Long Way Home

By Jackson S. Whitman

Marc Orlov is a down-to-earth wildlife biologist, working hand-in-hand with Russian biologists on Siberian Tiger research in the Russian Far East. International conflicts break out, and Marc and his crew are perceived as spies. What follows is a story of his escape from Russia, weaving accounts of deep friendships, deep loves, and harrowing adventures into an entirely believable yarn set in a land of intrigue and shadows. The twists and turns of this saga and the beautiful, wild country through which Marc travels will keep you turning the pages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jan 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9781698716213

Jackson S. Whitman

Jack Whitman was born and raised in the Salmon River Mountains of central Idaho. In his mid-20s he migrated north to Alaska, where he worked for nearly three decades as a wildlife biologist and bush pilot, specializing in large predator research and management. He lived and worked in the Copper River Basin of southcentral Alaska, the vast western Interior, and amongst the mist-shrouded islands of Southeast. In 1993 and 1994, he took a sabbatical from his duties in Alaska and worked on Siberian Tigers and Amur Leopards in the Russian Far East. In 2008, he and his wife retired from Alaska, and completed their migration back to the mountains of Idaho, where he was employed as a wolf biologist. He has authored four books and many technical manuscripts on a variety of wildlife subjects, as well as popular articles in various outlets. He has been a passionate hunter, trapper, fisher, and outdoorsman his entire life.

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Copyright 2024 Jackson S. Whitman.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1620-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6987-1621-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023924662

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CONTENTS

Disclaimer

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1   Tigers

Chapter 2   After the Catch

Chapter 3   Conflict in Paradise

Chapter 4   Kolya to the Rescue

Chapter 5   Avoidance; Cat-and-Mouse Games

Chapter 6   Avoiding Capture

Chapter 7   Parting Company

Chapter 8   Into the River Bikin

Chapter 9   Village Time

Chapter 10  Continuing North

Chapter 11  Kostya

Chapter 12  Svetlana

Chapter 13  Settling In

Chapter 14  Alexander (Sasha)

Chapter 15  Trapping the Winter Fur

Chapter 16  On Pins and Needles

Chapter 17  A Change in Plans?

Chapter 18  Boat Time

Chapter 19  The Wreck

Chapter 20  Rescued

Chapter 21  Return to Russia

DISCLAIMER

This is a work of fiction. In most instances, I have used real places, but not real people or events. Certainly, the characters are most often loosely based on someone I know, or sometimes a fictional conglomeration of various people. I have tried to be realistic. Any resemblance to people living or dead is unintentional.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My wife and, most certainly, my best friend, Lisa Whitman, endured many evenings reading and rereading early drafts of this manuscript. Her keen eye caught many inconsistencies, and her common sense helped considerably with this piece, as it does every day in other aspects of our life. Editors Michael Fedison and Ken and Barb Deardorff did magic in bringing my often-unsophisticated writing up to standards. To Dr. Maurice Hornocker I owe a huge debt for hiring me for a year of tiger and leopard work in Far Eastern Russia. In retrospect, it was one of the best years of my life. Part of my time in Russia was alongside another researcher who has been instrumental in doing great things for the tigers, Dr. Dale Miquelle. To the many good friends, both here in the States and in Far Eastern Russia, who taught me the ropes, I owe a great thanks and an insurmountable debt. They include many coworkers in Alaska and Idaho who have taught me what it means to be a field biologist. To name them all would constitute a book in itself. You know who you are. In Russia, primary thanks go to the late Alexander (Sasha) Ziev and the late Vasily (Vaisa) Solkin, both of whom treated me as a friend and shared what it means to be a naturalist. To my former wife and friend, Natalia Borisovna, and her son, Valentin: you two taught me more than you know, and I thank you for that. My late parents, LeRoy and Emily Whitman, instilled a love of books and a love of things wild, and for those I am forever grateful.

1

TIGERS

Well over 750 pounds of consummate killer. The ultimate predator . . .

Every hair and muscle of the mature male Siberian tiger emanated defiance toward the man moving through the light underbrush a scant thirty yards distant. Under normal circumstances the aggression would have been one-sided, with the great cat stalking the human. In this case, however, roles were reversed, with the more powerful of the two restrained by a five-eighths-inch aircraft cable tightly cinched to his left front foot, the other end double-wrapped and bolted around the base of a huge oak.

Armed only with a blow-gun tube and a couple of drug-filled darts, the man cautiously moved to within fifteen yards of the growling tiger, crouched behind another large tree, and tried to steady his pounding heart and nerve-ravaged breathing. He inserted a dart into the mouthpiece and peered around the tree. The tiger lunged, but was upended as he reached the end of the short cable. The man steadied the long tube as best he could, pointing at the exposed flank of the cat, and after a few more controlled breaths to steady his aim, he expertly discharged the heavy dart. Fortunately, his experience paid off, and the projectile hit the intended mark.

Tochna!, he thought to himself. Bull’s-eye! Although his mind was filled with other pressing matters, he briefly remembered a tease his kid brother had often repeated after a successful shot. Even a blind hog manages to find an acorn every once in a while.

He knew that the next ten or twelve minutes was simply a waiting game. Waiting for the drug to act to narcotize the huge animal to the point where the man could manage his business without fear of being attacked. He’d done it a thousand times on various species of animals over the past twenty years. With an animal as fierce and as rare as a Siberian tiger, however, his adrenaline was rushing.

Marc Orlov had a list of credentials that were unique. He’d been born in the rugged mountains of Idaho’s Salmon River country some forty years earlier. His mother was a no-nonsense, practical, hardworking ball of fire, trying to eke out a living on a 240-acre boulder patch in the wilds of the South Fork of the Salmon River. His father, a Russian forest ecologist who had unfortunately been politically naïve, had escaped from his exile to a Siberian settlement, stowing away on an oil exploration and research vessel bound for America. After a two-year period of contending with various bureaucracies in Seattle, he’d been granted a permanent visa by the United States government, and he’d wandered the Pacific Northwest. He’d been plucked from the raging waters of the Salmon River, looking more like a drowned rat than a human being, when his homemade raft had disintegrated halfway through his solo trip down the river. His plucky benefactor had been intrigued by the handsome features, stout build, and boyish inability to speak clear English. Shortening a long story in itself, they had fallen in love, were married the following spring, and, within two years, produced Marc, their first of two boys.

Growing up on the homestead was difficult, entailing seemingly endless hours of physical labor during a large part of the year. Winter months, however, were largely devoted to academic study interspersed with regular outings in search of mountain lion tracks, which were studied and followed, sometimes for a week or more at a time. This passive pursuit helped Marc develop an early interest in wildlife and the complex interrelationships between animals and their environment.

Marc had excelled in collegiate athletics as well as with his university studies despite the fact he’d never been to an accredited high school. He had continued on with a three-year graduate degree program, and graduated with honors. Despite serious urgings to enter into a doctorate program, he had elected to leave academia for the real world. Marc surmised that a PhD in wildlife management would brand him overqualified for the field assignments he really enjoyed.

His work experience included an impressive array of difficult assignments that he was able to pull off with precision, control, and not without a bit of flair. Marc’s publication record included a wide variety of professionally impeccable papers on a range of predators, both mammalian and avian.

Most important for his current assignment, however, was something less objective. Something not listed in his official dossier. He had the unique ability to get along with people. Arrogance was completely lacking. He mixed as well with legislators, academicians, and judges as he did with trappers from bush Alaska or dirt farmers from Iowa.

Additionally, he spoke Russian. Not well, but his father had insisted on him learning bits and pieces as he was growing up. He’d been offered the chance to work with a species he considered the ultimate predator in the land of his father: Siberian tigers in Mother Russia.

Now Marc found himself sitting behind an ancient oak in the middle of the Russian taiga, waiting for the fast-acting narcotic to be pumped through the veins of his quarry, rendering the massive animal impotent. He marveled at the scenery surrounding him. It was springtime in the Russian Far East, but a skiff of new snow the previous day had powdered the recently erupted greenery a mottled white. Leaves were budding out from the tips of branches a hundred feet up in the canopy—that new, crisp, vibrant shade of light green that has no equal. Against the deep, dark green of the Korean pines that grew farther up the side of the mountain and the now-cloudless azure sky, Marc was in total awe of the country.

He was brought out of his reverie by an almost imperceptible low-frequency growl that was more felt than heard. The rhythmic growling from an animal that large could hardly be described as a purr, but the effects of the tranquilizing drug had obviously taken hold, and a magnified purr was exactly what it was. No more daydreaming, he thought. Time to get to work.

Peering around his cover, it was evident that the cat was down and out. Marc circled the now-recumbent tiger, approaching cautiously from the rear. He squatted down and grabbed the tail, even the tip too big to be encircled by his hand. He tugged a time or two, and getting no explosive response from the tiger, Marc moved up and lightly slapped the flank. An involuntary flexing of the massive foot and twitching of the ears was the extent of the response.

Satisfied that the big cat was out, Marc slipped out of his backpack and laid it on the wet ground. It took only seconds to remove the snare cable from the front left foot of the tiger and reposition it loosely around the right foot. This allowed blood circulation back into the foot, but assured a safety precaution should the animal regain consciousness. The first things out of the pack were a stethoscope and other medical paraphernalia. A topical salve was applied to the tiger’s eyes and a small towel was positioned over the head and eyes to shield them from the direct sunlight that periodically dappled through the leafy canopy above. The first order of business was to monitor the beast’s heart rate and breathing, all the while talking notes into a small microcassette recorder he carried in his shirt pocket.

After the initial physical condition assessment, he spread a light tarpaulin on the ground and began emptying an amazing array of instruments and equipment on top of it. Close-up photos were snapped from every conceivable angle, especially around the face of the tiger. Notes were dictated into the recorder concerning tooth wear and suspected age of the animal based on the dental patterns. A bulky but rather lightweight collar with a built-in radio transmitter was bolted around the neck. Blood samples were drawn into vacuum-type glass vials, and a scrupulously cleaned skin sample was surgically removed from the groin area. A small number was tattooed inside both ears, as well as inside the upper lip. A small plastic numbered tag was inserted into the left ear as well.

Next, a series of length and girth measurements was recorded, and a stout rope with a complicated system of pulleys was thrown over a stout overhead branch from the gnarly old oak. The tiger was rolled into a cargo-net sling, hoisted off the ground, and the weight of 330 kilograms, about 730 pounds, was recorded. Marc again smiled to himself that his original estimate was a bit higher, but was satisfied that the drug dose he’d used was still well within the safety range for a mere twenty- or twenty-five-pound difference.

Throughout the other procedures, he periodically re-monitored the animal’s respiration and heart rate. He examined the head, neck, and all extremities for scars and other evidence of past trauma. This was his first adult male. Indeed, this was only the third Siberian tiger that was ever captured, which would be returned to the wild wearing a transmitter. It was pioneering work designed to understand the basic ecological needs of a wild tiger population. It was understandably exciting.

The tiger was slowly beginning to revive from the effects of the anesthetic. Muscle tone was returning, and respiration was becoming more forceful. As with all cats, the nervousness was exemplified by a twitching in the end of the long tail. As a final check, Marc turned on his small receiver, tuning in to the unique frequency that this animal would be transmitting for the next two or three years. He removed the small magnet from the collar-mounted transmitter now buried in the dense fur of the neck. A loud beep from the receiver every second or so confirmed that the transmitter was operational.

The entire procedure had taken less than forty minutes, and Marc was inwardly ecstatic over his good fortune at capturing the animal. More so, he was satisfied that the animal had reacted predictably to the procedure, and would soon be back in the wild, none the worse for wear except a bit hungover and sporting a new collar. He efficiently and deliberately repacked his backpack, took one last admiring look at the recovering animal, and departed down the faint game trail toward the cabin. At several hundred yards distant, he sat on a downed and rotting pine, and took a deep breath. Wow! What an animal!

An hour later, Marc arrived at the cabin. Kolya and Yuri were already there, wondering why Marc had taken so much time to check his morning snares. They were both Russian biologists, assigned by the Academy of Sciences to assist in the Siberian Tiger Project and learn the Western ways. Perhaps more important than the ecological data that were being collected on Siberian tigers, the project was designed to assist the Russians with technology transfers. These two Russians in particular were well versed in the ways of the taiga. They had both spent their adult lives studying the tigers, Himalayan bears, brown bears, and Amur leopards that prowled Far Eastern Russia. Their methods, however, were vastly different from the technology used by their Western counterparts. Aside from perhaps a few African bushmen, these two men were capable of reading subtle signs in an animal’s tracks better than anyone on the face of the earth. They were naturalists, and the abilities they possessed were no longer relied upon by North American biologists. One of Marc’s primary reasons for taking this assignment was to attempt to learn this art from the Russians. To try to rekindle the woodsmanship he knew lay latent in his soul. To better understand the stories left by animals in their tracks, droppings, scrapes, scent posts, or whatever other sign they left in their passings.

Kolya and Yuri greeted Marc in stilted English.

Preevyet, he greeted them in return, using the informal Russian greeting. Both Russians were interested in learning English, and they had developed a system of using the other’s language. Marc encouraged them to speak English and, as a favor, had further asked them to put up with his equally poor Russian sentence structure.

Yuri sensed Marc’s excitement first, but it was Kolya who detected and identified the faint aroma.

You are late, my friend. And I know the reason, he remarked, barely able to contain his excitement. You did touch Amba!

Marc, too, was unable to contain his own exhilaration. Da, I have touched Amba!

2

AFTER THE CATCH

The next several hours were busy. Despite the researchers’ desires to break out the celebratory bottles of vodka, they all were aware of the work that had to be done. All three had split up and gone in separate directions early that morning, checking their respective snare lines. The newly collared tiger would be somewhat groggy following the drugging, so they knew all the foot snares in the area had to be retrieved. It took most of the afternoon, but by early evening they had again returned to the centrally located cabin.

Unlike their Western counterparts, the Russians associated with the project insisted on christening their new charge. Most Western scientists would scoff at the idea of giving a human name to their various study animals. It was standard practice to assign an accession number to an animal; names were thought too personal, and were arguably too anthropomorphic for an objective researcher. Marc wondered why, then, his fellow researchers who had dogs or cats or horses always gave them names, not numbers. Anyway, he was comfortable with the idea.

Even as the evening meal of canned beef, or whatever kind of meat it was, and barley was being prepared by Kolya, the first of the vodka bottles was ceremoniously opened.

It’s been a good week, and our new tiger is moving well, Marc commented between mouthfuls of three-week-old Russian bread. Their receiver was tuned to the new frequency, and the clarity of the signal varied constantly, signaling the big cat had recovered and was on the move.

Yuri and Kolya pressed Marc at every opportune moment to tell of the details of the capture and of the tiger. They reverently referred to the tiger as Amba, and would continue to do so until it was properly christened that evening. It was evident that they were as excited as Marc, and were anxious to get on with the informal celebration. Marc dispensed details in response to every question. The air was full of humor and good cheer.

Marc grabbed the open bottle that had been sitting on the rough plank table in front of him. Time to start the merriment, comrades! Let’s toast to Amba and choose his new name . . . a name befitting his place in the taiga. A name he deserves. He realized as he was saying it that his colleagues probably didn’t understand all of what he’d said, but with open bottle in hand, he was sure they understood the gist.

Four large shot glasses were brought down from an upper shelf, and all were filled to their rims. Marc knew the protocol from the two earlier captures. The three men sat around the table, staring at the filled glasses. The night following one of the previous captures, they had discussed naming the tiger Kolya,