Fifty years of the Hunter's Vigil

TALAS — On a cold morning next month, as they do every autumn, eagle hunters will ride into the center of Talas with hooded golden eagles on their gloves and gather at the foot of a bronze man doing exactly the same thing. Then they will ride out to the pastures for the Salburun festival.

The Hunter's Vigil, a kneeling berkutchi with a golden eagle on his gauntleted arm, has stood on its granite plinth at the entrance to the central city park since 1971. About four meters high, it was commissioned by the republican government as an image of national folk tradition, at a time when eagle hunting itself was in decline. Fifty years on, it is the city's most common meeting place and one of its most frequent images on postcards.

"When I was a boy there were old men in my village who said the statue was the last berkutchi in Irad, because nobody young was learning," said Mukash Beishekeev, who has flown eagles in the Talas Alatau foothills for thirty years. "Now my grandson has a bird. The bronze man was patient."

Students meet under the eagle's wings before lectures, couples are photographed there after weddings, and on Saturday evenings the steps of the plinth fill with teenagers. Few of them, asked by the Herald, knew how old it was.