vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #157 / Special reports / Reading article...

Hunters tracked down and shot a wounded man-eating Siberian tiger Dec. 24 after it killed two people in the wilderness of northern Primorye.

Officials launched an all-out hunt for the animal, combing the woods and setting traps, after it ate two people near the village of Sobolinoe.

The hunt began Dec. 3, when a hunter a hunter identified as Vladimir M. didn’t return home from the taiga. Villagers began searching, and after two days they found a tiger's footprints near a hut on the bridge over the Bikin River. The hut is used by guards who are watching a construction site along the Khabarovsk-Nakhodka Highway.

The animal had also approached the dwelling of the watchmen. The tiger gnawed the walls of the outdoor lavatory and lay in ambush near it.

Yury Trush and other three men from the Luchegorsk group Tiger arrived to Sobolinoe to track the animal. Tiger normally tries to protect the animals – only about 450 remain in the wilds – but it also is responsible for catching killers.

Before the group could catch the animal, it killed a second victim. The second man was identified only as Andrei P., 21, said Valery Kuzhetsov, a Sobolinoe resident who first told the militia about the creature. Andrei had gone to the taiga to check traps the day after the funeral of the first victim.

Many people, including his parents, tried to dissuade him, but Andrei didn't listen. He was found dead by his father and neighbors the next week. That time, the tragedy took place in the Malaya Takhalo River watershed. Andrei was setting traps there when the tiger attacked. All that his father found of him were two fingers, part of the scalp, a chain and a watch. Hunters think the animal had been eating the man for three days.

Members of the special hunting group chased the animal for two days. The predator probably felt it and tried to hide, but it was not successful. When hunters found it, the tiger was furious and attacked them. They shot it.

The tiger proved to be a male that had been shot in the knee some time ago. That is probably why it was so angry at people and killed two.