cabins were because the tiger certainly did and he wanted desperately to
avoid another tragedy. But only Burukhin was willing to break this
unspoken pact with his neighbors, and his motivation was clear. “He was
angry,” recalled Yuri Pionka, “and his intention was to ‘have a meeting’
with that tiger.”
The road out to the Pochepnyas’ apiary lay between the river and
Sobolonye, and Trush knew that, at some point, the tiger would have to
cross it. “As we drove, I was asking the guys to look carefully to the right
and to the left,” Trush explained, “and yes, we found the tiger’s tracks
crossing the road. He had crossed over and did not come back.”
The tiger’s tracks ran almost due west of Tsepalev’s tarpaper shelter,
and when they studied them that afternoon, their edges were already hard
and slightly rounded, a natural progression of aging snow tracks. Yuri
Pionka judged them to be nearly two days old, which meant the tiger had
crossed over almost immediately after leaving Pochepnya on the 15th.
From here, it was roughly three miles to Sobolonye as the crow flew, and
about twice that overland. The tiger could have been there and gone by
now, but so far there had been no sign of him around the village. Team
members were posted there just in case, and among them was Yegeny
Smirnov from Field Group Taiga.
The terrain between this point and Sobolonye was steep and
convoluted, laced with creeks and interrupted repeatedly by steep rocky
bluffs. It was perfect habitat for Amur tigers, but very hard on humans.
This was where the two tracking teams would be spending their days until
the situation resolved itself, one way or another. Should the driving team
find a fresher track, they could contact the other team by radio and let
them know. Although their radios were Japanese and of decent quality,
they only worked line-of-sight. If either party was in a valley or over a
hill, there was no way they could communicate with each other.
Denis Burukhin, his short, sturdy horse antsy and blowing in the cold,