This is by far the darkest film by Leonid Kayukov I've seen so far. All the earlier films by him that I have watched were insanely sweet and child-friendly, while this one is not shy about showing blood and death. The last time I remember hunting being shown so relatively "realistically" in a Soyuzmultfilm production may be all the way back in 1938, in Aleksandr Ivanov's "Fyodor the Hunter" (not on the site yet). But the art style in this is much nicer and really radically different from any previous film by Kayukov, which tended towards the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

In the Perestroika era, artists were more-or-less left to their own devices in the USSR, while still being funded by the state. For some directors, this led to a real flowering as they finally felt bold enough to be more artistically daring, and their films became stronger (e.g. Galina Barinova). Others (e.g. Vladimir Tarasov) abandoned their successful previous artistic directions and began making rather questionable things. Sometimes (let's say, in the case of Aleksandr Petrov, or Robert Saakyants), opinions will differ.

In Leonid Kayukov's case, he seems to have chosen to spend this period making animated films about the natural world. I'm curious to see the others, now.

I've tried to find the textual source of the tale, by the way (by Vasiliy Yuksern), but with no luck.

I'm also not sure about that mask that appears in the beginning of the film. I couldn't find any photo or drawing of any Mari mask that looks like that - it looks rather more like a Native American mask.