on the river and his direct pipeline to local gossip, Smirnov had his finger
on the pulse of the local hunting and poaching scene. Smirnov counted
the Dunkai clan among his neighbors and, shortly after Markov’s death,
he got on his Buran and rode out to Ivan Dunkai’s cabin at the confluence
of the Amba and the Bikin.
“The first thing I wanted to know,” Smirnov began, “was where the
tiger came from. Uncle Vanya [Dunkai] showed me boar tracks going
down along the Bikin, and the tiger had followed these boar tracks. He
said, ‘Zhenya [a diminutive form of Evgeny], that’s not my tiger. He
must have come from up the river.’ Then I knew the tiger had ventured
out of its home territory. Uncle Vanya got scared when I told him that
Markov was involved in trapping tigers and selling their skins. He
understood very well that, if Markov had injured the tiger or harmed him
in any way and then visited his [Dunkai’s] cabin, the tiger could come for
Markov and might not spare him either.”
It seems now that Evgeny Smirnov was the only person with a forensic
interest in this case who actually spoke with Ivan Dunkai at the time of
the incident. What must be taken into account here is that Russian
citizens, particularly older ones, have learned through painful experience
that information is a weapon that can and will be used against them.
Therefore, people protect their friends and neighbors, and information
about them is shared carefully, being limited or altered according to who
is asking. Shooting a tiger is a serious offense; if it came down to a
choice between Inspection Tiger, foreign journalists, and a known and
trusted local like Smirnov who had married into the tribe, the latter stood
the best chance of getting good information. This is why Smirnov’s
account must be considered, even though it differs substantially from
Trush’s piecemeal one, which depended heavily on his (often excellent)
powers of deduction.
“The thing is,” Smirnov explained, “that particular year was a bad year
for tigers in terms of prey. Boars are very susceptible to disease and the
boar population was in decline. That was the main reason this tiger came
down the river: he was forced to expand his turf because there was not
enough food and, while chasing boars, he ended up in someone else’s
ron
(Ron)
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