on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey
—even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking
its behavior. It was our ancestors’ skill at not only analyzing and
imitating the nature of a given animal, but identifying with it, that
enabled them to flourish in dangerous environments, both physically and
psychically. In hunting societies, such as the Udeghe, the !Kung, the
Haida, or the Sioux, animals were not merely food, they were seen as
blood relatives, spiritual companions, hunting guides, and sources of
power and connection to the surrounding world. The boundaries between
the umwelten of humans and animals were, of necessity, much less
rigidly defined. Many residents of the Bikin valley maintain these skills
and relationships to this day; there are hunters there who speak with
tigers and who can identify game by scent alone. In the predominantly
Russian village of Yasenovie, a random winter scene in 2007 revealed a
circle of men in forest green and camouflage, in the center of which a
man charged and wheeled while holding a rack of elk antlers to his head.
“All species have been shaped by the forces of evolution to meet
immediate needs,” wrote George Page in his companion to the television
series Inside the Animal Mind.^8 “The more a given species needs to be
conscious of, the more it is conscious of. Either that or it becomes
extinct.” Georges Leroy, a naturalist and gamekeeper to Louis XV at
Versailles, had ample opportunity to observe predator-prey relations and
he speculated that the reason wolves seemed so much smarter than deer
was that they would starve to death if they weren’t. While deer forage is
stationary and abundant, wolf prey, by contrast, is not only highly mobile
but doing its utmost to avoid being eaten. In order to succeed, predators
must actively—and consciously—contrive successful hunting scenarios
by adapting to, and manipulating, random events within a constantly
shifting environment. This, as any hunter or businessperson knows, is
hard to do, and these conditions favor the prey almost every time.
Ivan Dunkai’s son Vasily, a lifelong hunter who has shared his territory
with tigers all his life, has come to a similar conclusion. On a bitterly
cold day in March 2007, he tried to put the tiger into a context an outsider