Gastro Gnome - Eat Better Wherever

Tajikistan Ibex

OntarioHunter said:
I suggest you get rid of the decals/stencils on the gun case. They are an invitation to trouble with European anti-hunting airport staff. I know one fella who puts musical instrument logos on his gun case for that reason.
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Violin case would be better.
 
OntarioHunter said:
I would suggest Yamaha logo. That gun case is about the right size and shape for an electronic piano keyboard. Is Bundy still making saxophones? That might work too.
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I’ll pull off the decals. I was thinking about doing it anyway bc 1/2 of them didn’t want to stick any more anyway. I think I’ll pass on the music stickers though. Maybe a Yamaha sticker.
 
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OntarioHunter said:
I suggest you get rid of the decals/stencils on the gun case. They are an invitation to trouble with European anti-hunting airport staff. I know one fella who puts musical instrument logos on his gun case for that reason.
Click to expand...
You know, we had two incidents with our rifles.

One was boarding the Air India plane in Chicago. When we declared the guns and the gave our paper work, then the confusion started. About every passenger on the plane gave us the evil eye at that point too. Maybe because they thought a delay was going to take place. They called in a person that was higher up the ladder there and he explained that all the paper work was good and in order and to board us. On a side note: Boarding that Air India plane is the point that you realize you're not in Kansas anymore. It then gets real distant when you board the plane in Istanbul Turkey headed to Tajikistan. Not many European decedents on that plane.

Then the next problem was on the return trip we had to stay at the crown Inn in Chicago. This was the motel that our Hunting consultant booked for us.

They freaked out when they saw we had weapons and called the police. When they arrived they told the clerk to let us take the weapons to our rooms. The manager said no weapons were allowed in the motel, and the police must take them. So they did and was nice enough to return them at 5 AM the next morning so we could catch our flights out. We stayed in a very nice motel in Dushanbe and never had an issues with our weapons in a country where they aren't legal for residents to possess. We just handed them to the manager who locked them up in a safe vault until we left.
 
shoots-straight said:
You know, we had two incidents with our rifles.

One was boarding the Air India plane in Chicago. When we declared the guns and the gave our paper work, then the confusion started. About every passenger on the plane gave us the evil eye at that point too. Maybe because they thought a delay was going to take place. They called in a person that was higher up the ladder there and he explained that all the paper work was good and in order and to board us. On a side note: Boarding that Air India plane is the point that you realize you're not in Kansas anymore. It then gets real distant when you board the plane in Istanbul Turkey headed to Tajikistan. Not many European decedents on that plane.

Then the next problem was on the return trip we had to stay at the crown Inn in Chicago. This was the motel that our Hunting consultant booked for us.

They freaked out when they saw we had weapons and called the police. When they arrived they told the clerk to let us take the weapons to our rooms. The manager said no weapons were allowed in the motel, and the police must take them. So they did and was nice enough to return them at 5 AM the next morning so we could catch our flights out. We stayed in a very nice motel in Dushanbe and never had an issues with our weapons in a country where they aren't legal for residents to possess. We just handed them to the manager who locked them up in a safe vault until we left.
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Who was the "hunting consultant" handling your travel arrangements? Gracy? They should have told you to check your guns in at LEAST an hour before departure. Sometimes that's not enough. If hunter doesn't have an hour and a half at Johannesburg to get guns through police when changing flights, he'll probably miss connections. And you DON'T want that if you're transporting guns in a restricted weapons country!

After the episode in Las Vegas, I'm sure taking guns to the room would be a problem in just about any lodging in an American big city. Guess I can understand that. Still, your consultant should have ironed it out for you ahead of time. No excuse for that.
 
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OntarioHunter said:
Who was the "hunting constant" handling your travel arrangements? Gracy? They should have told you to check your guns in at LEAST an hour before departure. Sometimes that's not enough. If hunter doesn't have an hour and a half at Johannesburg to get guns through police when changing flights, he'll probably miss connections. And you DON'T want that if you're transporting guns in a restricted weapons country!

After the episode in Las Vegas, I'm sure taking guns to the room would be a problem in just about any lodging in an American big city. Guess I can understand that. Still, your consultant should have ironed it out for you ahead of time. No excuse for that.
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U mean the one where “mr tough guy” country singer didn’t even warn the crowd, just dropped the mic, tucked tail n ran away?
 
Kazakhstan is blowing up badly right now. Hopefully you can avoid flying through that country.
 
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OntarioHunter said:
Who was the "hunting consultant" handling your travel arrangements? Gracy? They should have told you to check your guns in at LEAST an hour before departure. Sometimes that's not enough. If hunter doesn't have an hour and a half at Johannesburg to get guns through police when changing flights, he'll probably miss connections. And you DON'T want that if you're transporting guns in a restricted weapons country!

After the episode in Las Vegas, I'm sure taking guns to the room would be a problem in just about any lodging in an American big city. Guess I can understand that. Still, your consultant should have ironed it out for you ahead of time. No excuse for that.
Click to expand...
Jack Atcheson out of Butte. We had checked in our guns pre. Sorry I didn't get that part across better. They called us up first for boarding process because of their issues with it. I presented double paper work there. We had made three copies of everything, and had a file with us around our necks.
 
Looking forward to hearing how your hunt goes, I am currently planning a similar trip for 2026, not sure if I will go to one of the "stans" or Russia yet.
 
I’m currently sitting at the Istanbul airport waiting for my flight to Houston (only 3hrs to go). It’s as good a time as ever to start writing this out. Even though the hunt just happened it was truly an adventure. This bucket list hunt of mine lived up to the expectation.

My trip started with flights from Columbia to Chicago to Istanbul. In Istanbul I met up with Kevin another hunter who I would be sharing camp with. We didn’t book together but we hit it off both being primarily hardcore diy hunters. It couldn’t have worked out any better.

From Istanbul we flew into Dushanbe our flight landing at 2:30am local time. We were immediately met by our contact in Dushanbe (Mustafo) and our interpreter (Nabi) that would be with us the duration of our trip. Both guys were nice and spoke English pretty well. After about 90 minutes all our paperwork cleared and we were on the road with Nabi and our driver who spoke no English, but he was good natured and looked and sounded like every Russian you’ve seen in the movies. There are multiple languages spoken in TJ but according to Nabi most people speak Russian to a certain extent due to soviet influence back in the day.

We drove on good roads for about 9 hours then we hit the Pamir “Highway”. The Pamir Highway runs along the border of Tajikistan and Afghanistan for hundreds of miles. You can go between 10-25mph usually averaging about 15 depending on road conditions and weather. Villages are scattered along this road here and there. Everything from motorcycles and walking to semi trucks drive this 1-2 lane road. A good portion of the road is a rock wall on the Tajikistan side and a 100’ cliff down to the river with the rugged Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan on the other. It’s interesting. People over there don’t really follow any type of driving rules. It is pretty crazy. We also went through about 10 police and military check points. They were everywhere. Nabi said it was for safety to try to mainly look for illegal people in the country primarily taliban. For the most part these checks were often but uneventful. Some of the officers would look at us and make sure everything matched our paperwork, some would call in our info, one guy thought I took a pic of him (I didn’t) and looked through pics on my phone. Overall Nabi and our driver handled all the situations well and took care of us.

We drove through the night on the highway. The higher we got the more snow and ice there was on the road which added some excitement. We drove in a 4x4 Land Cruiser with good tires. We stopped in one of the small villages around 10pm to to let backed up semis and military trucks through. We were notified that the road wasn’t great ahead of us. So we put chains on the rear tires… kind of. One chain fit perfectly, the other was about 3” short. They rigged it up with some wire. Surprisingly it held.

We made it to the guest house in the village at the bottom of the valley we would hunt around 3am. I think it was 23hrs total. They had a warm meal ready for us and insisted we ate. FYI they eat a lot over there and they fully expect you to eat too. Lots and lots of bread. We had a meal and went to sleep around 4am with the alarms set for 8am to load up the yaks and donkeys and head up the mountain. Nabi told us there was already a group of guides in the valley locating groups of ibex for us. It was time for sleep.


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