the tiger, hunting, eyes alight. Stepping gingerly over the ice and plowing
through the drifts, there was in its progress something relentless and
mechanical: the clouds of steam chugging, enginelike, from its nostrils,
translucent whiskers laced with hoarfrost from its own hot breath. Inside
Trush’s Kung, men sat jammed hip to hip on the makeshift bunks, rifles
cleaned and ready in the rack on the wall, a kettle steaming on the
woodstove by the door.
Kungs are essentially self-propelled versions of the caravans Markov
and the loggers used, and Inspection Tiger’s had been modified to serve
as patrol vehicles, personnel carriers, dormitories, dining halls, arms
caches, and war rooms rolled into one. On the night of the 16th, Trush’s
vehicle was dedicated to the latter purpose. “Schetinin got us all together
and told us to find the tiger and destroy him,” recalled Vladimir Shibnev,
one of the local hunting inspectors who had been called in to assist. “I
argued with him: I said, ‘Do you have any idea what it means to follow
tiger tracks in December? A tiger is not a sable who walks a few miles
and is done. This tiger could be fifty miles away by now; it could be a
hundred and fifty miles away.’ ”
Shibnev worked with Yevgeny Smirnov in Field Group Taiga, a small
team of dedicated hunting inspectors who, in addition to being skilled
hunters and trackers, were based right on the Bikin. They knew the area
intimately and took a proprietary interest in it, both personally and
professionally. Shibnev was Russian, but he had been raised on the river
in close proximity to the Udeghe and Nanai. Shibnev’s father and uncle
had both done military service in the Far East, and they had been so
inspired by the country—and by Arseniev’s descriptions of it—that in
1939 they persuaded their entire family to move out to this lush frontier
on the far side of Siberia. Shibnev’s father worked on the Bikin as a fur
and forest product buyer, and his uncle became a respected naturalist and
author who specialized in the Bikin ecosystem. Shibnev’s mother taught
school on a Nanai collective farm. As a result, Shibnev, a wise and
handsome man who exudes a calm vitality, has an exceptionally good feel
for the area and its inhabitants. At fifty, he was the oldest member of the
hunting team, and he could remember the valley before the loggers came,
ron
(Ron)
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