Прыгоды з жыцця прыроды
Adventures from the life of nature
Вячаслаў Грамыка
Для сярэдняга школьнага ўзросту
Выдавец: Беларусь
Памер: 263с.
Мінск 2003
Then Kuzmich wound dried and repaired strings with flags onto light wooden reels, having arranged a small loop on one end of each piece and a handy wooden fastener on the other. He made it so as not to lose much time while unwinding and fixing strings with flags... Well, for example, when one piece of a string ends with a loop, you can immediately pull through it a fastener of the next piece and go on throwing flags about the bushes — it is done quickly and conveniently.
Kuzmich also made several small fork reels using birch bear-spears and wound shorter strings on them. It was for the case when wolves might break some segment of battue and it would be necessary to repair it immediately.
Then the old man cleaned his twelve-caliber cock-gun, thoroughly wiped it with a clean sheet of paper, took it to the inner porch, hung it on the nail to drive out the smell of metal and timber. Then he rubbed it on the outside with alder rind.
Very thoroughly the old man filled cartridges. He knew very well that a wolf is tenacious. As hunters say, it is strong for a wound. Sometimes even heavily wounded beasts cover great distances and when it is wounded in the evening, you may altogether consider that you lost the beast — it will escape. It is important that detonating caps of cartridges be dry, the chart be strengthened with dry powder. Because, God forbid,
in case of a misfire, it can well be that there will be no chance to make another shot.
Everybody knew that the old forester was a good judge of this. Carefully, without any hurry, he examined once again the reserves of cartridges filled with large buckshot. He recharged some of them. He also filled new ones with smokeless powder, which somebody had recently brought him from the town. At that time it was extremely difficult to get such powder and Kuzmich usually used the powder producing smoke known as black powder, but it was bad for the kind of hunting planned by the old man. Then Kuzmich inserted cartridges into all cells of self-made leather fowling bag and hung it onto a wooden bough under the ceiling. The hook had been made just for this purpose. Thus, all the main things for hunting were prepared.
The next day Kuzmich again decided to call on neighboring villages — he thought somebody's domestic animal might perish. Some bait would not be out of place during such hunting.
One may say he was lucky. While calving a cow died at the collective farm and, though its meat at that time could be used for food, the chairman, understanding the importance of the future hunting, let the old man have it. The team-leader allotted a cart for Kuzmich and assigned two farmers to help him.
The carcass should be taken to the forest, to the place where, by the old man's opinion, wolves were to appear some day soon. And if usually they might come here for a day or two, substantial reserve of carrion could keep them for a long time. That played into the hunters' hands. There was time to think how and where a battue should be made.
It has been already the fourth day since the beasts left our parts where they attacked domestic animals and had rest. On his way to the forest Kuzmich, together with farmers, called on his home, loaded sledges with all the things necessary for hunting: reels with flags, the fowling-piece and cartridges, several self-made wooden rattles and, of course, his light self-made skis.
Snow has noticeably settled, became denser compared with the beginning of winter, as if someone had rammed it. The horse almost didn't break through the flat surface covered with crust. The sledge moved easily, the iron-padded skid squeaked.
Soon the field ended. The winding road ran through the underbrush then dove into thick brushwood. From time to time it got thin then changed into a wall of tall and very high conifer trees unbounded mixed forest with bare borders began and sometimes, on the contrary, — it was with thick impassable underbrush.
Here are the parts where the wolf pack used to play about and rest, the parts where it was necessary to start preparation for the hunting, which promised to be quite interesting.
The men dropped the carcass on a vast clearing, since when playing around, wolves prefer open space rather than thick brushwood or a dense forest. Wolves feel calm in the open space. They approach bait more willingly and boldly, stay longer in such parts. At the same time, after they ate their fill, wolves become less cautious. Then, having rolled themselves into balls, they sleep soundly somewhere in the backwoods, relying on a watch wolf. The satisfied watch beast itself becomes less attentive and the brood on the whole is not willing to leave the place of lying even if they feel danger.
There were no wolf tracks at the place they had dropped the carcass, but the beasts of prey could be expected any day soon.
On their way back, the farmers took Kuzmich to our farmstead. My dad was not considered to be an inveterate hunter. He didn't even have a fowling-piece of his own, but when necessity arose he usually borrowed one in the neighboring farmstead where a large family of our distant relatives lived and their son had been going in for hunting since his childhood. In such cases he used to let my dad have his gun for one or several days. In other words, when it was necessary dad took part in hunting and treated it reasonably, like any other farmstead business.
But the old man stopped at us not because my dad took part in hunting before. Kuzmich knew my dad very well. Kuzmich was a friend of my dad's father, my grandfather Andrew (now the deceased). It was more convenient to get from our farmstead to the place where the bait had been left and there was always a room for Kuzmich in our hut. Though it was rather small, my parents used to say “Come on! Welcome to our place, there is enough room for everybody.”
In the evening we had dinner together with our guest and he told us amazing and fabulous stories of his life. The talk mainly concerned wild animals and birds, the life of old trees and he explained to us how much an ordinary, unnoticeable stump could tell a man if it was scrutinized thoroughly.
In a friendly manner all ate the so-called “corny” — crushed boiled potatoes, enriched with fat cracklings, fried with finely-cut onions; with pleasure we crunched small salted cucumbers covered with tiny pimples, served by my mother.
Meanwhile, my brother climbed out from the table and examined the old man's fowling-piece with keen interest, carefully, with fingers shaking from strain; he touched the butt and the barrels, not knowing of what he is afraid more — of the gun or of whether he would be scolded. Seeing his excitement, Kuzmich allowed him to take the gun into his hands and brother carefully took it and held it to his shoulder indecisively. It seemed there would be no end to this excitement and joy. You don't say so! A real hunter's gun is in his hands. Which of the poor peasant boys could brag about that!
The only thing the old man didn't allow was pointing it at people and, moreover, to aim at them. Though he was sure that the gun was not loaded, the unwritten hunters' law demanded precaution. Everything may happen in this life — one may forget something or somebody may find somewhere a cartridge and load the gun... in short, even an unloaded gun may fire once a year. In general, it is not good to aim at a man — there is something cruel and disgusting in it...
And now, after many years, while thinking of that sometimes, I cannot, but stress once again the importance and wisdom of forester's words, so simple and clear to everybody, so ordinary as if they are not distinguished in anything, though, at the same time... Perhaps, they have even saved my life, too, those simple words of warning when you've got a gun in your hands.
...When I became a grown-up youth, having graduated from the biological faculty of the University and working over the Ph.D. thesis on the ecology of birds, I had the permit for selective shooting of them in the Nalibokskaya Virgin Forest. There 1 had an accident. Once I went to the forest with two friends of mine, also
graduates of the University, only from another faculty — the chemical one. After the fourth academic year we were at the annual military training camp together and made friends there.
We started from the city on a day-off, just to spend our time out of town and at the same time, to gather some material for our work. As they say, the benefit was double. I wanted to please my friends in some way. The places there are very beautiful. They impressed me yet when I had my summer practice after the third year in the University. So, I wanted to show my comrades those beautiful, indescribable woodland sceneries of the native land. It was just at the place where unbounded expanses of Nalibokskaya forests are pierced by a thin blue ribbon of the clear forest river Isloch. When we were riding in the bus along the highway Minsk — Volozhyn. After the stop in the village of Pershai, the bus having covered 5 to 6 kilometers more, stopped again near the small village of Dovbeny. If you turn left there, taking narrow unused and untrodden roads, you will find yourself in virgin forests after about a twelve-kilometer walk. You can hardly meet a single man there in the radius of ten kilometers. Few such places remained on our land and it's so good and pleasant to visit them.
If you happen to meet there anybody, you won't be embarrassed, though you came here to be far away from people. On the contrary, you will be glad, since people in those tiny villages are also extraordinary.
Wherever I was later, whatever places I visited, I never met such modest, kind and sincere people either in my country or abroad. So, when you sometimes meet a man in those places after a long wonder about the forest, you will always feel this sincerity. People will always take notice of you here, share with you everything they have, invite you to the hut, ask you where you are going. If you have any need, they will help you by all means.
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