Hunting Turkey in the Mountains of Sisian

I have a fear of heights. More specifically, I have a fear of rolling down a mountainside in a car. A lot of travel through Armenia requires driving through winding roads cut alongside mountains. So when I travel within Armenia I am constantly battling against this fear. 

There is a secret to hunting turkeys. You can’t do it in the spring, nor in the summer, nor fall.

So when I went on a trip with friends to Tatev Monastery, part of the plan was to head south and check out Meghri, the southernmost city in Armenia, and a place of peculiar interest to me. My dad had visited there earlier, and described it “...like entering Jerusalem 2000 years ago.” Unappealing to him, but intriguing to me. 

The reason why you can’t hunt turkeys during those seasons is that they camouflage too easily with their surroundings. 

Plans for the following day changed, and without the trip to Meghri I decided to take a cab ride back to Yerevan. This was a night affair, requiring finding additional travelers in order to divide the fee enough to make the cost for the trip back reasonable. We set off after about an hour of waiting, having been informed by the driver that we would pick up our fourth traveler along the road. 

Finding a turkey, let alone being able to track and shoot a turkey is nigh impossible.  

We stopped on the road. Construction work was going on, and one of the workers took off his helmet, handed it to another worker, picked up his bag and sat next to me. He was stained with tar and the odor lingered in the car. “I’m Yuri.” he said, “I’m Molokan.”

In the winter, the colors of a turkey pop out against the snow, letting you more easily find and track them. 

Molokans, which roughly translate to milk-eaters, were Russian Christians who were forcibly relocated to Armenia during the Soviet Union. Yuri, like many Molokans, spoke a broken Armenian. He also talked, a lot, and I was trying to sleep so I would not freak out from being on a mountain road in the pitch black. 

You have to be very careful when stalking a turkey, you can’t make a single sound. 

Yuri gabbed on, spurred on by the mini barrels of beer he bought during a gas stop. He told me about growing up in mountains near Sisian, where once, quite by accident, he slipped into a cavern and discovered ancient petroglyphs that he claimed were of Adam and Eve. 

One sound and the turkey will be gone, “blblblblblbl!”, in an instant it will be on the peak of the next mountain. 

Yuri told me that though he was not Armenian by blood, that Armenia was his country, not Russia. He was born in Armenia, lived in Armenia, hunted and played in Armenia; and surely, one day, he would die in Armenia.

But if you manage to kill your turkey, be prepared to taste something delicious!

We approached Yerevan as midnight approached. Yuri invited me to join him on a turkey hunt someday, then exited the car, providing no last name, no village name to visit, nor any way to contact him to do so.