been so tightly linked to animals that trigger the tiger’s wolf-killing
instincts, the likelihood of conflict would have dropped to nil. Remove
guns and dogs from the equation and Markov would not have felt as bold,
while the tiger would not have felt as threatened or protective. Even if
there had been a dead boar lying in the snow between them, both parties
would have responded to the situation very differently. Tigers will bluff-
charge the same way bears do and, in most cases, all the tiger wants is an
indication of submission. Under those circumstances, Markov would have
deferred to the czar, and everyone would have lived to hunt another day.
But guns and dogs are central to the tayozhnik’s identity; for someone
like Markov, life here would be impossible without them. Furthermore,
submission of this kind doesn’t come naturally to European Russians.
Even had Markov wished to avoid a conflict with the tiger, seeing his
dogs threatened or injured may have been too much to bear. Ivan Dunkai
might be willing to sacrifice his dogs to the tiger, but not Markov.
A graphic example of the lengths to which a hunter can go to protect
his dogs occurred in October of 2008, in south-central British Columbia.
There, in the forest outside the town of 100 Mile House, a forty-five-
year-old hunter and tree faller named Jim West was out with his two
Labrador retrievers, searching for moose sign. West explained to Carole
Rooney of the 100 Mile House Free Press that he was unarmed and
traveling upwind when “All of a sudden I heard a kind of a huff and a
growl off to my right, and when I turned around there was a bear six feet
away.”^13 It was a black bear with two cubs. Caught by surprise, the bear,
which weighed about 250 pounds, attacked. “I had no opportunity to hit
the ground like I should,” West explained, “so I just started to kick her in
the face. She jumped up and took a snap at my face, split my upper lip,
and then I hit the ground, and she jumped on top of me, tore my scalp and
bit my left arm.”
At this point, the dogs entered the fray and attempted to draw the bear
off. The bear abandoned West to pursue them, but as soon as West
attempted to rise, the bear turned and attacked him again, this time biting
his right arm. Again, the dogs intervened, and again, the bear went after