My main reason for hunting Armenia this past April was to take an Armenian mouflon. This is the only destination where a US hunter can take this animal from its native range and legally import the trophy. I booked my hunt through Srdja Dimitrijevic of Safari International (www.safariinternational.com). Dimitrijevic told me that a hunter last year took a mouflon that would be the new number one SCI Armenian mouflon if the hunter chose to enter it into the record book. Other hunters, including my friends Rex Baker and Bruce Keller, have hunted here and taken less mature Armenian rams. Although Dimitrijevic claims a 60 percent success rate in his literature, there’s no doubt in my mind that this is one of the least successful hunts in Eurasia. I saw a band of 27 females, but this is the only one of my 23 hunts for wild sheep on which I saw not a single ram.
That negative being noted, I must say that I haven’t given up. I’m returning to Armenia in late summer, when the rams are reportedly much more visible. It is true they are higher on the mountain at that time, but even on my April hunt we hunted up and over mountains and ridges fully 13,000 feet high, contending with deep snow on the north faces and high winds. Mouflon generally stay below snow, but in order to approach likely open south faces, climbs over higher terrain are unavoidable, even in springtime. Despite seven days of effort, the mouflon hunt was a shutout. No problem; that’s why they call it hunting......
