Kaigus is the Ket spirit-owner of the forest and its game, one of the named 'masters' of the natural world in Ket hunting religion. Ethnographers record the being as gender-ambiguous: sometimes a male man-bear, sometimes a female 'forest-mother' who tests and then rewards a hunter. Kaigus stands at the centre of the Ket bear ceremony, in which the killed bear's bones are returned to the east so that the animal, and the master's bounty, may be renewed. Hunters secure his favour with offerings and ritual respect, and offend him at the cost of an empty forest.