During the communist period in Kazakhstan, many Kazakhs fled for Mongolia, settling down in Bayan Ulgii, an area that has been designated for the Kazakhs of Mongolia today. Kazakhs living in Bayan-Ölgii Province of Mongolia continue to hunt with eagles today. There are an estimated 250 eagle hunters in the Western Mongolian province.Their falconry custom, so-called 'horse-riding eagle falconry', is unique in practice only with trained Golden Eagle on horseback. Their hunting target is almost limited to Red Fox or Corsac Fox. In the first week of October, 70 eagle hunters gather for the annual Golden Eagle Festival of Mongolia. They use eagles to hunt foxes and hare during the cold winter months when it is easier to see the gold colored foxes against the snow. Many Kazakh traditions have been preserved by the Kazakhs in Mongolia, eagle hunting being amongst them. Although the Kazakh government has made efforts to lure the practitioners of these Kazakh traditions back to Kazakhstan, most Kazakhs have remained in Mongolia. Bayan Olgii, Western Mongolia, 2015.
Kazakh boys playing on there bicycles. Olgii, Western Mongolia, 2015.
Among traditional herders, each married couple occupied its own tent, and sons usually received their share of the family herd at the time of their marriage. The usual pattern was for one son, often, but not necessarily, the youngest, to inherit the headship of the parental herd and tent, while other sons formed new families with equivalent shares of the family herd; daughters married out to other families. Adult sons and brothers often continued their close association as members of the same herding camp, but they could leave to join other herding camps whenever they wished. In the 1980s, herders were likely to continue to work closely with patrilineal kins, and many of the basic level suuri, a subdivision of the negdel herding camps, consisted of fathers and sons or groups of adult brothers and their families. Herders no longer inherited livestock from parents, but they did inherit membership in the herding cooperative. If cooperative officials granted custody of collectively owned animals and permission to hold privately owned stock on a family basis, which was how private plots were allotted in Soviet collective farms in the 1980s, then it would be to the advantage of newly married sons to declare themselves new families. Arkhangai Province, Mongolia, 2015.