Exploring the Pustaya Mountain | theHunter: Call of the Wild

This Week's Contest theme by the Gaming Photography Community is Mountain Stories and for this, I went on an adventure in theHunter: Call of the Wild.

I still have a lot of uncharted territory in the game, especially on the maps that I don't often hunt in... One of those maps is the Medved Taiga National Park. It is probably the coldest and harshest place in the whole game. It is always covered with snow and the blizzards are very frequent here. You can't go one full day without snowfall here. This makes it a beautiful place to hunt, but the lack of animal variety discourages me from hunting here. It is not the easiest map to hunt, and the population of available species is also sparse.

For today's adventure, I had a place that I never went to and wanted to explore. This is called Pustaya Mountain and is located in the northeastern part of the national park.

You can see how it looks from a couple of kilometres away.

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I used my ATV to cover some distance. The half-frozen lake was relatively easy for it. But once I reached the base of the mountain, I had to leave it there and climb on foot.

At this time I was actively looking for signs of animals to hunt too. The slope wasn't that steep.

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I was ready with my revolver to shoot anything moving and also it was for self-defence too from the pack of Wolves. Those bastards can come and attack anytime.

When I reached a bit up, I looked back to see how far I had come up and the view was amazing.

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When I reached higher, it was a wide area. There was no edge on the other side. I heard the noise of some birds and shot one of them down with my rifle.

Look at how Sheru inspects this dead 'Western Capercaillie'. I have not seen them enough in this reserve. I wished I had shot down the colourful male

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At the top, there was a forested area and the sunlight through the clouds and trees was begging me to capture it.

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The fog would come in suddenly and go away quickly too. This happened a couple of times in quick succession. I was walking on the edge of this mountain going after a Musk Deer.

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I stalked this small male 'Siberian Musk deer' on top of this mountain. I took my time with the shot. He was very calm and not aware of my presence. Look at those fangs, how scary. Don't tell me they have no connection with the Vampires.

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I was going for the highest point on this mountain. There is supposed to be a watch tower in these locations. I got lucky and saw a big Brown Bear a few hundred meters in front of me. This was his last day here.

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Finally, I saw the watch tower and decided to climb up to get a better view of the land. Now, I was sure that this was the highest point of Pustaya Mountian.

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A snowstorm hit the place where I reached the top of the tower. The weather changes so quickly here. It was already evening and I decided to wait on top to watch the sunset. But I didn't expect much sun as this map is not receiving enough sun.

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I waited 15 minutes at the top of the tower but I was unlucky and the sun never fully came out of the clouds. It stopped snowing eventually and just before the sunset, the brightest sky I saw was this. I liked this shot. The lights give you so much warmth in this cold hell.

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I waited a bit more and the fog was gone but the sun was already set and now the clouds had the pinkish tint on them. They looked good to me.

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This is how I spent my day on this Pustaya Mountain. I hunted a few animals, explored a lot of terrain and surveyed the land from the top of the watch tower and later enjoyed the game of dynamic weather in this beautiful game. It was a wonderful experience.