Hunting Report subscriber J.Y. Jones is on our Honor Roll list for numerous past reports on important and up-and-coming hunting destinations. In 2008, he e-mailed us from Kath- mandu with a report on the very first hunt conducted in Nepal since hunting was shut down for six years due to political upheaval in that country. Like many adventure hunters, Jones took the US State Department’s Travel Warnings under advisement and traveled there in pursuit of blue sheep and tahr. A blizzard prevented him from completing his hunt, but he has since returned and filed the following assessment on this fascinating destination.
He writes, “I just completed my second hunt in Nepal. The first was in 2008, when I was the first foreign hunter into the country since the closure in 2001. A series of unseasonable blizzards (snow is extremely rare in April and even in March) kept us either in camp or seriously hindered by deep snow for that entire hunt. (See Article ID 2068.) I managed to take a good Himalayan blue sheep on the last day, but didn’t even get to hunt tahr.
“I returned this year, and took an exceptional tahr with 13½-inch horns and 9½-inch bases. (See photo in Trophy Gallery section of The Hunting Report website.) I also took a very old Indian muntjac, or barking deer, near the end of the hunt. Fellow Hunting Report subscriber Craig Boddington was my constant companion on this hunt. He also took a tahr with 13½-inch horns, an older animal than mine by several years and truly a great trophy. Additionally, he took a great blue sheep on the second day of hunting for that animal. Both of our tahr bulls should make the Top Ten in the SCI Record Book.
“In contrast to my hunt in 2008, we only got snow up high twice, but it was much higher than the tahr go and even higher than most blue sheep. With blue sky, sunshine and warm temperatures, we mostly hunted in shirtsleeves. In 2008, I slept in my double-layer sleeping bag every night, but this time I didn’t need the outer layer at all. The elevation where we camped was 1,000 feet lower, but that wasn’t the difference; we were surrounded by 15,000-foot peaks that stayed bare almost all the time, and when we did get snow high up, it melted before noon. This was a radical departure from 2008’s trip, when we waded through thigh-deep drifts much of the time.....
