Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky painted The Hunters in the second half of the 1890-s. By that time he was a graduate of two educational institutions: the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and the Higher Art School of the Imperial Academy of Arts where he studied in Ilya Repin’s class. For the painting The Future Monk the artist was awarded a Great Silver Medal and the title of a Certified Artist. The rank exempted its holder from personal income tax and mandatory military service.

In the painting The Hunters Bogdanov-Belsky portrayed two peasants with hunting trophies. Not only did the artist know what the village catchers looked like, but he himself would often go hunting with them. Nikolai Zolnikov, a local teacher, used to recall: ‘It so happened sometimes that he would miss the target and start finding various excuses for that: either somebody pulled him by the arm all over a sudden, or the boat was unstable, or the dog started barking at the wrong time. He would get angry and excited, while the rest of the company kept joking at him saying: so what, so he missed again. It was my father who told me about that, they often hunted together with the artist.’ Bogdanov-Belsky also devoted another painting to hunting. His canvass Children Rounding up the Bear is now kept in the Ontario Art Gallery in Canada.