The Siberian Incident

by Andrew Gille

  Again we joined a river and rode along it, this time, however, we were able to ride the snowmobiles over a wooden bridge that appeared to be constructed well enough that a smaller truck could have crossed on it.

  Within an hour’s ride, Anatoly stopped, removed his helmet and put on the same black winter cap he’d worn the previous day. I did the same thing and readied my rifle for the hunt.

  We walked along a ridge that stood at the base of a steep incline and which in turn went up a rock-strewn mountain. The sun was fully out now, and it was getting warmer. Bears would undoubtedly be out, coming down the incline to the river for fish. I looked through the Swarovski as Colin looked through his computer scope and Anatoly scanned the area through the field glasses.

  After a few minutes of silent searching, Colin spoke up.

  “Got one,” he said, “Looking in the mid-right quadrant of the hill, I got it, it’s a…”

  “It’s female,” Anatoly says.

  “Yeah, yeah it is,” Colin says.

  It isn’t a law for the spring bear hunt, but Colin got Anatoly to guide this hunt with the agreement that we make every attempt to only shoot male bears, otherwise known as boars. He must have a soft spot, and he doesn’t want orphaned cubs which can happen during the spring season in which we’re hunting. Doing this is a lot more difficult than other animals though. Female and male bears look very much alike. Sometimes the only way to tell them apart is to see them together, males walk differently, more pigeon-toed, they have a more angular face and bulkier upper bodies. Understanding the difference is sometimes almost impossible.

  Colin keeps his eye on that bear, and I am glassing her with my Swarovski, an impressive animal, majestic and beautiful. I can admire her because she’s so far away if she were closer I’d be shooting at her while I ran and shit my pants at the same time. She’s about 900 lbs and probably between 8 and 9 feet high if she stood on her legs. Definitely large enough for me to mistake her for whatever it was that I saw yesterday. Just a little snow on her fur. I try to convince myself of that as I watch her but what I saw yesterday was so different, it couldn’t have been.

  “Another, right lower quadrant,” Anatoly says.

  “Yeah, you got her, that’s definitely a she, she’s with cubs,” Colin says, pushing a button on his scope that makes the lens move in what appears to be a zoom.

  I look at this bear through my scope, she’s even bigger than the girl up top, she could be 9 or 10 feet long and is well over 1000 lbs. Fantastic for spring after they’ve been hibernating that they are still so big.

  “On top, on top!” Colin shouted in a whisper.

  I moved my scope up to the peak of the hill we looked at, a solitary bear stood on top of the mountain. It looked around, steam came from its nostrils as it was doing what I assume was grunting, in the distant silence of my scope I could only imagine his grunts as his ribs flexed while the air was expelled by his mouth. The shot was over a kilometer and a half at the top of the mountain.

  “It’s a male, I’m taking it,” Colin said.

  “It is too far, you will not hit it,” Anatoly said, “Don’t,” he added when Colin said nothing.

  “I have him! Winds are 323 at 4 miles an hour, I shoot seven clicks above and four right for a bullseye. He’s standing to the side, Anatoly! I have a clear shot!” I assumed that Colin's scope was doing all of the calculations for him.

  “He could move! Wait he will come down!” Anatoly argued, they both whispered harshly at each other and began speaking in Russian.

  “Y menya yest eto!” Colin said.

  “No!” Anatoly replied.

  “Y menya yest eto!” Colin repeated, and they went back and forth enough that I remember this phrase.

  I saw the flame come out the sides of the flash suppressor on Colin's FN SCAR before I felt the concussion wave. I was looking at him as he fired his gun and it sent a shiver down my spine, I was not ready for him to shoot. It startled me, and I jumped as he did it.

  Anatoly swore in Russian, and he and Colin began shouting at each other in Russian.

  “I hit it!” Colin insisted.

  “It was too far, you are not sniper!’ Anatoly said in English for my benefit I think and then went back to yelling at Colin in Russian.

  Colin drew what I think was supposed to be a bear in the snow, it looked more like a pig and then he drew an “X” far up above and to the right of the bear. They were obviously arguing about the shot and whether or not it hit the bear. Colin insisted it had, but Anatoly and I were looking at him when he fired. He was the only one who could have possibly seen whether he hit it.

  “Wait! Wait! Wait! Wait!” I shouted, standing in between the two men.

  They both stopped talking and looked at me, I got the idea that I had one chance to say something before they tore through me to get at each other. What I was going to do if they went at it I didn’t think of, they were both much bigger and in better shape than me.

  “Doesn’t your scope take videos of each shot?” I asked Colin.

  “Yes!” Colin said, his face changing from angry to joyful in about two seconds. Now I got the idea that he really did believe that he’d hit the bear. He pushes buttons on his scope as it makes beeping noises. He’s frantically pushing the buttons, and he is whispering, “What the fuck,” to himself, like he doesn’t actually know how to replay the video that the scope supposedly took. Anatoly and I are standing watching him peer through the scope, unaware of what is going on inside of the monocle. The scope zooms out and in and then back out, which I really can’t imagine is part of finding the videos, and I wonder what the hell he is actually doing.

  Anatoly looks at me, he’s angry, and all I can do is look back at him and shrug my shoulders and shake my head trying to show him that even though Colin and I are related, I am on Anatoly’s side and I feel the same way about his inability to follow the rules.

  “Ha…ha ha! You fucker! I got you fucker!” Colin yells, “Here, here! Look!” Colin finally exclaims.

  Anatoly looks into the scope he stares for about 15 seconds, I hear a tiny speaker play what sounds like a gunshot from the scope.

  “Mason, look, I got the fucker!” Colin shouts.

  I look into the monocle. The male bear we saw on the ridge is standing, the gun goes off, and there is a loud sound of white noise that comes from the speaker on the scope. The image gets shaky and about a second later, stabilizes and although at first blurry, it focuses on the bear who seems to be meandering along the crest of the hill minding his own business. After about two seconds in which it looks like nothing is going to happen, a puff of red blood explodes above and to the left of the bear’s elbow, what I would consider a near perfect shot. It rears up and then rolls violently on the ground. The video ends.

  “I hit him!” Colin exclaims as if we still doubt him after watching the video proof of his shot.

  “Da, da, you hit bear,” Anatoly says.

  He takes out a massive container of bear spray and shoulder’s his weapon, “Now we go, hike up to top, get him, try not to die from other bear with cubs,”

  “Pssht,” Colin scoffs, ”I’m not afraid of a hike. You saw it,” he says to me, ”I got the fucker!”

  Colin did hit it, the video gives us irrefutable evidence of that. It was an impressive shot, maybe it was aided by a computer, but he still had to aim and stay steady to make that shot. Even if I had a marker that showed me where to hit a bullseye from that far, it would be luck that would allow me to hit it. A bear’s vitals are protected by a massive leg bone, and he seems to have avoided that. There is only an eight-inch circle behind the shoulder where you can hit a bear’s vitals an even smaller circle makes up a shot in the heart, and he seems to have hit it directly there. Colin has always had a lot of spare luck, but I do have to respect that he made the shot. Still, he should have never taken it, and his hunting guide told him not to. I’m not exactly impressed at his attitude toward the game either.

  “Congratu
lations Colin, that bear is yours. You killed it clean. It died quickly and humanely, you did well. I am proud of you. Have some respect for what you hunt though. You can say ‘I got him,’ it was a he, not a fucker.”

  “Well, he is probably the father of some of those cubs, so I wouldn’t doubt that he’s a fucker. But uh, hey so am I…” he says the one thing I’ve agreed with most then continues to try to explain himself. Anatoly and I are already 10 meters ahead of him walking up the hill.

  I try to keep pace with Anatoly with Colin in tow. The hike up the hill is already taking my breath, and we’re going to have to hike down with a bear that weighs several hundred pounds. If Colin could have waited until this bear walked down to the river, we could have ridden the snowmobiles right up to it. I was estimating the bear to be over 1000 lbs so he’ll still be several hundred fully dressed. I am hoping the hike down the mountain will be much easier than the hike up is proving to be. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, and I can forget about not sweating through my base layer, that’s already happened.

  I’m also hoping that when we do dress this bear that nothing attacks us in this altitude and on the treacherous terrain, we’ll be encountering up the mountain. When the video ended, the bear had rolled several dozen feet down the hill on which he stood. I am really hoping that like sharks to blood, a tiger or another bear is not attracted to the gutting of this bear.

  As these thoughts are going through my mind, I am startled by the sound of thunder.

  “What?” Anatoly says.

  I look up, and a massive cloud is rolling over the crest of the hill where Colin's bear lies. There were no storms predicted for this area today, so everyone is surprised.

  “You want we go back?” Anatoly says.

  “We can’t go back!” Colin says.

  “Fine then, carry on,” comes Anatoly’s reply.

  It begins to snow tiny ice pellets down on us as we walk up. I look up, and it is like looking into a cloud. Suddenly, a deluge of icy snow pellets falls on us, hissing as it hits the ground. I continue to try to walk up the hill, my boots now slipping in the ice deposited by the freak storm.

  Just as quickly as everything started, it goes from snowing ice pellets to giant flakes, these fall silently but are massive, they seem like fist-sized flakes that fall to the ground. Visibility is now zero. I try to trudge on, I don’t know why I didn’t just stand in place. I had some idea that Colin's bear would be buried in the snow if we didn’t get to it quickly. I may have been right, but it was stupid in retrospect to continue on.

  As the snow falls silently to the ground, I can hear Colin and Anatoly calling out faintly. The insulating snow is muffling their shouts to me, I yell back, but it seems futile, it sounds like I am shouting in a soundproof booth. Nothing echoes and the snow seems to absorb all sounds.

  Then I smell something, like piss or ammonia. I don’t understand where the pungent smell is coming from. It happens all at once, and I wonder if I am having a stroke or somehow my brain is smelling things that aren’t there. Then, it feels like I run into a wall. A wet, matted stinking wall of fur. I can tell that I have bumped into something living. I hear a grunt as I impact into its body.

  I look up, and through the mere inches of visibility I have, I see a face. A man’s face. Terrified I look away and see a spear the size of a giant hand railing. I fall backward, yet I still see the face. The face is fur covered, a massive brow ridge, thick, pronounced cheekbones, a huge jaw. He has a primate’s nose, but this is no ape. This is a man, he looks down at me, I can’t look him in the eyes, and I turn away, hyperventilating from sheer terror. Then through the pouring snow, I hear a muffled scream, it is Anatoly. The face turns its attention from me and quickly disappears into the sheets of whiteness coming down upon me.

  My heart pounds harder than it has during any other event on this trip. What had I encountered? I ran and ran, terrified. Not knowing what to do. Blindly I ran through the deep snow, my lungs burning from the altitude. Eventually, I either ran out of the snowstorm, or it moved on, but I noticed that the snow had stopped. A blanket of two to three inches of snow covered the hill, and the blinding storm moved down into the valley. Now the sun shone through the few flakes that still came down and then I saw the blue sky once again.

  I stood, cautiously looking around, unable to catch my breath. My heart beat so hard that it nearly pounded out of my chest. Anatoly and Colin were nowhere to be found, I shouted, but no one responded. Where could they have gone? The massive man I had run into had also disappeared into the storm. A deep sense of dread overcame me as I realized that I was now alone.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Into the forest

  I TRUDGED THROUGH the snow yelling to Mason and Anatoly. There was no response, I was now at the bottom of the hill we’d walked up to retrieve Colin's bear. I’d obviously gone down the path of least resistance, and I wasn’t sure if I was near where Colin had taken his shot or somewhere else. I thought I was on the same side of the mountain since I could make out the river beyond the forest, but I wasn’t even sure of that.

  I couldn’t believe this, I was exhausted, soaking in sweat, alone and scared. All of the ingredients to die out here. What had I allowed Colin to get me into? Where was he right now?

  I couldn’t decide if I should stay where I was or try to find the other two. Waiting in one place seemed futile. Especially since I’d heard a scream when the snow started and it could have been Colin or Anatoly, surprisingly they both had the same baritone voice. In fact, when they spoke Russian, it was difficult to tell which of them was talking if you didn’t look.

  Either of them could be hurt, and if they were immobile, I wouldn’t ever find them by sitting still. I decided to walk along the edge where the hill began to rise, and glass the slope periodically for movement. I hoped I would find them or the snowmobiles before dark.

  I walked a good distance this way, but now I saw nothing through my scope. There was no movement at all. It was discouraging to not see Anatoly or Colin, but I was pleased that I didn’t see tigers or bears or anything else that could kill me. I decided that I’d walked far enough that I should probably try to walk back the way I came since I hadn’t come upon an area that looked familiar.

  It was spring in Siberia, and the temperature was in the upper 20’s or maybe even the 30’s, ice dripped off trees, and I was comfortable. I watched as the sun moved across the sky. I didn’t want to ponder the idea that I may have to stay out in the woods alone tonight, but I did decide that I needed to think about drying out my base layer, so I didn’t get dangerously cold on the ride back like I had yesterday. I felt that the temperature tonight would probably dip into the lower teens or single digits and I didn’t want to be at a point of hypothermia when I got back to the cabin.

  I got into a sunny area, and I took off my jacket and sweatshirt which were soaked in sweat, and I did my best to dry my chest and head off with them. I then took off my snow pants and attempted to take off my thermal underwear without taking off my boots. It wasn’t going to work, I put my parka back on over my bare chest and sat down on my snow pants to remove my boots and take off my thermal underwear. My polyester boxer briefs were also soaking so I just took them off as well and sat on my snow pants wearing only my parka. It was not a great look for a man. I removed the parka and stood totally nude on my snow pants so my feet didn’t touch the snow and then I stepped onto the parka to put the snow pants over my bare legs. I then put the boots back on and donned the parka over my bare chest once again. The top layers were relatively dry, and I was comfortably warm wearing what I had on. I didn’t even need to put the hood on the jacket up right now, but I put it up anyway as I assumed that any body heat I retained that didn’t make me sweat would be valuable.

  I wrung the wet base layers out as much as I could and then hung them on dry branches in the sun taking care to ensure that no melting snow dripped down onto them from upper branches. Wearing the parka and snow pants, I searched through m
y pack to take inventory of the items I had for my survival. I put my back to a tree checked the perimeter often for bears, tigers and anything else that might threaten me. The last thing I wanted to do was become complacent and get attacked and injured adding to the difficulty of surviving in this environment.