апреля 17, 2008
The Hunt
4/17 20:05, Pushkin time
A full month. -sigh-
Anyway, I make time to stop in and relate a relatively recent happening (and then likely disappear again for a time; perhaps not terribly unexpectedly, plant-managing is a fairly time-consuming endeavor). After making a year's worth of inquiries, I finally a couple months ago located in a friend of С С's a person who goes hunting. Last weekend I got to go out for my first time.
Friday evening С С and I bailed from work an hour early and I followed him down the Moscow highway into the Valday mountain range and then off to the right a ways to the city of Demyansk, Novgorodskaya Oblast. Though about five hours long, the drive was not particularly bad -- up until the 80km or so once we got onto the Demyansk road. This stretch we did in the already-dark, made even the more exciting by the constant appearance and passing of sections of road so badly potholed that only the fairly regular occurrence of chunks of asphalt paid any kind of evidence to the fact that we were still on a 'paved' road. As for the Valday themselves, coming out of the Petersburg flats, they were adequately mountain-looking, and had at least a few river-rapids-type things to look at.
Anyway, after an hour driving through increasingly-demoralizing road and roadside decay-of-things-modern, all of a sudden we popped over a bridge and jarred right back into civilization. Demyansk is, after all, a Russian equivalent of a county seat. Plus in the civilized part of the country, so really not so stone age as the drive out led me to fear.
And navigating into Demyansk itself, we found our way to the house of С С's friend, Viktor. We had a quick dinner, some vodka, and hopped into his sauna for a bit before hitting the hay. Viktor, it turns out, is no casual hunter. He and his crew pull something between seven and nineteen wolves out of the woods and bogs around Demyansk and the surrounding villages every winter -- in large part, they are the only people hunting several hundred square miles of wilderness. Not only do the wolves fetch them good money (the bounty is 5000rubles for a male, and 6500 for a female, which is better than $200 and almost $300, respectively -- wolves are apparently a serious issue in this part of the world; wintertime in the Demyansk region alone, they lose a person every other year or so on average to wolfpacks, and in the villages around people do not go outside at night, armed or not, when it's likely the wolves have had hard luck hunting), but they have gained them a sort of privileged position with the local game wardens. Which was good, since we were going to be hunting the local bird (глухарь -- call it 'glukhar', not an animal for which there is an english name) about a week before the season started. This was in large part necessitated by the fact that the spring thaw came on very early, and even at the time we were going out, the majority of the birds would have already mated and moved on. So we were going to be going on a 'Tsar's hunt' as Viktor called it (which is to say, on our own hunting grounds as we damn well felt was the time to go out. We'd get only the bare minimum of grief if we were caught, but still it was best to keep as inconspicuous as possible.
The next morning started at about nine with a breakfast of noodles and cheese, vegetables, and vodka (Viktor's wife scolded him for drinking so early, and I suppose me, too; but... russian hunting...). Then around about ten, Viktor's brother Sasha showed up with another of their party, Oleg. Sasha is a longtime Demyansk hunter. Oleg is a Korean-by-descent from Uzbekistan doctor who owns his own private clinic in Petersburg. His parents were less-than-legal inhabitants of what turned out to be Russian territory out on the Amur at the time Stalin decided to do some exile-swapping. All the ethnic Koreans in the Amur area got rounded up and sent to Uzbekistan, and a whole bunch of Ukranians-or-something got deported to the far east taigas to sort of take their place. That crazy Stalin... But you run into stories like that. Oleg speaks Korean and his son is actually married a girl from Korea that he met while he was there on a student-exchange thing.
Anyway, we piled into Sasha's UAZ (a russian jeep with the well-earned reputation of being able to go anywhere) and scooted out to a nearby village (see picture) to pick up our fifth, Ivan. He has also been hunting for a long time. I got to see pictures, later on, of the two sets of bear cubs that he and his family ended up raising (the first set's mother he killed, then found them and took them home; the second set's mother was killed by a guy he was with). Pretty cool for his kids, that. They had them from the size of maybe five inches long until they were maybe forty pounds each; four bear cubs as pets. Then he gave the first set to zoos, and the second set to a wildlife-release program.
Anyway, that kind of hunter.
And then from Ivan's house, we set out in the UAZ, with Viktor in a tractor following, down the road to the hunting spot. We took the UAZ as far as it could manage. When the road started getting to like like this, we ditched the UAZ and four of us piled into the trailer behind the tractor while Viktor drove us another hour into the woods.
Since these guys are the only ones who hunt these woods, the road is their own, and we did a fair bit of on-the-spot maintenance and otherwise driving over and around stuff. Made our own roads where it looked like even the tractor might not get through (mind you, the tractor went through three-foot-deep mud and water pits without so much as blinking).
We went through moose and boar-hunting grounds as well as a part of what they consider to be really good places to get wolves. And then eventually (though not soon enough for my and Oleg's aching ass-bones) we came to the point where even the tractor could go no further, parked it, got our stuff off, pulled up our swamp-boots (not quite crotch-high) and set off to slog the last two miles through the swamp to our campsite. Russian nature at its finest, up above your knees in ten inches of water and under that another who-knows-how-deep liquid muck. With a backpack and a shotgun . For two miles.
So eventually, we got to the campsite only to find that a recent windstorm had blown a big tree over right onto the lean-to that they use. Which made agenda item #1 - build a new shelter. Fortunately, along with the other necessaries, both Viktor and Sasha had brought along chainsaws, and Ivan had ported a hatchet and nails. So over the course of a couple hours, we de-forested a goodly size area and had put together a place to sleep in the more or less dry and warm.
In between chainsaw and hatchet work and hauling, of course, we took the time to have lunch (and drink vodka), and Viktor sort of talked me through what the hunt was going to be about and what I needed to keep in mind.
Plus, of course, during the building we drank all the non-alcoholic liquids we had brought with us. More on that in a bit.
During the rest of the early afternoon, Ivan took me a little ways out from the camp to show why they called this spot the "Seven Airplanes". During the war, Demyansk, which sits in a valley in the Valday not too far by air from Moscow or Peter, was mostly taken by the Germans and used as a forward airbase. Of course, this meant that the Soviets bombed the crap out of it pretty much constantly, as well as making at least one major parachute-drop assault -- into the middle of a wolf- and bear-infested swamp, if you dig... Anyways, of course during the course of this, several Soviet planes were downed.
And in fact, our campsite sat near the remains of a couple of them -- one plane, an ИЛ-2, a scant several hundred yard away, in fact. And this being a bog and all, the crater where it hit is still pretty much as it was, and chunks of it were still available (to the fellow equipped with a metal-detector as was Ivan) for pulling-out. On most of those, the paint was even still intact (again, thanks to the bog). So we played around there for a bit until it came time for Viktor and I to scout out our hunting grounds for the next morning.
We walked out in a general direction -- something I learned about bogs and myself; I make all my direction-estimates almost exactly 180 degrees off. Thank goodness I stayed with someone who knew what they were doing and had a compass. I asked at one point what would be the best way to get out if one got lost. Sasha's response was to find one of the rivers that ran through the area and follow it downstream until you got to the nearest inhabited area. That is, for close to 200km through bogs and marshes until you got to Velikiy Novgorod. In other words, if you get lost, you are well and truly fucked. See ya. So I stayed as much as possible glued to someone the whole time.
Anyway, Viktor and I went for about an hour, cutting marks in trees on the way to find our path back and then out again in the dark the next morning, until we got to the bog-proper (apparently, we had only been on the 'outskirts'). Then another half-hour into the bog and we found a spot. There we stayed until late dusk, listening and watching the глухари come in for the night. And in the later minutes, listening to the moose squish-squishing their way here and there.
A note, a moose makes less noise moving through a bog that I do. Significantly less.
And in the dark we made our way back. And -- for a surprise -- found it with no problems at all.
Then dinner and more to drink and sleep. We got up at 3AM, had a bite and more vodka (hmmm...) and then set out back into the bog. Viktor was optimistic (again, hmm....) and even though it was pitch-dark, and the middle of a freaking bog a freaking hundred miles if you were lucky enough to choose the right path from anything inhabited, decided to take a different route than the one we had marked to the hunting grounds. Okay, fine.
So we walked.
And walked.
And squished.
And squished.
After a time, Viktor started stopping to check his compass rather often.
Then he started banging on his compass every so often.
Then, when he stopped to check and thwap his compass, to curse to himself under his breath.
And of course, with my 180-degree-off sense of direction, every course correction he made -- and there were a lot of them -- seemed to be the totally wrong direction. Somehow, the sun started to come up and we were in a part of the bog (or some other bog... how the hell was I to know??) that was not totally unlike the hunting grounds we had scouted out. And the глухарь started to come in.
To hunt this animal, you have to follow the souds to it before it gets light enough for him to see you. Since they also have really good hearing, it is important to only move when they are making the very last part of their call (a sort drawn-out of belching sound). In the time they are doing this, an experienced bog-walker can manage maybe three steps. Frequently, I was able to extract a single foot from the muck before the song stopped and I had to freeze as my full weight, resting on only half the surface area, sunk me other foot deeper and deeper. It was actually a really good time.
Eventually, we got right up to one of them. In what would have been the last chorus of his last song, I took a single step to move into what I thought was hiding. But what turned out to be right in front of him in full view. The bird loo-ooked at me. And I presume considered whether it was really possible that something so obviously retarded could possibly pose a threat. Shortly it decided upon the course of prudence and flew away.
After cursing me thoroughly, Viktor allowed for the fact that I had done very well for someone on their first hunt -- especially considering my serious handicap of making more noise moving through a bog than the average freight train. Most people don't even get close enough to see a глухарь their first time out, and here I was able to get right out in front of him. For what that was worth.
Anyway, by that time, the morning was over, the birds had moved on, and it was time to pack it in. So back to camp, we waited for Oleg and Sasha, who had gone out to a different ground to hunt, to return. Which they did, having successfully bagged one as shown. While waiting, Ivan, Viktor, and I were finally thirsty enough to drink bog water (no pot to boil it, which was why we had waited so long). We discarded the first stuff we found, which was a dark brown color and had tadpoles in it, for a lighter-brown, otherwise-clear stuff. Considering it only gave me the craps for a couple days afterwards, I'd say we made the right choice.
Anyway, we packed everything in (after finishing off the vodka in celebration, natch), and slogged our way back to the tractor, which slogged its way back to the UAZ, which made its way back to my Ford, parked at Viktor's house. Then five and a half hours later, I was home and dry.
It is my intention to go out again at least this coming winter and get a wolf or two. How can you turn down an opportunity like that?? Viktor has said I am welcome out anytime, and that if A's dad (for example) wanted to come out, the best time for boar is fall, for moose and wolf, winter, and he has never gone out without bringing back at least one of whatever he's going for. And don't sweat the whole weapons permits and hunting license thing. They're his woods, after all...
A full month. -sigh-
Anyway, I make time to stop in and relate a relatively recent happening (and then likely disappear again for a time; perhaps not terribly unexpectedly, plant-managing is a fairly time-consuming endeavor). After making a year's worth of inquiries, I finally a couple months ago located in a friend of С С's a person who goes hunting. Last weekend I got to go out for my first time.
Friday evening С С and I bailed from work an hour early and I followed him down the Moscow highway into the Valday mountain range and then off to the right a ways to the city of Demyansk, Novgorodskaya Oblast. Though about five hours long, the drive was not particularly bad -- up until the 80km or so once we got onto the Demyansk road. This stretch we did in the already-dark, made even the more exciting by the constant appearance and passing of sections of road so badly potholed that only the fairly regular occurrence of chunks of asphalt paid any kind of evidence to the fact that we were still on a 'paved' road. As for the Valday themselves, coming out of the Petersburg flats, they were adequately mountain-looking, and had at least a few river-rapids-type things to look at.
Anyway, after an hour driving through increasingly-demoralizing road and roadside decay-of-things-modern, all of a sudden we popped over a bridge and jarred right back into civilization. Demyansk is, after all, a Russian equivalent of a county seat. Plus in the civilized part of the country, so really not so stone age as the drive out led me to fear.
And navigating into Demyansk itself, we found our way to the house of С С's friend, Viktor. We had a quick dinner, some vodka, and hopped into his sauna for a bit before hitting the hay. Viktor, it turns out, is no casual hunter. He and his crew pull something between seven and nineteen wolves out of the woods and bogs around Demyansk and the surrounding villages every winter -- in large part, they are the only people hunting several hundred square miles of wilderness. Not only do the wolves fetch them good money (the bounty is 5000rubles for a male, and 6500 for a female, which is better than $200 and almost $300, respectively -- wolves are apparently a serious issue in this part of the world; wintertime in the Demyansk region alone, they lose a person every other year or so on average to wolfpacks, and in the villages around people do not go outside at night, armed or not, when it's likely the wolves have had hard luck hunting), but they have gained them a sort of privileged position with the local game wardens. Which was good, since we were going to be hunting the local bird (глухарь -- call it 'glukhar', not an animal for which there is an english name) about a week before the season started. This was in large part necessitated by the fact that the spring thaw came on very early, and even at the time we were going out, the majority of the birds would have already mated and moved on. So we were going to be going on a 'Tsar's hunt' as Viktor called it (which is to say, on our own hunting grounds as we damn well felt was the time to go out. We'd get only the bare minimum of grief if we were caught, but still it was best to keep as inconspicuous as possible.
The next morning started at about nine with a breakfast of noodles and cheese, vegetables, and vodka (Viktor's wife scolded him for drinking so early, and I suppose me, too; but... russian hunting...). Then around about ten, Viktor's brother Sasha showed up with another of their party, Oleg. Sasha is a longtime Demyansk hunter. Oleg is a Korean-by-descent from Uzbekistan doctor who owns his own private clinic in Petersburg. His parents were less-than-legal inhabitants of what turned out to be Russian territory out on the Amur at the time Stalin decided to do some exile-swapping. All the ethnic Koreans in the Amur area got rounded up and sent to Uzbekistan, and a whole bunch of Ukranians-or-something got deported to the far east taigas to sort of take their place. That crazy Stalin... But you run into stories like that. Oleg speaks Korean and his son is actually married a girl from Korea that he met while he was there on a student-exchange thing.
Anyway, we piled into Sasha's UAZ (a russian jeep with the well-earned reputation of being able to go anywhere) and scooted out to a nearby village (see picture) to pick up our fifth, Ivan. He has also been hunting for a long time. I got to see pictures, later on, of the two sets of bear cubs that he and his family ended up raising (the first set's mother he killed, then found them and took them home; the second set's mother was killed by a guy he was with). Pretty cool for his kids, that. They had them from the size of maybe five inches long until they were maybe forty pounds each; four bear cubs as pets. Then he gave the first set to zoos, and the second set to a wildlife-release program.
Anyway, that kind of hunter.
And then from Ivan's house, we set out in the UAZ, with Viktor in a tractor following, down the road to the hunting spot. We took the UAZ as far as it could manage. When the road started getting to like like this, we ditched the UAZ and four of us piled into the trailer behind the tractor while Viktor drove us another hour into the woods.
Since these guys are the only ones who hunt these woods, the road is their own, and we did a fair bit of on-the-spot maintenance and otherwise driving over and around stuff. Made our own roads where it looked like even the tractor might not get through (mind you, the tractor went through three-foot-deep mud and water pits without so much as blinking).
We went through moose and boar-hunting grounds as well as a part of what they consider to be really good places to get wolves. And then eventually (though not soon enough for my and Oleg's aching ass-bones) we came to the point where even the tractor could go no further, parked it, got our stuff off, pulled up our swamp-boots (not quite crotch-high) and set off to slog the last two miles through the swamp to our campsite. Russian nature at its finest, up above your knees in ten inches of water and under that another who-knows-how-deep liquid muck. With a backpack and a shotgun . For two miles.
So eventually, we got to the campsite only to find that a recent windstorm had blown a big tree over right onto the lean-to that they use. Which made agenda item #1 - build a new shelter. Fortunately, along with the other necessaries, both Viktor and Sasha had brought along chainsaws, and Ivan had ported a hatchet and nails. So over the course of a couple hours, we de-forested a goodly size area and had put together a place to sleep in the more or less dry and warm.
In between chainsaw and hatchet work and hauling, of course, we took the time to have lunch (and drink vodka), and Viktor sort of talked me through what the hunt was going to be about and what I needed to keep in mind.
Plus, of course, during the building we drank all the non-alcoholic liquids we had brought with us. More on that in a bit.During the rest of the early afternoon, Ivan took me a little ways out from the camp to show why they called this spot the "Seven Airplanes". During the war, Demyansk, which sits in a valley in the Valday not too far by air from Moscow or Peter, was mostly taken by the Germans and used as a forward airbase. Of course, this meant that the Soviets bombed the crap out of it pretty much constantly, as well as making at least one major parachute-drop assault -- into the middle of a wolf- and bear-infested swamp, if you dig... Anyways, of course during the course of this, several Soviet planes were downed.
And in fact, our campsite sat near the remains of a couple of them -- one plane, an ИЛ-2, a scant several hundred yard away, in fact. And this being a bog and all, the crater where it hit is still pretty much as it was, and chunks of it were still available (to the fellow equipped with a metal-detector as was Ivan) for pulling-out. On most of those, the paint was even still intact (again, thanks to the bog). So we played around there for a bit until it came time for Viktor and I to scout out our hunting grounds for the next morning.We walked out in a general direction -- something I learned about bogs and myself; I make all my direction-estimates almost exactly 180 degrees off. Thank goodness I stayed with someone who knew what they were doing and had a compass. I asked at one point what would be the best way to get out if one got lost. Sasha's response was to find one of the rivers that ran through the area and follow it downstream until you got to the nearest inhabited area. That is, for close to 200km through bogs and marshes until you got to Velikiy Novgorod. In other words, if you get lost, you are well and truly fucked. See ya. So I stayed as much as possible glued to someone the whole time.
Anyway, Viktor and I went for about an hour, cutting marks in trees on the way to find our path back and then out again in the dark the next morning, until we got to the bog-proper (apparently, we had only been on the 'outskirts'). Then another half-hour into the bog and we found a spot. There we stayed until late dusk, listening and watching the глухари come in for the night. And in the later minutes, listening to the moose squish-squishing their way here and there.
A note, a moose makes less noise moving through a bog that I do. Significantly less.
And in the dark we made our way back. And -- for a surprise -- found it with no problems at all.
Then dinner and more to drink and sleep. We got up at 3AM, had a bite and more vodka (hmmm...) and then set out back into the bog. Viktor was optimistic (again, hmm....) and even though it was pitch-dark, and the middle of a freaking bog a freaking hundred miles if you were lucky enough to choose the right path from anything inhabited, decided to take a different route than the one we had marked to the hunting grounds. Okay, fine.
So we walked.
And walked.
And squished.
And squished.
After a time, Viktor started stopping to check his compass rather often.
Then he started banging on his compass every so often.
Then, when he stopped to check and thwap his compass, to curse to himself under his breath.
And of course, with my 180-degree-off sense of direction, every course correction he made -- and there were a lot of them -- seemed to be the totally wrong direction. Somehow, the sun started to come up and we were in a part of the bog (or some other bog... how the hell was I to know??) that was not totally unlike the hunting grounds we had scouted out. And the глухарь started to come in.
To hunt this animal, you have to follow the souds to it before it gets light enough for him to see you. Since they also have really good hearing, it is important to only move when they are making the very last part of their call (a sort drawn-out of belching sound). In the time they are doing this, an experienced bog-walker can manage maybe three steps. Frequently, I was able to extract a single foot from the muck before the song stopped and I had to freeze as my full weight, resting on only half the surface area, sunk me other foot deeper and deeper. It was actually a really good time.
Eventually, we got right up to one of them. In what would have been the last chorus of his last song, I took a single step to move into what I thought was hiding. But what turned out to be right in front of him in full view. The bird loo-ooked at me. And I presume considered whether it was really possible that something so obviously retarded could possibly pose a threat. Shortly it decided upon the course of prudence and flew away.
After cursing me thoroughly, Viktor allowed for the fact that I had done very well for someone on their first hunt -- especially considering my serious handicap of making more noise moving through a bog than the average freight train. Most people don't even get close enough to see a глухарь their first time out, and here I was able to get right out in front of him. For what that was worth.
Anyway, by that time, the morning was over, the birds had moved on, and it was time to pack it in. So back to camp, we waited for Oleg and Sasha, who had gone out to a different ground to hunt, to return. Which they did, having successfully bagged one as shown. While waiting, Ivan, Viktor, and I were finally thirsty enough to drink bog water (no pot to boil it, which was why we had waited so long). We discarded the first stuff we found, which was a dark brown color and had tadpoles in it, for a lighter-brown, otherwise-clear stuff. Considering it only gave me the craps for a couple days afterwards, I'd say we made the right choice.
Anyway, we packed everything in (after finishing off the vodka in celebration, natch), and slogged our way back to the tractor, which slogged its way back to the UAZ, which made its way back to my Ford, parked at Viktor's house. Then five and a half hours later, I was home and dry.
It is my intention to go out again at least this coming winter and get a wolf or two. How can you turn down an opportunity like that?? Viktor has said I am welcome out anytime, and that if A's dad (for example) wanted to come out, the best time for boar is fall, for moose and wolf, winter, and he has never gone out without bringing back at least one of whatever he's going for. And don't sweat the whole weapons permits and hunting license thing. They're his woods, after all...
