The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

is strewn with polished beach stones among which stands the bleached
carcass of a driftwood tree. In its branches is an assemblage of bear
skulls. Hanging from an upended beach log nearby are scores of carefully
chosen stones, each meticulously wrapped with string in a variety of
crisscross patterns. It is hard to say if these are shamanic devices or
exercises in bricolage, but Khobitnov is a complex and gifted man and he
has a grasp of both.
Khobitnov is almost exactly the same age as Yuri Trush; they are
friends and, for a time, they overlapped in Inspection Tiger under
Vladimir Schetinin, a man for whom Khobitnov maintains the utmost
respect. Like Trush, Khobitnov developed an affinity for the forest while
hunting with his father and, like him, he participated briefly in the
commercial slaughter of saiga antelope on the steppes of Kazakhstan. As
a young man, Khobitnov found a wolf cub in Moscow’s famous
Zavidovsky hunting reserve (now a park) and raised it in his apartment,
not far from the city center. After getting his degree from the Moscow
Institute for Decorative and Applied Arts (now called the Moscow State
University of Arts and Industry), he was hired by the Moscow mint,
where he worked as an engraver rendering designs for coins, paper
money, and government documents. His face looks as if it could have
been made there, too: above his salt-and-pepper beard and mustache, the
crow’s-feet and brow furrows are so deeply incised that they seem more
the result of tools than time. It is hard to reconcile the detail and
precision required of an engraver with the size of Khobitnov’s hands,
which look as if they could palm a basketball, and yet evidence of his
skill can be found throughout his home. In his free time, he builds
hunting knives from scratch, shaping and engraving the steel, bone, and
antler into works of art that look as if they should be in a gallery rather
than hanging from someone’s belt. The number of Russians who have
painted the Sea of Japan for its beauty alone can be counted on one hand,
but Khobitnov does that, too. His works—mostly landscapes and marines
—are distinctive for their detail and a tendency toward the miniature.
“There is a high demand for artistry here,” wrote Chekhov on his journey