This interview with the unique person, a hunter, a local historian and a writer, was taken from Valery Yuryevich Yankovsky in Vladimir on the eve of 2010.
"VAN" means a PRINCE!
The year of the tiger according to the Eastern calendar is coming. Why was the tiger so honored that one year out of a 12-year cycle was dedicated to it? Despite the fact that a powerful and formidable bear was not awarded such an honor! Why do people love a tiger? Are they afraid of it more than they respect it?
We will try to find answers to these and other questions together with a very interesting person, a hereditary hunter and writer Valery Yurievich Yankovsky. People who are interested in hunting and traveling have probably read the novels and stories of Valery about the Russian Far East, Korea, Manchuria. A fascinating description of the beauty of the Primorsky Territory and hunting for wild animals cannot leave indifferent real adventurers, hunters and nature lovers. You can learn a lot of interesting things about endemic plants, birds, butterflies of Primorye in his stories about the animal world of Primorye. But stories about life in the kingdom of the Ussuri tiger arise particular interest. We decided to turn to Valery Yurievich as a person who saw that interesting animal in its natural habitat at a very close distance, heard its breathing and a menacing growl.
D.V. Valery Yurievich, you have seen a tiger more than once from a distance of several steps. How does it look like?
V.Y. The tiger is a large representative of the feline. The size of an adult tiger can be 2.5 - 3.5 meters from the nose to the tip of the tail. The average weight of a tiger is from 100 to 200 kg. Once I have managed to get a tiger weighing about 300-350kg and about 3.5 meters long. It was the largest specimen I'd ever seen. This beast is very beautiful and graceful. Its bright orange color with black and white stripes strikes everyone. This fur color is patronizing and harmonizes well with the colors of the autumn forest of Primorye. All the beauty of this graceful animal can be seen only in its native home - in the forest. I have a very negative attitude towards keeping wild animals in circuses, zoos, and especially in mobile zoo cages, where the animals are kept in cramped cages like a prison cell. A tiger is not a beast to admire through iron bars.
D.V. Why do you think the tiger is so revered in the East?
V.Y. It's not easy to understand the oriental psychology even for me though I've spent many years there and have a rich experience of living in Korea, China and communicating with representatives of local nationalities. The Chinese claim that the Chinese character "WANG" is depicted on the tiger's forehead with black lines - one line vertically and three across - which translates into Russian as "PRINCE, MASTER". So, it turns out that our Mother Nature gifted this beautiful beast with such a sign (a special sign). The tiger inspired fear and respect to the local population and was a symbol of beauty and strength! None could even touch the game got by the tiger. This could lead to the dissatisfaction of the master of the taiga, and it could begin to take revenge on people.
D.V. Does the tiger justify having such a mark on his forehead?
V.Y. You should take a closer look at how this beast moves and everything will immediately become clear to you. It has truly princely or royal tread: unhurried, proud. I think that the tiger is fully aware that it has practically no enemies in its habitat. It is the highest step of the food chain. The tigers walked calmly around Vladivostok at the time of the beginning of the development of Primorye. They kept in fear the population of Korean and Chinese villages up to the Second World War and during it. They came to the villages and took what they wanted: livestock and dogs, as a true prince took his tribute.
D.V. You have been hunting for tigers with your father and brothers for many years. It is clear that any real hunting of an animal in its natural habitat is difficult. It is necessary to know a lot about the beast itself, its habits when chasing. What features of tiger's character make it stand out compared to other wild animals?
V.Y. The tiger is very cautious and secretive despite its impressive size. It is very difficult to find it in the forest. The tiger always appeared out of the darkness of the night silently even when we were waiting for him in a crouch and disappeared silently when it noticed danger.
A tiger is a very smart animal. It obviously planned its every attack on animals in Korean villages perfectly. We judged by its tracks and the beds that found in the morning near the cattle pen or on the edge of the village. The tiger practically never took risks. It clearly calculated all its actions and movements in advance.
The tiger is a very fast animal. When my grandfather started to develop the peninsula, which was now called the Yankovsky Peninsula (in his honor), he bred a breed of horses capable to work in the conditions of the Primorye climate and a large number of blood-sucking insects. Breeding material was imported from mainland Russia and America. It took him many years. And when the first breeding specimens of small but hardy horses were bred, tigers got into the habit to come to the pen and kill and drag mares. Thus, they caused great harm to the results of breeding work. Tiger is the curse of horse breeding. My grandfather Mikhail Ivanovich Yankovsky thought so. The tigers dragged away about 50 heads of horses, not counting cattle from the Yankovsky Sidemi farm in Primorye.
The hunters began to guarded the pen at night. But the tiger's movements were so swift and thoughtful that the hunters did not even have time to make a shot sometimes. The beast jumped over the fence of the paddock, killed the horse and disappeared with it in the dark.
D.V. If we compare the behavior of a tiger in nature with the bear, is it possible to find any differences?
V.Y. It seems to me that it is possible to note the intelligence, resourcefulness and accuracy of the tiger in combination with a huge natural force. I want to cite one case that happened on our hunt. We hunted a wild boar. It was too far to carry it to the camp. We covered it with branches in order to pick up the meat later. When we came for the trophy later, everything was in the same place, except one thing, there was no boar under the branches. The tiger pulled out carefully a pig weighing about 100kg, dragged it 200 meters up and ate it there. There was no sign of a drag on the ground, nor any other traces of the carcass being dragged. We found just few drops of blood on the branches of meadowsweet.
A bear in that situation would behave differently. It would just scatter everything to the sides. Then it dragged the pig to the side and would have finished eating it there. The bear would bury the rest, which the tiger never did.
D.V. I know that some indigenous peoples of Primorye call the tiger "Amba" (AMBA is the end of something. Explanatory dictionary of S.I. Ozhegova). Why do they call it so?
V.Y. Amba is the respectful name of the tiger by the local Udege people or the Taza peoples. There was a time when the tiger was completely superior to man. It was almost impossible to fight a tiger with a primitive throwing weapon – a bow and arrow. The muzzle-loading rifles that appeared later left a very little chance for the hunter to shoot the beast, but also to survive himself, if the hunter could injure the tiger even fatally. My grandfather also had difficulties when hunting a tiger, although he had a more powerful five-shot WINCHESTER carbine. Perhaps that is why such a stable phrase has been born: tiger - amba - the end. There was no chance for a person to survive during a meeting with a tiger, and the end of life was coming for him.
D.V. What else would you be able to note in a tiger behavior based on your practical hunting experience?
V.Y. Its persistence deserves special attention! There were cases, not often but they were when a tiger broke into a fanza (Korean hut) and carried off the owner. People had to leave one of such houses because of the tiger, which did not give rest, stealing cattle, dogs and attacking people. The tiger made it clear that it was its domain and it was the master there. That tiger pursued a specific goal and sought to be the master of that territory.
D.V. And how did the local people feel about the capture of the tiger by your team?
V.Y. The locals were genuinely delighted when we shot the tiger that terrorized their village. We used to take out the tigers we got on a cart pulled by a bull. But the tiger's head had to be covered with some kind of cloth when we were passing through the village. People tried to pull out the tiger mustache. There was an assumption that the mustache was twisted and then a man could give it to the enemy to eat. The mustache straightened up under the influence of a person's body temperature in the stomach, and could kill an enemy. There were special imperial teams to protect the local population from tigers that annoyed Korean citizens. They existed in Imperial Korea until its occupation by Japan in 1910. The density of tiger's population was very high.
D.V. How did the tiger behave when you followed in his footsteps?
V.Y. I should say that the tiger was well aware that we were on its trail. Its intelligence was quite enough to evade pursuit, and become not a victim, but a hunter. Usually it made a big circle, reached its trail and lay down not far behind a stone and waited for the one who was following its trail. Then it attacked the pursuer. So, we lost one of our best dogs named Tori. The tiger could lie in such an ambush for a long time, which indicated its endurance.
D.V. Were there any cases in your hunting practice when a tiger threatened your life?
V.Y. One day, my father and brother were chasing two tigers. The father saw the tigers at a distance of about 300 meters. He immediately shot and wounded one of them fatally. Then they wounded the second one, but it began to go into the mountains. When they began to approach the hidden tiger, the brother became entangled in the thickets of lemongrass. The father came forward, and the wounded beast rushed at him at that time. He managed to shoot and hit the tiger in the jaw. It saved him from more serious damage because the tiger could not bite my father much. But, despite that shot, the tiger managed to strike with its paw, knock out the rifle, which spun in the air like a helicopter propeller and knock down my father. It turned out to be an old eight-pound tigress. And only two shots of my brother saved my father's life and stopped the beast. The tigress walked a long distance being seriously injured, which indicated its endurance, hid and rushed at the hunters, which indicated its determination. It continued to attack despite several injuries (four in total), which indicated its survivability.
D.V. Has the tiger found its reflection in the visual arts of Korea and China?
V.Y. I would like to emphasize once again that Oriental people have always had respect for the tiger. The engravings with an attacking tiger were very common in China, as in Korea. The tiger is extremely beautiful in appearance. The artists depicted the tiger because of its beautiful coloring.
It remains for us to thank Valery Yuryevich for the fact, he shared with us his most interesting observations of the tiger's behavior. Perhaps this year of the tiger is the year of Valery Yuryevich Yankovsky like no other.
Everyone should decide for himself how to meet, what to expect, and how to spend this year. Think about the qualities possessed by this beautiful, powerful and intelligent animal, draw your conclusions and ... luck accompany you!!
We wish you all to be a little tiger next year. We wish you to be affectionate like all cats towards their loved ones; smart, patient, calculating and tenacious like a tiger, in their business or at work; determined and hardy as a tiger on the way to his goal. We also wish you to walk proudly just like a tiger through life with your head held high. Be good-natured and fair!
P.S. When this material was ready, the author of these lines found out in the news about an unprecedented case of human callousness, callousness and cruelty towards tigers. Eight tigers and one lioness were transported from Khabarovsk to Yakutsk. The drunken caretakers didn't pay due attention to the animals in the cages and simply froze or contributed to the suffocation of the animals from the exhaust gases.
Valery Yurievich and I agreed that zoos and, especially, mobile zookeepers should cease to exist. It all looks too mocking in relation to animals. But we decided not to print it. After that incident, we felt that it was simply necessary to talk about it!
It's one thing when a person competes with a tiger in its natural habitat, and gives it enough chances to survive. It all looks completely different when such a proud animal as a tiger is doomed to prison existence and death due to the negligence of alcoholics.
