We arrived in Moscow 9 1/2 hours after leaving Los Angeles..view out the window coming into the airport at Moscow

20191008_042259 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

We stayed overnight in Moscow and then flew out at around 12:30PM local time for Kamchatka--another 9 1/2 hours flight... once there we stopped at this grocery store for some supplies.. great view of a volcano in town.. Kamchatka has a large amount of still active volcanoes ..believe its 28 active with a total of well in excess of 100..

20191010_062406 by A Hoffart, on Flickr
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20191010_062349 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

After getting supplies and a bit of lunch, it was off for another 7 hour auto ride to get to the village we would be based out of..

20191013_170828 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191013_170828 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

This is the village we stayed at as our base camp..there is a local downhill ski area there which surprised me..surprised me from the standpoint everyone seems to have just enough to get by.. in the US,skiing is an expensive hobby.. apparently not so there..

20191011_131306 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

This lady was our cook..she cooked amazing meals.. most if not all was grown right in her green house and garden.. she was originally from Germany.. AND, it was a dialect I could understand for the most part and converse with..made for a better experience. We also had an interpreter along... Who was studying at the local university in Kamchatka for linquistics.. she spoke obviously Russian as well as English and French.. was great to have her in camp and be able to ask a lot about the Russian culture, thoughts, experiences, etc..

20191013_110919 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191013_110721 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191013_110711 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

Local Hot Springs in the village we stayed//

20191013_091352 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

The following day we flew out to the hunting area in this Russian Helicopter... old military model..see below..

20191013_144643 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

Below are some of the pics I took heading out to the hunting area and coming back in....as well as while on the ground....

20191012_104531 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191011_113337 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191012_104809 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191011_101809 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191011_102106 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191015_213538 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191011_102106 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191011_075546 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

My partner scored first with a nice approx. 8ft squared griz.. beautiful fur, nice bear..not huge, but a nice bear..Guns provided by the outfitter were a Christenson Arms in .375H&H and AK-47 variant... The CA had a nice Swaro Z6 scope on it..the AK's were open sights..

20191011_130717 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

We got lucky and found this guy... again, not a huge moose but a nice moose..

20191012_134956 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191012_135444_1 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191012_134906 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

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Breakfast at Kamchatka --compliments of Aeroflot Airlines..
Russian pancakes and caviar

20191015_113037 by A Hoffart, on Flickr
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This was the view out the plane flying back out of Kamchatka..

20191015_132621 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

and across the mountains headed towards Moscow... NOT a whole lot out there..

20191015_143435 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

20191015_143321 by A Hoffart, on Flickr

My takeaways... are as follows.

Russian people in the areas and villages seem to have, as I stated,, enough to get by --at or near poverty levels..

In the city or airports they have no concept of space. To both my partner, myself, and many others who have been there, along with my local friends who live in Montana but were from that neck of the woods, the way they go about things is extremely rude.. Perhaps one of the reasons Moscow is rated one of the most unfriendly cities in the world..

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/new...y-10480603.html

We got off the plane and wanted to head to the hotel which was literally 10 minutes or less away.. but you had to go out the high fenced area around the airport so you could not walk.. taxi driver comes up and asks to take us there.. after I put my bag in the car, I asked how much, he wanted $60 US.. I pulled my bag back out of the car and told him it is not going to happen..he magically went to $40 but by that time it was too late..took another taxi..

There seems to be little to no pride of ownership there..for the most part. Not much is fixd up or taken care of.. no paint, fences tipped over, junk laying around, etc.. They what they do to make a living and that's it..

Talking to the young interpreter gal, she said the young people there look for any way out.. to get to another country or whatever.. as there is not much of a future there... She told me that her parents told her before the fall of USSR, the people were pretty much told that you don't have to work that hard, the government will be here for you.. She said the people of that generation still are a bit like that.. even after the breakup..She told us it was horrible when the USSR broke up..people were lost..didn't really know what to do.. hard to get clothing, etc.. which is quite obvious to this day..you will see lots of bigger buildings in the villages, etc..with all the windows out, just sitting there.. they look like they must have looked like right after WW2..She said they were told Americans were aggressive.. work too hard, etc..found that interesting in light of the circumstances of what I saw while there..

Perhaps there is much I don't understand about the Russian culture, people, etc.. I am sure there is.. Having said that, I have never been so happy to set foot back in Montana..

My thoughts were to all those in the USA and around the world that find socialism and communism so appealing, need to head on over to interior Russia and hang out for a while.. see all that mother Russia has to offer to its citizens.. stark contrast,, in Russia people are trying to find any means to get out, where as in the western nations, people are doing anything to get in.. mmmm, why would that be???

We left this hunt early for a number of reasons.. we got extremely lucky to get what we did.. in general this was NOT AT ALL the type of hunt we were told it was going to be..

There is little to no ethics hunting there in our experience.. and little to no game left from what I saw.. As you can see, for the most part there was snow on the ground. No tracks in the snow means no game.. The outfitter tried to tell us the moose has migrated to another area..that is an outright lie.. I have been in moose country most of my life..they might move around with the snow levels a bit, but they don't migrate like mule deer and other types of game.. Was also told there was snow sheep in the area..never saw even one..on ground or from the air..

BUYER BEWARE to anyone headed to this area to hunt is all I can say..

Used a booking agent out of Germany--will never use him or this guide service again... not sure who is lying but doesn't matter, just won't do business with either..

ONE very positive thing Russia has .. they seem to have higher than average percentage of good looking women..

Having said all the above--if given the chance to go back with another outfitter for an actual hunt for snow sheep, I would go..incredibly beautiful country..