Throughout the 20^th century, hunting has had a marginal importance in the overall economy of the Komi people. Yet there are still people involved in it until the present time, and for some hunters, it is the main source of income. There are also traditional rules of hunting ethics passed on to us, although not all the hunters follow them. It can be said that the ideal of ethical hunting has been maintained, yet in real life this invokes fundamental conflicts. Here, the centre of controversy is between changing attitudes and traditional hunter morality.

The examples, which we shall present here, are based on materials collected from hunters living in the Ust-Kulom region of the Komi Republic. Evidently, they cannot be measured from the point of view of ultimate truth. Yet no doubt they communicate the centuries-old and nowadays attitudes of Komi hunters.

Traditional Komi hunter ethics have been based on beliefs in the supernatural dangers which may threaten a hunter for the breach of these rules or for any action not in correspondence with these rules. Porcha meant the lack or insufficient game, the stray hunter, a broken hunting gun, the dog has caught some illness. The hunters' artel was lead by a "master" possessing magic powers, whose task was to protect the artel members against the magic spells of other artels (Sidorov 1997: 41–49).

For Komi hunters, the main problem was the large number of hunters in the 19^th – beginning of the 20^th century in relation to insufficiently few good hunting grounds. This created tension among hunters and was a basis for violating hunter ethics (Konakov 1983).

For a breach of hunter ethics the traditional "forest rules" are applied, which allow the victim to exact quite severe revenge against the accused. One could burn down the hunting lodge of a thief or violator of the hunting ground, leave him tied to a tree trunk in the forest. Sometimes the thief was left with his hair fastened to the tree trunk. His knife was taken away, so he could not unloosen himself. Another punishment was to kill him. The thief was then burnt together with the hunting lodge, or a poisoned pie was left in the lodge. Those who come there, have the right to take everything with them. When it was known that a poacher was around, then the pie was left there. Also, sometimes a long batten was pricked through his sleeves and he was then left into the forest. Those who carry out these punishments, considered equitable by other hunters, were never reported to the police. During the Tsarist period, judges were not eager to investigate such cases, because hunters and other locals would not report them anyway.

Nowadays, a similar solidarity rule between hunters and not reporting one another to the authorities is also valid. Some hunters are illegal and, for the authorities, they are poachers. Many hunters do not obtain any gun licence, and those who have one, have permission to kill less game than they actually do. And all this is kept as an "open secret".

Vladimir Lipin: The militia realised that a hunter R¹, is a poacher. They caught a hunter Z and started questioning him. Z tried to think what to say and how to save his friend. Then a hunter K came out of the forest and said:

"Don't you know R is dead?"

Militia: "What?"

"Yes, we buried him between the three cedars. We could not report it to anybody, because we have been in the forest all the time."

If dead, then dead, the militia thought, and went away.

Within the last 20–25 years, the hunter traditions have undergone some downgrading. 20 years ago, they still kept them. Since the end of the 1980s, hunter traditions have been constantly disappearing. Nowadays, hunters are attacked for any breach of hunter ethics. Sometimes nothing happens to them. When, on a free hunting ground, someone builds his hunting lodge too close to someone else's, it is burnt down. They do not say anything – for example, we do not like you here. And when the poacher is in there, nothing happens. When he leaves the lodge, they set it on fire. And then everybody gets to know about this, and he gets an appropriate nickname.

Those who have hunting grounds, whether close to the settlement or further away, try to follow traditional hunting rules. Because so many people have cars nowadays, it very often happens, then, that people venture onto someone's hunting ground. Also, there are so many tracks – for transporting timber, just created, for electric power lines. A thief need not go to someone else's ground, he just goes along the electric power line track for about 100 metres and turns into the forest. The line track itself may be as long 10–20 kilometres. Then he turns around and moves on. The electric line track may have a number of hunting paths crossing it. And he takes the game out of a trap there.

Hunting grounds are obtained by inheritance or by occupation of unused land. These actions are in accordance with common law. Other hunters then recognise the new owner and this is what ensures his rights.

Vladimir Lipin: When I was in the army, someone made a hunting track near mine. I left him a warning: he did not react, but kept on hunting. Then I vandalised his traps. Then he vandalised my traps. I do not know who he was. This happened a number of times. We vandalised each other's traps. Then finally he stopped it. Did not vandalise traps or hunt. Perhaps he realised that I have more rights. Someone told him that it was my ground. I picked berries there for many years and saw that for 10 years no one had tracked there. Then I occupied this track and marked it with my signs.

Yet poachers are not so tolerant to withdraw after a polite request. They have developed their own morality that justifies taking into their possession everything they come across in the forest.

Vladimir Lipin: Once I caught a man on my track. That was enough: they steal all the time. In the morning I took the gun and sat there. And I see: the man is coming with his son. But I had a hazel grouse caught there. He saw the bird and took it, without turning around. I took my gun out and said:

"Come on, put it back there!"

But he starts arguing:

"Who are you?"

"Look, put it back there! It was me who set the trap not you! Put the bird back right there where it was!"

He did not, stood there. "That is enough, man, I would rather not see you here again," I said. Then he started remonstrating:

"Is this forest yours?"

I said:

"I set the trap, not you. I have been here for years. You just come and take. If I set it, how can you come and take it?"

He started to argue. He was not even worried. I had the gun and he was not scared. As long as I did not shoot, it was the same. Reprimanded, as if I did not have a gun at all. When I shot in front of his legs, it was much better. He put the bird back in the trap and ran away.

Considering the local hunters' identity, ethical setbacks among hunters themselves form even a more serious problem, as compared to poachers from outside the community. Once some hunters from Ust-Kulom wanted to take a bird from someone else's track. They justified that it would go bad anyway as it was lying there.

Vladimir Lipin: They know the rule that you must not take, yet they want to. I told them that I would not think badly of them, but they themselves caused that. They did not have any traps or tracks, they had just guns. Their ground was next to mine. I thought my own friends took my bird. They took heed of what I said, and did not take these birds with them. Otherwise they would have probably done it. Actually, when you see a bird lying on the ground on a strange track, you hang it up the tree and cover it, so that game would not get it. And set the trap again. At least, I and my brother did so in Parma, where Z allocated a hunting track to us. It crossed other tracks. Every time we found there some birds and we placed them on trees. As with elderly people, who find a bird when picking berries, they place it on a tree. My grandmother stated that in earlier times, when you were hungry, you were allowed to take the bird away. In return you then left there your sign (pas) on birch bark, or anything that you had with you. Also, you could later when returning to a village go to the hunter and give something in return.

Some problems involving mechanisms of occupying hunting grounds and punishments for breaching hunter ethics have then persisted for centuries. Even nowadays, hunters feel that in the forest common law is superior to the laws set by the authorities. The fact that hunters do not report to the police the prisoners who have escaped from prisons and live in the forest only confirms the above statement. Prisoners then live in hunting lodges and use hunters' supplies. Yet they must also follow the hunter common law. Should they breach it by, for example vandalising hunting lodges, hunters apply their laws to prisoners, too. This may even end in the killing of an escaped prisoner.

In addition to prisoners, according to hunters, also other people who have gone into the forest for a longer period, are to follow hunter ethics. Not long ago a Komi hunter and an escaped prisoner lived together in the forest. Then the hunter fell ill and was not able to hunt. While being forced to live on supplies, both their own and other hunters, they moved from one store to another. Then they came to the carriages of logging/forest workers. It was during the weekend and the workers were at their homes. The hunter knew that the workers must have some food supplies in there, and according to forest rules, he thought they could borrow from them. The door was locked. This made him angry, as normally doors are not locked in the forest. They then broke the lock and entered the carriage. The hunter was even more shocked when he saw that all the cupboards were also locked. He could not understand that the workers also hid food from one another. They broke the locks of all cupboards and lived a few days in the carriage. When the workers returned, the hunter fired in front of their legs and gave a lecture about decent behaviour in the forest.

In a present-day Komi society, hunters are surrounded by the aura of mysticism. They say, for example, that there was a hunter who went into the forest in 1925 and came out for the first time in 1970s. Then he received a culture shock and he was taken to a mental home. The storyteller admitted that the man should not come out of the forest at all. This probably involved some exaggeration, however, Komi forests basically enable hunters to live there, so that they only go to large settled areas 2–3 times a year.

Nowadays, the hunting morality enables some manipulation with the elements of the common law and traditional worldview. On the other hand, the aspect that different elements of traditional hunting are used indicates that these traditions have persisted pretty well.

Vladimir Lipin: A man from Ust-Kulom used strange hunting tracks. And our neighbour probably noticed him. I have two neighbours. One of them probably picked mushrooms and saw that the man was stealing there. The one whose track it was did not know anything. The neighbour then left it as if the trap was vandalised by some animal not a human being.² I was 14 when I heard that. And the neighbour asked:

"How is life? How is your hunting track? Any take?"

He said: "Not very rewarding. When I go there, game and birds all are eaten up. There is not much in the traps. Or: the traps catch well, but the take does not preserve/stay there."

The other says: "Bring me a vessel with some water in it. You have got a bowl made of copper. Bring it here. Be sure there is some water in it. I will see who has done it."

The first neighbour says: "Are you crazy? Are you really going to look at this bowl, there is only some water in there?"

The one without the prize thought it was some joke. Yet he brought the bowl. The neighbour looks at it:

"Look, I see who that person is. I go and tell him, and he himself will bring everything back. In case he has not eaten them up."

Then he went to the thief. In about half an hour, the thief from another street brings a wood grouse and some black grouse, saying:

"I was picking mushrooms. I saw they were almost going bad. So I took them."

He did not say he stole them. Said that he picked berries. But why had not he returned them so far? Yet finally he did. Later I asked the neighbour who had looked into the bowl:

"How you did it?"

He said he had seen that man taking the birds in the forest. He just went to that man and said:

"I looked into the copper bowl and it indicated it was you. You were there in the bowl."

He got scared: "I can't believe it! How come?"

"As we were looking at the mirror, we saw you taking two black grouse."

In fact, he just scared the thief. And the thief brought everything back. It was quite long ago, in 1979. Nowadays, he would not scare anyone like that.

Besides manipulating, diverse magic traditions connected with hunting have been passed on to us and are used in real life. For example, you should never pride yourself on a good catch, so as not to lose the hunter's luck. According to hunters' beliefs, a boasting hunter would not get any captures again. When someone has got a marten, for example, he says he's caught a squirrel. The take is considered to be fatal. They got what they did. They don't talk much about it. Yet there are some loudmouths among hunters who tend to overestimate their take. One of them, called V, was taught the following lesson by his fellow hunters. Another hunter crossed his hunting track and saw there a hazel grouse in the boaster's trap. Then that hunter took another grouse out of his bag and put into the same snare. Then V went home and told everyone the story about two birds in the same trap with tears in his eyes. Everybody laughed and could not believe it. V thought, however, he told a true hunting miracle for the first time in his life.

Also, in order to avoid the loss of hunter's luck, you are not allowed to use swear words when hunting. Even in a state of excitement.

Vladimir Lipin: When a child, I ran to the take. There was the swamp and pine woods across it. And I saw a black grouse sitting there. I shot it, and it was still alive. "Damn!" I screamed and ran to it. And the bird got lost in the middle of the swamp. One should not speak like that.

The hunting may be interrupted when everything goes wrong from the beginning.

Vladimir Lipin: Once we went hunting with K. We were skiing there, when all of a sudden K said he had forgot to switch off his kettle. So we had to go back. I asked why we went back. There was half a kilometre to home, you just see if any smoke was coming out of the roof. If not, it was OK. No, he demanded that we should return home. We did. The kettle was switched off. Yet we did not go hunting again. When it goes wrong at the beginning, you would not go hunting at all. He said this would be the same with hunting.

When getting into a hunting lodge, first of all a hunter speaks with the lodge. When he leaves it, he says: "Thanks for receiving me!" A Komi hunter may also get some magic help from his dead ancestors. They are asked to come into the forest and "point" the take. They serve tea for the dead, ask the dead relatives to help them.

YU (b. 1927): Sometimes you get so tired in the forest that you just can't go on. Then you don't speak, but you think: "For God's sake, help me, my parents!" Each hunter has an individual prayer. Although he would not speak up, you can see he gets better. When he is dead tired. I notice that, and so do other people. Especially when you are really tired.

According to YU, in earlier times, after killing a bear, they held a service in the church. Hunters also had icons and crosses in their hunting lodges. A local hunter called MV had an icon of St. Serafim Sorovski. The icon depicts bears praying to Serafim Sorovski. He was canonised in the 19^th century. He lived in the forest and tamed some bears. In Komi, September 14^th is bear day, or bear feast-day. The day is also called the Semyon Day and it is a church festival. That time also the bears' season in heat starts. They start looking for a mate.

Nowadays hunting also gives some emotional balance. Forest life is sharply contrasted to city life.

Vladimir Lipin: When I moved to the town, then at first I could not… When I went to the forest, then it was as if some poison. When I am at home, I cannot even think, I feel bad here. Then by time I got used to it. But when I came to the town for the first time, I fell ill. I just can't help, I come to the town and I can't get used to it. In the forest it is peaceful. Some emotional balance, you know.

YU: When you come from hunting, you feel great, you have made an effort, you know. You have a month-and-a-half long beard.

Vladimir Lipin: You just go there and live. That is the place where you can feel yourself as a human being to the most.

Nowadays the proportion of superstition in hunter ethics has decreased considerably, while relatively more practical rules are followed, the aspect which is directly related to the individual preferences of hunters and no signs of pressure from community morality can be detected. Yet the continuation of traditional hunter ethics is among the most important aspects of the Komi hunters' identity.

¹ Names of hunters are not provided, because, theoretically, this information could be used against them.

² When a crow vandalises the take caught in a trap, it would not take it along but pecks it near there. When a hunter has been there, only a pile of feathers remains of the hazel grouse. When some animal has taken it, it first takes the bird to some distance and eats it there. This can be traced, because with dragging the bird, some feathers are here and there. Small animals cannot take it very far, and therefore the bird must be somewhere near the trap.

References

Translated by Epp Uustalu