abyss.
In the case of the hunting-manager-turned-big-cat-researcher Sergei
Sokolov, it took years to pull himself back out. Sokolov was in his early
forties when he was attacked by a tiger in March of 2002. Powerfully
built, with a bull neck and a closely shorn head, he exudes the kind of
pent-up intensity that one might expect of a highly trained soldier—the
kind that gets dropped alone behind enemy lines and must, somehow, get
himself back alive. Sokolov is a rigorously principled and very focused
man, made more so, it seems, by his experiences with tigers and leopards.
To date, he has spent more than twenty years working and hunting in the
taiga. During his thirteen years as a ranger and hunting inspector, two
hunters he knew were killed by tigers, and he was personally involved in
a hunt for a man-eater (a decrepit male whose fangs had been worn down
to nubs). Like so many in this work, Sokolov was drawn to the Far East
by the stories he had read, and by their promise of the wild and exotic.
Today, there is an urgency about Sokolov, a sense that time is limited and
precious, and it may have something to do with coming so close to death.
Even so, it took him several hours to recount the ordeal that began, as
these incidents so often do, with a roar.
“I will tell you my personal outlook on things,” said Sokolov late one
evening at the kitchen table in his modest apartment in Vladivostok.
“Everybody has his fate and his destiny. It is difficult to escape it: if it is
your destiny to die this year, it won’t matter if you go into the taiga or
not. I never thought that something could happen to me in the taiga,
because in the taiga I felt like I was at home.”
Sokolov’s purpose on that cold spring day in the mountains of southern
Primorye had been to collect samples of Amur leopard scat for DNA
analysis, which is one way scientists determine population numbers for
this critically endangered cat. He was working with a partner—a novice
—who was some distance away, and both men were unarmed as per the
regulations for this type of research. It was early afternoon, just below
freezing, when Sokolov ran across a set of tiger tracks and stopped to
measure them; they were fresh, and it was clear they belonged to a
female. He decided to follow them, but did so backward as a precaution.
ron
(Ron)
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