11. Охота

· Fiery Trails - 1

Summer flew by unnoticed, and autumn was already drawing to a close. It was November. By then my nerves were badly frayed. I needed a rest. I loved hunting, and for me it was the best way to relax. In 1973–1974 I used to hunt, mainly for fur-bearing animals – sable and mink – but I also enjoyed hunting wild boar.
I tracked down my old hunting friends, Boris Myasnikov and Vasily Kryukov. I had hunted with them before and knew they couldn’t live without hunting, that their paperwork and game licenses were always in order, and that they could always add me to their licenses – the law allowed that. Even though I hadn’t hunted in recent years, I had paid my membership dues regularly, and my hunting permit was fine. And off we went into the taiga.
To many of our people, I disappeared unexpectedly; many thought I was on one of my usual business trips. The weather was still warm. It’s always like that in Nakhodka: warm along the coast, but drive forty kilometers deep into the taiga and you gradually find yourself in Siberia. We moved along a taiga road. Two dogs were with us in the vehicle. The ground was already covered with snow, and the farther we went, the deeper it got.

The road wound through a valley between two mountains. In places the valley widened, in others it narrowed so much that the mountains formed what looked like gates, letting only the stream and the road pass through. Then the road and the stream would part again, and the valley would widen once more. Over a bumpy taiga road we slowly entered the kingdom of the taiga. After about twenty kilometers we turned onto an old logging road – it was even worse and more rutted than the main one. The car was tossed from side to side, especially when it hit frozen puddles dusted with snow. Sometimes it skidded, and two of us had to get out and push. We moved more and more slowly, climbing higher from the valley into a narrow side ravine.

The winter hut appeared suddenly, all at once. It stood buried in snow, facing the road with one single little window. We got out of the car. The taiga pressed in on us from all sides. I stood there, admiring it. The trees were all draped in snow. The sun skimmed their tops, its rays almost cutting through the ravine. On the left side of the ravine loomed a huge mountain covered with mixed forest. On the other side was a low rise with a broad plateau, crisscrossed here and there by gullies. At one time, logging had been done on that plateau. Now it was overgrown with hazel and oak, with only scattered green islands of cedar visible here and there. Cedar was protected – it had been forbidden to cut – and the loggers had left it untouched. This was the boars’ favorite spot, where they dug acorns and nuts from under the snow. Want to hunt boar? Head for the plateau, into the oak and hazel thickets. Want sable? Go the other way, into the ravines of the opposite mountain. Want mink? Follow the stream and set traps. An amazing hunting ground!

The sound of a saw reached us. Myasnikov and Kryukov were already sawing firewood, casting amused glances my way.
“Well, what do you think of the place?” asked Kryukov.
“Fit for a king!”
“And we are the kings. We’re the masters here.”
I looked at the “kings.” In turn they pulled the saw handle toward themselves. Myasnikov was short, stocky and broad-shouldered, with high cheekbones and features of a Mongolian type, while Kryukov was tall, with gray eyes and fair hair. Both were hereditary Siberian hunters. I hauled my backpack and gun into the winter hut, then came back out and took over for Myasnikov. Kryukov and I sawed firewood while Myasnikov went to light the stove and prepare supper. As we sawed, the dogs ran merrily around the hut, thrusting their muzzles into the snow, snorting and chasing each other. They knew why they had been brought here. These were true hunting dogs. Soon we were sitting inside the hut. It was cozy now. The plank bunks were covered with our blankets. On the table stood a pot of soup made from concentrates, and on the iron stove the kettle puffed away.
“All right, you freeloaders, to the table,” Myasnikov said with a smile.
“Why freeloaders?” Kryukov asked, surprised. “Look how much wood we’ve cut.”
“Until we bring down a boar, we’re freeloaders.”

In the morning we didn’t hurry. Boar hunting starts after midday. Before midday the boar sleeps, holed up in the thickets, and after midday it comes out to feed. Around ten o’clock we set out for the plateau to look for fresh boar tracks. Kryukov went first with his dog on a leash. His dog was huge, with short gray fur. Its name was Sivy. Myasnikov’s dog was called Tsygan – black, shaggy, also an imposing size, but smaller than Sivy. We climbed slowly up onto the plateau. I came last, watching the dogs with interest.
“We lose five or six dogs a year to boar tusks and bear claws, but these two have been at it for four years now,” Kryukov said as he walked. We spotted boar tracks, and Kryukov fell silent, but the tracks turned out to be old. The dogs paid no attention to them, so we pressed on. Boar tracks became more and more frequent. We came upon a spot where the ground was thoroughly rooted up.
“A sounder passed through here not long ago,” Kryukov said.
We crossed yet another gully on the plateau, and the dogs began straining at their leashes. Almost simultaneously Kryukov and Myasnikov let them go, and the dogs bolted silently uphill, vanishing over a rise where another gully began. A few minutes later barking broke out. Until then we had all frozen, listening, but now each of us ran toward the barking, oblivious of the others, pulling our guns off our shoulders as we ran. At that moment nobody thought that he might come face to face with a huge, ferocious Far Eastern boar, its tusks reaching thirty centimeters – sometimes even longer – and capable of slicing a dog in half with a single blow. The barking stopped, and we heard hoofbeats. Not far from us a boar was crashing through the brush. In great bounds it dashed past us. Almost without aiming, Kryukov fired, but the boar was already disappearing behind the gully. We all rushed toward the gully where it had vanished, not knowing whether the boar was wounded or not. As we ran a hundred meters, I heard barking off to my right and turned that way. About two hundred meters farther on I found myself in a cedar grove. The grove was open, without underbrush. Some sixty meters away I saw a boar thrashing about, circled by the dogs. They worked very skillfully: when the boar charged one dog, the other seized it from behind. The boar immediately wheeled around; the dog deftly dodged the terrible tusks while the other would already be sinking its teeth into the boar from behind – not randomly, but trying to sever the tendons on its hind legs. They whirled before me in a deadly dance: either a dog would catch a tusk, or the boar’s hind tendons would be cut, and that would be its end. I raised my gun. A shot boomed, and the boar promptly sat back on its haunches. As if on command, the dogs both leaped at it. At that moment the boar gave a kind of nod, but it was a blow meant for Tsygan – and Tsygan flew aside. Tsygan’s hunting days are over, flashed through my mind.

Now the boar saw only me before it and charged, slightly sideways, in my direction. Sivy was still clamped onto its back with his teeth, but the boar paid him no attention whatsoever.
I pressed the trigger of the second barrel, but instead of a shot I heard a feeble click. A misfire! Quickly reloading, I chambered a cartridge I kept for special occasions – one that I carried in my breast pocket so it would always be at hand. It was loaded with an extra-heavy charge. When the boar was about ten or fifteen meters away, I had already cocked the hammer; I fired nearly point-blank, leaping aside and planting the bullet into the boar’s flank. The powerful impact threw the boar sideways.

“Don’t go near it from the front!” Kryukov shouted as he ran up to me. We stood beside the downed boar.
“Where’s Tsygan?” Kryukov asked.
“Down there. It looks like he took a tusk.”
Just then we saw Myasnikov coming up from below, pushing Tsygan along. The dog was barely staying on his feet. Kryukov examined the dog and said:
“He dodged the tusks, but when he was thrown, he must have hit a tree. Not the first time. Now he’ll gorge on meat, rest for a couple of days, and he’ll be fine.”
We measured the boar’s tusks. They equaled the length of three and a half matchboxes – about seventeen centimeters. Myasnikov set about butchering the boar. He was a great expert at it, and he tossed the dogs their rightful chunks of meat and the internal fat. We hunted for two weeks. During that time we shot eleven more boars. Kryukov went to call a truck to haul the meat and deliver it, while Myasnikov and I stayed at the winter hut.

Print, save, letter .pdf