man, it was only because the man was aggressive to the tiger: who would
like to be wounded—to get a bullet? These were the only cases. So, it was
Markov’s destiny to be eaten by a tiger. If he had stayed overnight at my
place, it would have been a different story.”
Lingering on in Trush’s mind was the question of what exactly happened
on the night Markov was killed—had Markov shot at the tiger then as
well? Trush knew little beyond the fact that the gun had been taken from
the scene, most likely by Onofreychuk. In March of 2007, Onofreychuk
stated that, when he arrived, Markov’s gun was lying open in the snow.
“There was an empty shell in the barrel,” he explained. “Apparently, he
shot once, opened the gun to reload it, but he didn’t make it and the tiger
got him.”
Sasha Dvornik had a vivid memory of the scene as well: “Markov’s
gun was lying open in the snow by the print of his body,” he recalled in
- “There were two cartridges in the snow: one was empty; the other
was full. He had managed to take the fresh cartridge from his belt, but
had no time to reload the gun.”
Markov’s cartridge belt held twenty shells and, when Trush recovered
it, three of them were missing. None were found in his caravan. It is
conceivable then that the first shell was fired sometime around December
1 or 2, the second shell was fired on the night of December 3, and the
third was dropped in the snow moments later. As was the case with
Pochepnya and Trush, Markov would have had two or three seconds
between hearing the tiger’s roar and being attacked. His shotgun would
have been loaded, and there is every reason to suppose he would have
tried to defend himself. It has never been clear where that shot went, but,
based on Inspection Tiger’s field autopsy, it now looks as if Markov
managed to shoot the tiger twice in the right foreleg—once from his
caravan (or in the woods) and, again, just before he was killed. The fact
that he was attempting to reload in the midst of the attack implies