Calling in from the top of an absolutely gorgeous mountain range. We are right at the top, right in the clouds and stars, one of the prettiest places I've ever seen in my life. It looks like the Rocky Mountains in the Kootenay area in British Columbia ... very similar. We've been traveling for 2 1/2 days. We finally got here right at dark tonight, and just before we got here we stopped and glassed, and we found three different bands of Eastern tur or Dagestan tur, same thing. They're only here in Azerbaijan. One was a group of four rams or billies, I'm not sure, because they're kind of a cross between a goat and a sheep (mountain goat genus) there was one monster and all four of them were shooters. But they live in the steepest country; it's the steepest kind of hunting you can do. I don't even have a clue how we'd get over there. But they're not far, only a mile away, I can see the whole face over there, but to get at them I don't know how we'll do it.

We landed in Baku, Azerbaijan last night. Got to our hotel around midnight. At 2 in morning, I was on the second floor, I could hear my lock being fiddled with and the door opened and a guy started coming in. I sat up and kind of yelled, "hey," and he ducked back out, so I ran to the door, opened it and he was already gone. About 10 minutes later, I was watching out the peephole, and saw his little head come around the corner. He did a little knock on my door, and I said, "Get out of here!" and he ran away again. About half an hour later he came out again this time with three official-looking guys in suits at the end of the hallway. I started getting a little freaked out, so I checked the window to go outside to the fire escape, and I opened the window, and there were three guys out on the fire escape. So I shut the window quickly and then a shadow walked past my window out on the fire escape. I thought, "What the hell is going on?" I looked out in the hall, and now the other guys were gone, so I went downstairs to the lobby. I don't know what they were doing, but it must have been security looking for someone else in the hotel. It's really tightly secured around here.

Anyway, then we drove six hours across Azerbaijan. Really deserty ... sand for miles, then over a high ridge then beautiful valleys and trees. We're in the Caucasus Mountains probably only 10 miles from the Russian border. Steep hunting and I'm out of shape, so I'm going to be hurting for the first few days. They have a rifle and I may have to use the rifle. I'm going to try with muzzleloader, but we'll see ...