Yuri Gagarin hunting, 1966.

Yuri Gagarin—the man who breached the heavens on 12 April 1961—was, on Earth, a passionate and disciplined hunter. Far from the flashing cameras and state protocol, he sought refuge in Russia’s forests, marshes, and steppe edges, where the only countdown was the flush of a grouse or the distant bark of a startled roe. Hunting wasn’t a hobby for Gagarin; it was rhythm, ritual, and release—a way to ground himself after orbiting our fragile blue planet at 28,000 km/h. His preferred quarry was feathered: woodcock, snipe, grouse, and mallard—birds demanding not brute force, but stealth, timing, and intimate knowledge of terrain and wind. He hunted mostly in the Oka River floodplains, Kaluga woodlands, and near Zvyozdny Gorodok, often alongside fellow cosmonauts—Titov, Nikolayev, Bykovsky—who shared both the thrill of flight and the quiet joy of retrieving a bird from tall reeds at dusk. Accounts from his friends describe how Gagarin approached every outing like a mission: scouting locations days in advance, studying migration patterns, checking tides for waterfowl, and meticulously cleaning his shotgun the night before. His primary firearm was a double-barrel TOZ-34 20-gauge, the iconic Soviet “side-by-side” produced in Tula—a reliable, elegant workhorse with walnut stock and hand-fitted barrels. He also owned a single-barrel IZh-54 12-gauge, used for longer drives or when heavier loads were needed. Notably, he avoidedsemi-autos—not out of ideology, but preference: he loved the deliberateness of the break-action, the pause between shots that forced discipline and intention. “One shot, one bird—if you miss, you earn the walk,” he reportedly said. Gagarin’s hunting style was classic russian “strelkovaya okhota” —walk-and-flush, often with a pointer or spaniel. He valued ethical, close-range shots, rarely taking birds beyond 35 metres. His friend and fellow hunter Sergei Belotserkovsky recalled: “Yuri never rushed the trigger. He’d wait—sometimes minutes—until the bird was steady, wings fully open. That same patience he showed in Vostok’s cabin, waiting for retrofire.” Fascinatingly, his surname itself is steeped in hunting lore. Gagarin derives from the old Russian word “gagara” —the Arctic loon (Gavia arctica), a dark, vocal waterbird revered in Slavic folklore for its haunting cry and solitary grace. The loon was—and still is—a prized quarry for wildfowlers along northern lakes and rivers. In a poetic twist, the first man to see Earth from space carried the name of a bird that soars and dives, equally at home above and beneath the surface—a fitting duality. Tragically, Gagarin’s last hunting trip was in early March 1968—just weeks before his fatal training flight. He brought back woodcock for a small dinner at his dacha, joked about a “missed double” on snipe, and spoke of planning a spring hunt for blackcock in the Volga forests. That grounded joy—mud on boots, gun oil on fingers, the smell of damp earth—was as essential to him as the stars. For Yuri Gagarin, hunting wasn’t about conquest; it was about connection—to land, to comrades, to the quiet pulse of life he’d gazed upon from 300 kilometres up.