Before the Fall; Legends of Winter

Rare archival footage from pre- revolutionary Russia of real psovaya borzois catching a wolf, with assist from scenthounds, while greyhounds (galgos? ) look on.

No fear if you are squeamish about blood-- as often happens today,  at the end, the hunter is going in with a forked stick to pin the wolf and catch it alive...

On translating Russian

In my Sportsman's Library, usually called "The Book of books" around here, I wrote about Mikhail Prishvin's Nature's Diary, and the problem of translation:

"There is also an interesting book by Prishvin, published by Pantheon 1952, called The Lake and the Woods, a handsome volume illustrated by woodcuts. A close read reveals it is the same book, but by a different translator and, more remarkably, with hardly any two words the same! I have helped translate another hunting book from the Russian, and know that the languages are different enough that some paraphrase is inevitable, but this edges into funny. Having no Russian edition, I can't tell which seems the better. The new one reads more smoothly and the old is prettier. I am happy to have both."

The first Prishvin I read was published by Penguin in 1987 and translated by L. Navrozov. Here is a passage:

"I always felt ashamed when I came to my senses after the madness of a chase as I slung a wretched limp hare over my shoulder, but this queen of the woods was no anti-climax to a hunt even when dead, and Solovei would have gone worrying the carcass if I had let him.

"The shadows had already deepened into twilight."

And then The Lake and the Woods (published by Pantheon in 1951, and translated by W. L. Goodman):

"I am always ashamed to come to myself after a mad chase, when there is nothing to hang over my shoulder except a miserable, puny hare. But this beauty we had caught and killed was worth the hunting, and if Solovya had had his way, he would have gone on for more.

"Thus it was we met the twilight in the forest."

Recently I was examining a small book, a collection of Prishvin called The Black Arab (publisher Hutchinson International Authors, 1947; the translator was David Magarshack, who did many translations of Russian literature), which I had picked up long enough ago that I no longer remembered  what was in it. I saw a chapter, a long one, called "Nature's  Calendar" and had a sudden suspicion, but as its sections (of course) showed no familiar names, it took a while to coordinate it. Sure enough:

"After recovering from the mad passions of the chase, I usually feel ashamed, even while I am swinging the limp body of a hare over my back. But even in death that beautiful fox did not rob me of the taste for hunting and, had I permitted it, Solovey wold have gone on for a long time pulling the dead fox about.

"So we were benighted in the woods."

Please notice that even the dog's NAME is different!

I want these

Plates by Vadim Gorbatov

VN

Arthur Wilderson, who knows more about guns that almost anyone, reminded me that Vladimir Nabokov died 36 years ago this week.

After I praised his English, more fluid and colloquial than his only rival as a non- native English- speaking  novelist in the language (VN would have said American I think), Arthur agreed: "I was always a little irked when he would complain of his "second-rate" command of English in the forward of some of his novels.  As though he could possibly have anything to complain about in that regard!"

Right-- tell me what other "American" could have written Pale Fire-- yeah, odd, but an impossible tour de force. The same un- degreed Russian emigre wrote at least two more essential American novels: Lolita (with On the Road as its crude brash kid brother and Roger Tory Peterson's 's Wild America its overlooked one, one of the three essential road and motel novels of the fifties, the road and motel decade); and Pnin, the only academic satire I can stand-- well, maybe Lucky Jim. All the while analyzing butterfly genitalia in the Harvard Museums while being condescended to there as well, doing so well with traditional taxonomic methods that his classification of the Blues is confirmed by today's DNA studies fifty years and more later.

I picture his burly tweed- clad figure racing off from his tiny office to some unnecessary meeting imposed on him and stumbling impatiently over a little kid who is seated cross- legged on the floor in front of a glass case containing awkwardly stuffed specimens of Neotropical birds, trying to figure out THEIR taxonomy and wondering why the taxidermist has chosen yellow eyes for the bat falcon...

Gun Quiz Solution

It was (obviously?) an 1895 Winchester, most famed as Teddy Roosevelt's lion gun in Africa, using its odd heavy load, the .405 Winchester. It was a relatively strong action, and because it had a box magazine* rather than the typical tubular ones on most leverguns, it could shoot modern spitzer type loads like the .30- 06.

But what this specimen looks like is the front of an old bolt action military rifle grafted on to a "cowboy" rear. Because that is exactly what it is. It is '95, but one made for the Czar's army before the Russian revolution, in the old Mosin Nagant caliber, 7.62 x 54 Russian.

The interesting thing to me is that they made 300,000 or so in this caliber, 70 % of all production, more than they did of .405 Winchester, .30-06, .30-40 Krag, and .303 British COMBINED. They sent almost all of them to Russia-- and they flat- out disappeared. Those that don't know Russia say, well, the Soviets had strict gun control. But though that is to an extent true, I have seen SKS's, Mosins, AK's "Baikal" shotguns, and even CZ Mauser sporters everywhere in Central  Asia and never a hint of a 95 Winchester. I think there must still be a stack of crates in a cave in the Urals...

(More negative evidence for what it is worth: the Chinese have even harsher gun control, up to the death penalty, AND the demented sixties youth movement known as the Red Guard once tried to destroy all 45's because they were a "bourgeois caliber". But I have seen more Chinese Broomhandles in .45 ACP for sale, albeit for absurdly high prices-- $5000!-- than I have Russian Winchesters).

The owner of this one has a theory. He writes in part: " [My girlfriend's grandfather]... in Finland passed away a few months ago. He acquired the firearm during the 1950s or 1960s as his first moose-rifle... you may be wondering how a Finn acquired the 1895. Well, 70% of the rifles were produced for Imperial Russia before the model was discontinued in 1936. The rejected rifles were resold on American commercial market. The 1895 can use the same stripper clip as the 1891 Mosin Nagants. However most of them ended up in Finland and Baltic states before the October Revolution of 1917. Some of them were reissued by the Soviets for the Spanish Civil War. This particular rifle produced in 1907 survived World War I, Finnish Civil War, Winter War, Continuum War and Lapland War. "

He adds: "...  after the Civil War, many of '95 were converted to 8.2x53mmR or 9.3x35mmR during the interwar period for moose-hunting because of the hunting laws they had during that time period which only allowed 8mm or larger calibre. Those which survived to serve in the Winter War without being modified into hunting rifles were either converted to 7.62x53mm or left intact... My Finnish contact said one can still find a lot of people still hunting with them in Lithuania or Latvia... "

Correction: Dave, the owner, writes: "The 9mm round is: 9.3x53mmR, not 9.3x35mmR."

Which I believe.  But surely not all 300,000! See comments for more thoughts.

UPDATE: Bruce Douglas (he appears a few posts below with two flavors of Broomhandle Mausers) reminds us that the rifle makes an appearance in the last great work of Akira Kurosawa, Dersu Uzala, carried by  Captain Arseniev. Arseniev's Dersu the Hunter is also in my new book of one hundred books.

*Elmer Keith disliked the protruding magazine and said it looked like the belly of a poisoned pup.

Russian Quote

From the NYT, courtesy of Reid:

"... gun control in Russia is less strict than in some other former Soviet countries. Estonia, for example, proscribes carrying a weapon while drunk. “If they did that here, well, nobody would hunt,” said Igor V. Anisimov, the Izhmash director of foreign sales."

SIlk Road redux

From Dmitry Kosyrev, author of the Silk Road Trilogy, via Kickstarter:

"My dear friends, Americans, a few Russians from Russia, all 111 of you, plus many more who will read my novels after their successful funding:

"What you did in suport of my books, letting them be published in USA, means that somebody needs the lines I write and that I do not spend my God-given days in vain. Thank you for showing it to me so clearly. There is nothing more important in writer's life..."

Only six days left...

..to fund the Russian life- Kickstarter Silk Road trilogy translation project, with $4300 to go, or all is in vain. I think Q readers may make up a majority now! Consider digging in a second or even a third time-- we are!

Just a little time left

To contribute to the Russian Life Silk Road Trilogy translation project. My earlier take here. Apparently just 100 ten- dollar book orders would put them over the top. It would be a shame if lack of publicity made this wonderful project fail.Tell your friends. Go viral!

Silk Road Trilogy Project

An innovative approach to publishing and natural for Q fans, on so many levels: The Silk Road Trilogy translation project on Kickstarter!

Central Asia, the Silk Road, falcons and horses, China, literature, cyber- publishing; what's not to love? Please consider pledging a bit to make this happen- time is short! Russian Life's blog will report on progress. Casa Q pitched in a hundred and may try for more...

Seton and Vadim Gorbatov

Vadim acknowledged Seton as an influence before he ever visited us in NM.

When a Korean publisher asked him to do a version of Seton's Lobo, the story of a youthful Seton's capture of a notorious cattle- killing wolf in late 19th century New Mexico, we sent background images to him in Moscow. He in turn gave us an original two page spread.

You might think he had lived here all his life.

Cherkassov from Vladimir

Vladimir Beregovoy now has copies of his translation (with a slight assist from me) of Cherkassov's East Siberian Hunter to inscribe. I am not sure of the price--25?-- but postage (for a BIG book) is only $5. Jim Cornelius at Frontier Partisans, Dan On the Rock, and Constant Commenter (and wild canid maven) Lane Batot are fans--check it out!

(Jim adds: "And yes, that’s a Vadim Gorbatov painting on the cover. Huzzah!")

Vladimir Beregovoy
1507 Mountain Valley Road
Buchanan, Virginia 24066

Former vol 2 cover, now back:

Original illos:

Cherkassov at last!

After several years, I am happy to announce the publication of A.A.Cherkassov's 1865 Notes of an East Siberian Hunter, translated by zoologist, eminent cynologist, and "dog in law" Vladimir Beregovoy of Virginia, with a little help from me. It is available as a large format, good- quality print on demand paperback of 439 pages, for [To come shortly-- around $20 I think], from Vladimir at his address:

Vladimir Beregovoy
1507 Mountain Valley Road,
Buchanan, Virginia 24066

(The shipping is about $6.00 (book rate) within the US.)

UPDATE: V doesn't have any yet but here is a link to order directly from the publisher. You can always send it to him to sign!

It is a unique book, and I should quote at length from my even longer foreword. The editing and captions could be better, and if Vladimir makes some money, will be. But the text is worth every penny.

"The book itself is remarkable. Cherkassov’s biographer Felix Shtilmark says it resides on the imaginary “golden shelf” with those of such masters as S.T. Aksakov, who wrote not only novels but books on wildfowling and fishing, and Ivan Turgenev, whose Hunter’s Notes is as good as, if more obscure than, such classics as Fathers and Sons. All these have been translated into English, but until now, Cherkassov has not. Yet his is a book any modern naturalist or hunter will find fascinating; it will also be of value to any historian or scientist who reads with care. Notes is encyclopedic, including technical information on guns and traps, observations of animal behavior that are still fresh today, and even, perhaps, bits of fiction and legend. ; if , in the course of all his years, Cherkassov encountered or observed anything that he did not include in this book, I would be surprised.

"It is also, according to Felix Shtilmark and my friend Vladimir Beregovoy, a treasure trove of archaic Siberian dialect and expression. I cannot judge this, but I can testify that while Shtilmark’s intro and the occasional footnote read as modern English, Cherkassov’s personal voice is that of a garrulous old backwoodsman, full of fire and prone to digression. The educated scholar within him notices everything with a keen predator’s eye; Cherkassov apparently observed many zoological phenomena for the first time. (Shtilmark cites among other things the breeding period of hoofed mammals, the mating habits of capercaillie, and the natural history of Siberian bears). But the voice rambling on in the foreground remains that of a shrewd but somewhat superstitious old countryman, above all that of a “passionate hunter”, a phrase that occurs again and again.

"It is important for the American reader to realize that Cherkassov lived not just in another century, in another country, and on another continent, but in another world than ours. It is possible and sometimes informative to see the ethnically- Russian free Siberian hunter, the “promishlennik”, as the equivalent of a North American sourdough or Rocky Mountain fur trapper, but their situations were quite different. America’s western frontiers opened after the American Revolution ended and were closed after Manifest Destiny, the railroad, and the Indian Wars, only about a century later. Whereas the first Cossack trappers started to explore east of the Urals as early as the late 1600s, and much of the immense Siberian forest is still roadless today. While there have always been a scattering of free trappers, smallholders, and remnant Native tribal peoples living a free hunter’s life there, it is well to remember that Nerchinsk, Cherkassov’s first Siberian post, was to quote Shtilmark “…known mainly as a place of exile and penal servitude”.

"It was a magnificent and beautiful but harsh environment, containing dark taiga and deciduous forest, with isolated mountain ranges and bogs and dry steppe and permafrost, where hunting and trapping and logging were all pursued with enthusiasm and no thought for conservation. That modern concept did not even exist. Despite Cherkassov’s obvious intelligence and sensitivity, he never quite “gets” this principle. While he laments the disappearance of game again and again, he doesn’t make the connection that seems obvious to us today. He bemoans the diminution of herds, the absence of entire species from where he hunted them when he was young. Then, for instance, he will say in his chapter about capercaillies (the largest species of grouse, now considered the trophy of a lifetime in some western European countries), “…I would repeat once more that spring hunting at the singing sites is very productive [emphasis mine], delivers great pleasure to a true hunter, and is very interesting to a nature lover.”

"Cherkassov’s promishlenniks and natives were both subsistence hunters who pursued various game animals summer, fall, winter, and spring, in rutting season and in breeding season and in their dens. Some-- never tender- hearted Cherkassov himself – show a cheerful, almost heartless lack of empathy that borders on cruelty, with their elaborate traps and occasional gruesome practices. I mean this less as a condemnation than as an anthropological observation. These men lived hard, poor lives as predators among predators, ultimately as innocent and fascinating as their prey. But a few practices can make a reader who is not used to country matters flinch.

"... there are two kinds of delights in Cherkassov’s Notes. The first consists of his endless “facts”, his mixture of everything from instructions on how to shoot firearms originally designed in the 17th Century and keep them working (he calls such weapons “primitive” in 1865 though I saw the same type used in Mongolia in the 1990’s) to the sex habits of carnivores. These things were as fresh to the young administrator from Russia’s European west as they are to us, and his enthusiasm for learning them is contagious. As an example, he tells you how local tribesmen cook Mongolian marmot or “tarbagan” “They clean the animal of hairs and entrails and, very skillfully, remove all the bones and fill the ugly- looking corpse with hot rocks. They quickly close the opening by sewing it up, and roll the whole thing on the grass until it is ready.” Unlikely? I can testify that I have eaten marmot cooked by that method in Mongolia in the late 1990’s!


"The other delights in Notes of an Eastern Siberian Hunter are his narrative and poetic set pieces, some with the feel of tales passed around the campfire among friends, some as lyrical as any in Russian literature. [Here] He tells of a tiger (“babr”) that befriends an Orochon tribesman who frees him from a trap as though it happened yesterday. “The exhausted babr fell heavily onto the moist ground; he lay for a long time, moaning like a human. Then he came to his senses and called the Orochon again, but this time in a much nicer tone than he had before. The Orochon did not hesitate and quickly came to the babr who tried by all his means to express his gratitude, licked the Orochon’s hands and feet, bowed to the ground (I do not know how he could do that), walked away, and brought firewood. The Orochon started a fire. The babr brought a roe deer for him. They had breakfast together. From then on the babr lived with the Orochon and helped him by bringing him game...”

[A terrifying fire on the steppes] "Fire, driven by wind like a wall, spreads over the steppe with incredible speed on the flat surface, burning down all the remaining yellow grass, small steppe shrubs, reeds and everything that can burn, turning it all into ashes and raising the remaining ashes into the air in a vortex which together with clouds of white smoke is lost in the darkness of wide open space. The all-devouring flame may be so strong and moves with such a speed that herds of horses and sheep, caught by surprise, cannot run away from the flame and are scorched…The stars in the skies become paler and stop flickering. Suddenly, you see that the fire weakens; in some places it has died and in some places it is still crawling through the dry tops of grass; finally, it dies everywhere with only some single sparks still running in the dry grass. The surroundings become dark; behind the swirling smoke stars appear in the skies, looking down on the charred steppe after the fire. You may think: why has the fire suddenly stopped and died? It is not difficult to understand: the fire came to a creek, could not cross it, and died. But now, look, the wind has started to blow and a barely-glowing ember on some stem leaped to another one, onto the third one; or the wind has thrown a smoldering horse apple, and the fire has again reached dry vegetation, reviving the flame, which again becomes a wide sea and runs further on the wide steppe. The noise and crackling resumes and stars in the skies become dimmer and the crimson flame is again reflected on the dark skies, lighting the surroundings.”

Notes from an East Siberian Hunter is something unique for the English speaking reader, for hunters, naturalists, black powder shooters and anthropologists, historians and Russophiles. Constant commenter Lane Batot, who read the ms, adds a few thoughts below; then, I will leave you with Cherkassov's own send- off.

Lane: "AWRIGHT! I hope I can afford a copy! SPLENDID cover! I still can't afford Vladimir's primitive dogs book-last I looked on Amazon, it was "only" $189.00!!!!! Although nobody knows who I am, SOMEBODY should mention(in a promotion blurb) that naturalists as well as hunters will find much valuable and fascinating information in it--this will help sell more copies to a wider audience(as hunters as a cultural group are becoming rarer and rarer, as you well know!) But heck, that cover alone will sell a bunch of copies, I'd think!..."

Alexander Alexandrovich adds:

Hunters! Read the truth I wrote:
I hope you find I told it well.
Ask not what I do not know.
I told you all I have to tell.

And here is VB with his old laika Alik

Two Links

Vadim Gorbatov has his own website at last! It is in Russian but just click around-- you don't need language to appreciate a great painter.

Click the second button ("Novosti") for not only tigers battling bears but great sketches and images including ones on this Samurai falconer.

You can buy his prints from Al Gates-- links in post below.

Also, though I am almost embarrassed to so to speak recommend myself, the Suburban Bushwhacker has just done a perceptive and moving review of Querencia- the- book. Thanks, Sten!

Back Again... (and Guests)

Only this time I have never left-- just been ridiculously busy. To reassure-- my health is the best it has been in a year, though my vigorous and always expanding exercise routine takes up a surprising amount of time, and neglecting it brings on a slide if I do it very long.

Add guests to the mix and one runs out of hours in the day (and sleep is also important for controlling PD).

I think the Russophile "motif" and the Asiaphile one (is that a word?) has reached critical mass in my life, work, and the environs of Casa Q. About two weeks ago we knew that two of the people we term "The Russians", Australian- born, Ukrainian- derived Denverite Peter Reshetniak and his associate, merliner Anne Price, were on the way. Russians? Both, who also run the Raptor Education Foundation , are Russian speakers who brought our friend Vadim Gorbatov to the US, including Casa Querencia and the Golden Spur, a few years ago.

We also knew that Lauren, subject of innumerable posts here and now the official first female Berkutchi, was coming to tell us of her Fulbright year in Bayan Olgii Mongolia, and brainstorm on travel writing before she was off to a remote cottage in Scotland to fly a slightly smaller (big male) eagle and work on her book.

What we didn't anticipate were an email from another young American off on a Fulbright to study eagle-ry in post- Soviet Asia, this time in Kyrgizstan! Dennis was in Santa Fe and was leaving California for Bishkek, Kyrgizstan, about as far from our beloved Almaty as, well, Santa Fe is from here. He was leaving in a week and had been inspired in part by Eagle Dreams; could he come by and pick my brain? He did, and I attempted to fill it with info and contacts for about three hours. Dennis is not a falconer (yet) but has Russian and some Turkic and has read at least one anthropological Russian work on birds of prey in Inner Asian culture that I want but that is beyond my feeble Russian. (He was a high school exchange student in Almaty--!-- has kept up with his "family" there, and went to Olgii to see eagles off season). My network has responded and we hope for dispatches from Bishkek.

And just to bring the whole situation to the edge of absurdity, we walked into the Spur after one group left and a local rancher in his forties came up to introduce his new girlfriend who he said had a special reason to meet us. Her first words were "I speak fluent Russian and I'd love to go to Mongolia." She was not exaggerating-- had worked in Moscow for two years-- and also turned out to be a mathematician and a pilot. "Bodio's law" is "everybody knows everybody", meaning closer than six degrees-- you just have to dig. Its corollary is "All roads lead to Magdalena/ The Golden Spur Bar". (That one is so true nothing shocks us-- in addition to "Names" I have talked to someone there in from Beijing less than 48 hours after the Tien An Min Square massacre, who lost a friend there; a guy who had just worked in a village targeted by the Sendero Luminoso; and less ominously, a rich Ugandan who kept a Mercedes up on blocks in his garage, was obsessed with goats ("Do you have GOATS in America?") and who lost a bet to the Beijing guy that I wouldn't know Kampala). That all said, things were as they put it in cowboy land "real Russian" here this week.

I have planned a lot of blogging with links but at the moment links will not cut and paste. (I typed the ones above, and don't know if they will work yet). I am now going to try to put in photos.If THAT doesn't work I will post anyway and cry for help. If it does, I have more photo stuff for another (single) post, courtesy of Lauren. Wish me luck, and see you soon I hope.

Aaahh, photos work anyway. (All will "embiggen" if clicked on). Below, game dinner (rare grilled Canada goose breast slices, with a pomegranate marinade, and pheasants, brought by the "Russians", at cellist neighbor Joel Becktell's. Joel will be the subject of a post himself soon when I get the frackin' links working. From left: me, Anne, Peter, Libby, Joel.



The inhabitants of the living room: Ataika, Irbis in his crate, the redhead (who is now doing high jumps).



And, finally, a pic of Lauren HERE with us, rather on horseback on snow, eagle on glove; at rest for a fleeting moment:

John Vaillant's The Tiger

Here it is, Q- Philes-- John Vaillant's The Tiger: a True Story of Vengeance and Survival is finally out this week. It is better than good-- my favorite book of the year so far, and a likely classic in my rare favorite genre, that which documents (to use a book title) "the edge of the wild", that interface where humans and "nature" are not artificially separated but in conflict or cooperation, acting on each other.

Tiger is a non- fiction book that reads like a novel, set in "Primorye", the Russian Far East-- not "Siberia", despite its desperately cold winters-- but rather a huge block to the east and south of Siberia, a rugged place of mixed deciduous forests, few roads, a flora and fauna mixing the temperate and the subtropical (like leopards and tigers), inhabited by a never- prosperous populace now eking out their lives by such expedients as beekeeping and subsistence poaching.

Its protagonists are a single huge tiger, a ragged bunch of drunken poachers, and a patrol of anti- poaching rangers dedicated to protecting tigers over a huge area, with no money and inadequate tools. The beginning, as an unnamed hunter and his dog approach a dark cabin on a freezing evening, is a masterpiece of tension and quiet terror; the ending is utterly cinematic but real (the book is based on over 200 interviews). In between, Vaillant skilfully cuts from one "protagonist" to another, building an almost unbearable tension even as he dramatizes the serious issue of Asian poaching.

He manages to evoke sympathy for a man- killing tiger that outdoes any in Corbett (at one point he drags a mattress out under the shelter of a spruce to await his next victim in comfort; waits for another IN HIS BED; toward the end,`a la Kipling’s "Letting In the Jungle", he appears to be contemplating the elimination of a village), but also for destitute subsistence poachers tempted by the Han Empire’s eternal appetite for animal parts, and above all for the underpaid, overworked, and threatened Russian rangers, who use SKS’s in 7.62 X 39 (on brown bear, moose, and sadly tiger if they must) because they are the BEST rifles available! (Regular readers will recall previous posts on my love/ hate for this working man's rifle and cartridge-- more later, but I would never use it for such animals if I didn't have to!) On the other hand, a scene where a poacher pulls the trigger on an ancient Mosin and, instead of the firing pin falling, in the words of James McMurtry it "didn't, quite...", doesn't end well; perhaps the rangers are doing the best they can.

(In fact, my only extremely minor quibble with the book is re firearms: if you know a bit it can be momentarily confusing; if you don't, though, you won't even notice. But a poacher's badly- handloaded 16 gauge single- shot shotgun is not a "rifle", and using a thing like that to try to poach an Amur tiger is the exact kind of drunken Russian foolery that is likely to bring on Nemesis, on wheels, with no brakes...)

But really, a quibble-- this is an amazing book, one to stand with Arseniev and Corbett, its worthy predecessors. Annie Proulx sent me an early galley, asking that I return it as soon as I finished, and I was so blown away I asked-- well, demanded!-- another copy from the press, to quote to my friends until the real thing came out months later. On the Amazon site she says:

"The Tiger is the sort of book I very much like and rarely find. Humans are hard-wired to fear tigers, so this book will attract intense interest. In addition to tiger lore and scalding adventure, Vaillant shows us Russia’s far east and its inhabitants, their sometimes desperate lives interwoven with the economics of poaching and the politics of wildlife conservation... This is a book not only for adventure buffs, but for all of us interested in wildlife habitat preservation.”

Another good writer, Sy Montgomery's friend Liz Thomas, adds:

"In it are chilling accounts of human encounters with tigers—but these encounters, however fearsome, convincingly demonstrate the role that these enormous cats continue to play in the natural world. Equally compelling are the people of Primorye, those who of necessity must hunt the tigers, and those who would preserve them. To call this book a page-turner is an understatement."

I rarely quote other writers in praise of a book I like-- as anyone who knows me knows, I am secure in my opinions (!) But in this case, I think this book is so good I want to remind readers that writers I respect and who like MY writing-- "friends of Q"-- are as over the top about The Tiger as I am. Run don't walk...

Russian Art

Let this one load all the way. The thing to look at is not the second rate Gorbatov imitations (the falconry one is almost a direct ripoff), but the still life pics at the bottom. I love the Russians but sometimes I don't know quite what to say..

HT Chas

Not- so serious links

Dr Hypercube has three great links from English Russia which you should also visit, on reindeer races, Ukrainian Amazons, and wildly implausible airplanes, some of which actually existed (see here.)

The charm of the first is partially linguistic: "People bring their best deers and race, race, race. The looser deers are being eaten then, like, they did not satisfy the expectations, giving the big meals to everyone." The charm of the second is the concept. And the third-- well, you really have to see it!

More Gorbatov

Al Gates just gave me this link to a huge gallery of Gorbatov art at his Eaglehunter site, including dogs, large mammals, and falconry. There is even a version of my "Lobo".

Hounds

The Asian tazi gene pool continues to expand-- Vladimir now has three, in addition to mine and their offspring.

Puppy Urtak is somewhat related to my dogs, and is going to be huge.

Here he is at only four months with the full- grown female, Adel, who is closely related to mine.

Timur, a young male, is from Saint Petersburg and of a completely different line. We may outcross to him.