[a][1][2] Kulbertinov was born on 7 November, 1917 in Tyanya in the present-day Sakha Republic to an Evenk family of reindeer herders, who hunted wildlife in the taiga of Olyokminsky District.

For most of his teenage years, Kulbertinov worked on the Novaya Zhizn collective farm in Tsivilsky District, Chuvash Republic, for which he was recognised as a Stakhanovite.

Measured as 153 cm and 53 kg, he underwent training in the Ural Mountains and deployed as part of the 2nd Guards Airborne Division on 27 February 1943 near Staraya Russa, where he made his first confirmed kill.

While there, he was involved in a shooting incident, when two drunk Red Army officers approached Kulbertinov while he was eating and accused him of stolen valor, derogatorily calling him a Chukchi.

Kulbertinov was returned to Tyanya and from 1948 to 1969, he worked as a hunter for the state-run silver fox farm while also setting up traps to deter wolves from a deer husbandry site.