Chapter 112: Meeting the Saker Falcon Again

“Hey! Xiao Tao! That’s enough, the pig has been hammered to death! Stop hitting it!!!”

It took Xiaowen a shout to wake Xiaotao up from his dizzy state.

Xiao Tao looked up blankly: “Huh?”

“I said, stop hitting it, the pig is almost dying!” Xiao Wenyou repeated.

“Oh my! I don’t know where I lost my knife when I was chasing the pig just now. Can you help me find it? Let’s kill the pig while it’s still breathing!” Xiao Tao fumbled around, trying to find his knife.

“Here! For you!” Xiaowen handed the knife with only half the handle left to Xiaotao. After all, the freshly cut elm wood contained a bit more moisture, and it had just been dragged into the woods by a pig, and no one knew which tree had cut off the handle.

With the knife in hand, Xiao Tao swiftly went to the wild boar’s head and decisively aimed at the carotid artery under the neck and stabbed it.

The pig was not dead yet, so it would have been best to bleed it now. However, the aorta was clearly cut, and the expected scene of blood flowing did not occur. The pig did not bleed too much.

“Hey, something is not right. Where is the wild boar’s blood? I cut the aorta!” Xiao Tao scratched his head, a little confused for a moment.

“What the hell am I talking about? There’s blood all over your cotton pants! Go home and get beaten by your mother! You see, I’m going to tell Brother Feng later that you’re a good kid in every way, but you change when you see blood. Have you completely lost your mind?” Xiaowen pointed at Xiaotao’s lower body speechlessly.

Xiao Tao then lowered his head to take a look. Wow, from the punches he threw at the pig just now while riding on it, almost all the blood from the knife wound on the pig’s butt was not wasted, as it was all absorbed by the cotton pants.

At this moment, Xiao Tao was like a lesbian who had unexpectedly had sex. His crotch and half of his buttocks were dark red, emitting a strong smell of blood.

“Well, I’m just afraid that the wild boar will run away again! This is a sow weighing nearly 200 kilograms, and it can produce at least 130 to 140 kilograms of sow meat!” Xiao Tao said as a matter of course.

“Well, since you’re already in this state, why not gut the pig as well? When the tip of the knife reaches under the pig’s belly, be careful not to cut the intestines!”

“Okay, watch me!”

Xiao Tao directly knocked off the half of the wooden pole that was supported by the knife, and then deftly cut open the wild boar’s belly. Soon, a string of steaming hot pig offal was taken out intact.

According to the rules, once the internal organs are hung on a tree branch, the ceremony of worshiping the mountain god is completed.

Xiao Tao wiped the blood off the blade with pig skin and asked, “What should we do with the pig? Should we drag it back?”

“What else can we do? You finally killed him with your own hands, so we must take him back! Give me a hand, let’s carry him back together!”

“it is good!”

The wild boar, after its internal organs were removed and its blood was drained, still weighed about 150 to 160 kilograms. The two brothers grabbed the pig’s trotters together and slowly carried the prey back.

Over there, the brothers Yuefeng and Xiaowu were still slowly bleeding the wild boars one by one, when Xiaotao and Xiaowen came back carrying the wild boars.

From a distance, Yue Feng saw that Xiao Tao’s lower body was stained with dark red blood. He thought Xiao Tao was injured, so he stood up and rushed over with concern without opening the pig’s stomach.

“What’s going on, Tao? Where are you injured? Why is there so much blood on your cotton pants?!”

“Hehehehehehehe!” Xiao Tao felt a little guilty, so he just smiled foolishly when faced with the question.

Yue Feng was a little anxious. He looked around carefully from head to toe, but couldn’t find any wounds. Xiao Tao said a little late, “No, this is blood from the pig!”

“What the hell did you do to this little sow? Why did you get covered in blood?”

Yue Feng was a little confused when he saw this scene. He didn’t know what incredible thing Xiao Tao had done.

Xiaowen said angrily, “Humph, forget it! I was a little slow in catching up with him. Xiaotao was chased by the pig and couldn’t move. He was riding on the pig, grabbing the pig’s ears with one hand and punching it with the other!
He was hammering me while cursing at me. If I hadn’t called him back to his senses after I did that, I would have thought he was possessed by a demon!”

Hearing what Xiaowen said, Xiao Tao scratched his head a little embarrassedly. Although this kind of thing was exciting at the time, when he calmed down and thought about it, it was actually not rational and extremely risky.

Yue Feng glanced at Xiao Tao with a smile and said, “Mr. Tao is awesome. When we get home, I will tell your father about your heroic deeds of beating up the sow wild boar at Sandaogang. It’s up to you whether Uncle Li will punish you or not!”

When Xiao Tao heard that Yue Feng was going to tell his parents, his face instantly fell and he came forward: “Oh, Brother Feng, I was wrong, it’s not okay, I won’t dare to do it again next time!”

“What if it happens next time?”

“Next time…Next time I will…I will be a puppy!”

Xiao Tao couldn’t think of any powerful punishment at the moment, so he just said that next time it would be the puppy.

Originally, Yue Feng was just trying to scare his silly brother. In his previous life, not only could he beat a wild boar with his bare hands, but Xiao Tao even dared to fight a blind bear with a sharp knife. If the hunters who go up the mountain don’t have this kind of blood in their bodies, they will have no future in this life.

“I trust you this time, but you can’t be so reckless next time.

You have to think like this: if a wild boar gets angry and bites your ankle, you will get hurt even through your cotton shoes. When that time comes, we will go up the mountain to hunt, and you will have to stay at home, and we won’t even be able to release the eagle!

The lesson of my uncle Li is right before our eyes, so please don’t take it lightly!”

When Xiao Tao heard Yue Feng mention the consequences of the injury, his face changed instantly.

It’s true, it would be very powerful to go home and tell him that his father hasn’t recovered from his injuries and can’t go up the mountain.

“I will definitely be calmer next time. How can you not let me go up the mountain? The hunting season has just started this year. If you let me stay at home all day, I will definitely get angry!” Xiao Tao muttered with some fear.

“Okay, stop wasting time! There are still three pigs to clean up. Xiaowu and I have spilled all the blood. You take out all the broken bits of the lanterns!” Yue Feng waved his hand and stopped scaring Xiao Tao, motioning him to continue working.

Since his crotch was already covered in blood, Xiao Tao didn’t care much about his clothes when he was working. He quickly ripped open the pigs one by one, then drained the internal organs of several pigs, took them out and hung them aside.

“Are all these offal hanging on the trees?” Xiaowu looked at the good pig offal and felt a little reluctant to part with it.

Yue Feng shook his head: “Get the biggest pig and hang its offal on a tree. We can freeze the rest and take them back. They won’t go bad in the winter, so we can just take some time to clean them up and stew them in a pot. They’ll be delicious!” “Then I’ll go get the offal that Xiao Tao hung in the woods!” Xiaowen turned around and went to get the offal.

Hearing that Yue Feng was going to take back at least four or five sets of pigs, Xiao Tao asked, “Brother, we only brought two sleds this time. How are we going to deal with so many wild boars?”

Including the pig that Xiao Tao chased back, there were six pigs in total. Two of them weighed over 150 kilograms after they were cleaned up, one weighed over kilograms, and the other three were yellow-haired pigs with only about to kilograms left after they were cleaned out.

The total weight of these six wild boars of different sizes was more than 750 kilograms, and with the five pigs in the water, it would add more than kilograms. It would be difficult to drag them back with just two sleds.

However, there were four people in this team operation, so Yue Feng didn’t have to worry about the large number of people. He looked around and cut down a few low bushes with his knife.

The branches were tied with ropes, and a few small yellow-haired pigs were bundled up. The slowly freezing pig offal was also tied up. The weight of about two hundred pounds was dragged on the snow. Although the speed was slow, it was much less labor-intensive than carrying it by hand. There was no problem getting home before dark.

As for the heavier pigs, they could be brought back all at once by towing them with the large sled.

After more than half an hour of hard work, today’s spoils were finally tied and secured. However, the brothers had been busy since morning and were tired and hungry. Yue Feng decided to light a fire and have lunch on the spot, then take a rest after lunch before heading back.

It takes more than two hours to hike without any weight. Even if you pull a sled, it will take twice as long to get home.

Yue Feng and his four brothers picked up some branches as firewood and built a fire in the pine forest.

In addition to the fat biscuits and pickles he brought from home, Yue Feng also took out a small bag of salt from his bag.

He used a knife to cut an incision on the little yellow-haired pig’s hind leg, and then took out the fresh wild boar meat from the pig’s leg.

“Catch it and eat it right after it’s cooked, so it’s fresh! I have some salt here, sprinkle some on the meat when it’s cooked!” Yue Feng called out, skewered the meat on a sharpened pine branch, and passed it to his companion.

The fire lit by the pine branches is not the same as charcoal fire. There is a certain amount of smoke. To be objective, the meat will not taste very good if you use it to barbecue. It will have a bit of the smell of smoke oil.

But in this era, who cares about those details when you can eat meat? The yellow-haired meat back then was very tender, and it would soon sizzle with oil after being roasted over the fire.

Everyone sprinkled a little salt on the flour and ate it happily along with the dry food. In the wilderness, the taste was quite different.

Just like that, the four of them grilled meat mixed with pine branches in the woods and ate the dry food they brought with them, and soon filled their stomachs.

“The yellow-haired pig meat is still the most fragrant and tender! It tastes better than old sow meat!”

Xiao Tao ate the most barbecue just now. He didn’t care that his mouth was covered with dust. He spoke with a black mouth.

Xiao Wen wiped his mouth with his sleeve and said, “Of course, this yellow-haired pig meat is definitely better than a wild boar weighing hundreds of kilograms! After all, it is still young and the meat is tender. The only drawback is that the fat of this yellow-haired pig is a little thin. If it is sold to the villagers, it probably won’t be very popular!!”

“We won’t sell this stuff to the villagers! Apart from the cannon eggs, I don’t even plan to sell the rest to the villagers!” Yue Feng said calmly.

“You think the price is too low?”

Yue Feng continued to explain: “That’s partly because no one in the village has much money, so the first consideration when buying meat is definitely cost-effectiveness.

The eggs from the big cannon are sold at a reasonable price, so everyone buys them. If it is a sow or a yellow-haired pig with good meat quality and high price, we can’t afford to sell it cheaply, and if we sell it expensively, the villagers will scold us! ”

“That’s right, let’s send it to the canteen. Except for one of the boars, the rest are all good meat! We can keep the meat of this little yellow-haired pig for ourselves. We can use it to make dumplings, steamed buns, stewed meat, etc. It’s better than eating a big pig!” Xiaowu was already looking forward to eating the prey after dragging it back to the village today.

The brothers were chatting and kicking the snow to completely put out the fire, when suddenly Xiao Tao glanced at the air out of the corner of his eye.

“Look everyone, there’s an eagle in the sky!”

Everyone looked up at the sky in unison, and it really was an eagle.

The eagle was circling at a height of seventy or eighty meters above the ground, and one could only see its general outline by looking up.

It is actually very normal to see eagles in the mountains. Although the migration season for birds of prey has passed, there are still birds of prey in the Walin that will stay in Changbai Mountain for the winter.

Yue Feng didn’t think much about it. He just looked up and said, “It might be the eagle that Walin hibernated in the mountains. Its wings look a bit like a falcon, but without wing fingers!”

[Wing fingers: When a bird of prey fully stretches its wings in flight, the tips of its wings will take on different shapes depending on the species, resembling human fingers, hence the name wing fingers. Different types of birds of prey have significantly different wingspans, lengths, and the shape and number of wing fingers. Experienced bird of prey enthusiasts can judge a bird of prey’s species by the size of its wing fingers and the proportion of its body. Falcons have narrower wings that resemble scissors, and do not have obvious wing fingers, making them relatively easy to identify.]

“Is it the long-winged, short-legged eagle you mentioned last time? That’s useless!” When everyone heard Yue Feng say that the thing in the sky looked like a falcon, they immediately lost interest in continuing to observe.

Conventional falcons are birds of prey that the older generation of players play with as toys for princes and nobles. In terms of efficiency in field work, harriers and goshawks of the Accipitridae family are more practical.

Of course, this is not absolute. There are exceptions among birds of prey in the genus Falcon, and that is the Gyrfalcon.

The gyrfalcon is the largest existing individual among the raptors of the genus Falcon. The male gyrfalcon weighs 1.2 to 1.7 kilograms, and the female gyrfalcon is said to grow to more than 2.2 kilograms.

From this perspective, the name seems unremarkable and seems to lack presence. It also has another nickname, Saker Falcon!
There are sixty out of three hundred feather insects, and the most handsome one is Hai Dongqing.

The Saker Falcon in the poem refers to the Gyrfalcon.

Why did the ancient emperors love this thing so much? In addition to its handsome appearance, its overall quality as a falcon is also top-notch.

This thing has both the terrifying short-distance level flight burst capability of an eagle-like raptor and the endurance and dive acceleration capability of a falcon-like raptor. It is almost the only medium-to-large falcon-like raptor in existence that can be used alone for fist hunting.

It would be fine if it had strong overall qualities, but what is even more commendable is that the Saker Falcon’s IQ is far smarter than that of eagles and raptors. According to ancient records, during the Qing Dynasty, Saker Falcons could even be domesticated to replace carrier pigeons to deliver the highest-level military secrets.

Saker Falcons have no natural enemies in the wild, so there is no possibility that carrier pigeons will be killed by birds of prey and lose their information, and the success rate of information transmission is extremely high.

Because this bird of prey is extremely rare and precious, in the Qing Dynasty, offering a Saker Falcon as a gift could exempt one from the death penalty. The value of one eagle in exchange for one life can be seen.

(End of this chapter)