The tradition of hunting with golden eagles is said to have been started by the nomadic Khitans from Manchuria in northern China in 940 AD

Bahak Birgen is renowned as Mongolia’s youngest male eagle hunter

Asholpan is the 13-year-old daughter of a legendary Kazakh eagle hunter. Asholpan may well be the only female eagle hunter in the world among the 70 that remain.

The Kazakhs of the Altai mountain range in western Mongolia are the only people that hunt with golden eagles, and today their number is on the decline. The eagles are not bred in captivity, but taken from nests at a young age. Female eaglets are chosen since they grow to a larger size – a large adult might be as heavy as seven kilos, with a wingspan of over 230cm. After years of service, on a spring morning, a hunter releases his mature eagle a final time, leaving a butchered sheep on the mountain as a farewell present.

“That’s how the Kazakh eagle hunters make sure that the eagles go back to nature and have their own strong newborns, for the sake of future generations”.

In his project The Eagle Hunters of Mongolia, photographer Asher Svidensky follows this little tribe:

During my last voyage to Mongolia, I flew over to Ulgii (or ölgii), the capital of the far west. I went there in order to document the Kazakh eagle hunters’ lives in west Mongolia. These eagle hunters, who preserve an old tradition that’s passed from generation to generation, tame eagles and use them for hunting smaller animals, such as foxes and marmots. The eagle hunter’s families live on this side of Mongolia after having migrated between Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia until the fall of communism and closing of all borders. The tradition’s preservation was what drew me to them. They preserve it without any touristic nature, unlike in Kazakhstan. These Kazakh eagle hunters, who live in Mongolia today, are the last ones on earth who still deserve the title “Eagle Hunter”. It is not merely a title to them, but a way of life.

On the way back from the mountains, however, it felt like something was missing. I felt like all the photos I’d taken over the last few days were a mere reflection of previous photos and stories, distinguished only by slight light and place differences. It wasn’t enough for me. I knew I had to find another way and tell a new story that was not yet told in the snowy Mongolian mountains. I tried coming up with new ways of photographing the eagle hunters. Should I use different lenses? Ask them to perform tasks other than hunting? How could I tell a more interesting story than “Even today, there are eagle hunters in Mongolia”? From previous acquaintances with the land of the open steppes, I had known about the difficulty of trying and defining it. Modern Mongolia is a young country that was created after the fall of communism in 1990. In addition, we all have a vague image of 13th century Mongolia, during Chinggis Khaan’s reign, the Manchurian reign or even the communist reign, but today’s Mongolia is going through somewhat of a transition – it’s no longer communist but not yet fully modern.

I’ve decided to focus myself, stop looking for a portrait of centuries old image of a Kazakh eagle hunter, and search for a portrait representing the future of this ancient Mongolian tradition. I wanted to document the “Future Generation” – boys who take their first steps in learning the hunting skills, boys who hold the tradition’s future in their bare hands.
And that is my story.

Read his full story here and see an incredible photo feature here