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'There is no halfway': Sheridan hunter pursues snow sheep in Russia

By Stephen Dow | stephen.dow@thesheridanpress.com 42 min ago


SHERIDAN — Sheridan hunter Mike Pilch keeps a quote from journalist Jack O’Connor saved in his phone. It’s there when he gets the inevitable question, the one about why he travels to faraway places — China, Mongolia, Pakistan — to hunt one of the many species of wild sheep scattered across the globe.

“There is no halfway,” O’Connor wrote back in 1960. “After his first exposure, a man is either a sheep hunter or he isn't. He either falls under the spell of sheep hunting and sheep country, or he won't be caught dead on another sheep mountain.”

Pilch fell under the spell. Hard.

“I’m addicted to it,” Pilch said. “The actual harvesting of the animal is less than 10% of the reason for me. It’s about the experience and about the sights you see, not just about the harvest and the kill.”


On a recent hunt for two subspecies of snow sheep, Pilch had numerous memorable experiences as one of the few American hunters allowed into Russia with a rifle permit in the midst of heightened international tensions and the country’s ongoing war with Ukraine.

Pilch spent the entire month of August in Russia, and while he only came home with one of the two subspecies he sought, the trip was memorable due to the experiences he had and the people he met, Pilch said.

“It’s been my experience, while traveling in all these countries and talking to the locals around the campfire, that they are just like us,” Pilch said. “They care about their families and their communities, but sometimes feel disconnected from what the higher government is doing. But at the end of the day, we’re all humans doing what we can to survive and to take care of those we love. These trips are a great reminder of that.”

‘The world’s upside down’

Clark Jeffs is the general manager and worldwide hunting consultant for Safari Outfitters LLC, based out of Powell. Safari is a hunting consulting firm that works with hunting guides and outfitters all over the world to set up its clients with unique, exotic hunts, Jeffs said.

One of the outfitters Safari has had a long relationship with is Kulu Safaris, based out of Magadan, Russia. According to its website, Kulu offers hunters the chance to hunt brown bears and snow sheep, both of which were quite popular opportunities prior to the outbreak of the war with Ukraine in February 2022, Jeffs said.

While it is still possible — and even fairly easy — for hunters to travel to Russia, Jeffs said he has seen a steep dropoff of his business in the country.


“Russia is open, and it is relatively easy to get a visa for a citizen going into Russia,”Jeffs said. “Getting a gun permit is also pretty straightforward. So getting in and out is not that challenging right now. But people are really apprehensive, and understandably so. If something major were to happen down there — if Putin were to close the borders and not allow visitors to leave, for example — that could be disastrous. The world’s upside down right now, and the hunting industry there has definitely been impacted.”

So far in 2023, the company has sent just one hunter to Russia, Jeffs said. That hunter was Mike Pilch.

A different world

Pilch had originally planned to travel to Russia for this hunt two years ago — a plan complicated first by the COVID-19 pandemic and later by the war with Ukraine. But as travel restrictions eased up, he saw a chance to continue his quest to hunt the seven subspecies of snow sheep.

The snow sheep, or Siberian bighorn sheep, is a species of sheep from the mountainous areas in the northeast of Siberia, Pilch said. There are seven subspecies of snow sheep: Kolyma, Koryak, Okhotsk, Yakutian, Kamchatkan, Putorana and Chukotka.

Pilch had a chance to hunt and kill a Kamchatkan sheep two decades ago. This time around, he set his sights on both the Okhotsk and the Kolyma subspecies.

But before doing that, there was a lot to figure out. Like how to make it from Sheridan to Moscow.

“Because of sanctions, I couldn’t use any American airlines,” Pilch said. “So I flew from Houston (Texas) to Istanbul (Turkey) and then took Turkish Airlines into Moscow.”


The flight from Istanbul to Moscow usually just takes two hours, Pilch said. His flight took four hours to avoid flying over Ukrainian territory.

Upon arriving in Moscow, Pilch was expecting a wait of three to four hours in order to get his gun cleared to enter the country. That didn’t happen.

“I was in and out of there in 20 minutes,” Pilch said. “I couldn’t believe it, and Sasha (Kiselev, the Safari Outfitters employee who coordinates hunts in Russia) couldn’t believe it. We were just giggling, like ‘I can’t believe we just got away with that.’”

Pilch was originally told by authorities that his unused ammunition would have to be detained by authorities upon leaving the country, as “a contribution to the war effort.” With the help of Kiselev, authorities were persuaded to allow Pilch to bring all his ammunition home.

Pilch spent the first night of his trip in Moscow. He later learned that, on that same night, the city was bombed just six blocks from where he was staying as part of the ongoing Ukrainian conflict.

“I tend to be a pretty cool cucumber about that sort of thing,” Pilch said. “But on the other hand, you’re sort of always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Throughout his hunting trip, the war with Ukraine loomed in the background, Pilch said. In Magadan, he saw a piece of propaganda comparing Russia’s fight against Ukraine to their fight against the Nazis in World War II. And as he traveled to higher and more isolated regions of the country, he learned that many Russian citizens had limited understanding of the conflict, with some believing that Ukraine and the United States had invaded Russia.


“It was definitely kind of a wonky thing to be the first American in the country with a firearm in years,” Pilch said. “But overall, there really weren’t a lot of glitches. I thought it was pretty smooth sailing.”

The hunt

Just three days into his hunt, Pilch fulfilled a dream of his and successfully bagged a ram Okhotsk. Pilch’s hunt for a Kolyma sheep was less successful. Pilch and his guides hiked 15 miles a day for a total of 22 days, and never encountered a Kolyma ram.

“The first hunt was nice and somewhat easy,”Pilch said. “The second hunt was brutal. It was 15 miles a day through virgin territory with a 40 pound backpack. There were no roads, no trails, no nothing. That’s the way snow sheep hunting is.”

While August in Russia is typically very rainy, there was a drought this year, and Pilch and his guides encountered a lot of smoke and haze on their travels. Roughly 100,000 acres of forest was on fire in the surrounding area.

“It was so hot and dry, which definitely might have impacted the second hunt,” Pilch said.

While the meat from the Okhotsk could not leave Russia due to U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, Pilch was able to bring the hide and horns back for taxidermy purposes. The meat remained in Russia with the local people.

“It was cool to share that meat with them,” Pilch said. “Primally, we’re all hunters, and I think they understood that as well as I did. Regardless of what other differences we have, we’ll always have that in common.”

The next hunt

With several months of rest under his belt, Pilch is just weeks away from his next hunt. He’ll be traveling to Pakistan next month, hunting four species, including the Himalayan ibex, the blue sheep, the Blandford Urial ibex and the Sindh ibex. With the exception of the Himalayan ibex, this is the first time Pilch has hunted any of these species.


Regardless of the outcome of this next hunt, Pilch knows he’ll come back with memories he’ll never forget.

“This is not necessarily an old man’s sport, so I’m going to do it as long as I can and enjoy every moment,” Pilch said. “I’m grateful for the opportunity.”

His mention of meat not taking it back to US seems like amateurish comment for international hunter
Nobody takes meat back to US