National paper Kommersant carried a letter from Vologda's deputy chief of regional hunting resources management, Sergei Starostin, which accuses hunt organizers of plying a captive bear named "Mitrofan" with vodka-drenched honey and then forcing him from a cage to be shot by Spain's King Juan Carlos."His majesty Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with a single shot," Starostin wrote in his letter.
Russian hunt organizers are not complete strangers to such tactics. Keen hunter and former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had trouble with his aim in his later years. Some of the animals he liked to stalk were either tied to trees or plied with booze.
OK, Yeltsin was the drunk tied to the tree. It still wasn't an easy shot. You could ask Brezhnev about it.