Chapter 165 Something is wrong

Li Wentong grabbed Yue Lei’s hand. One of the brothers had injured ribs that had not yet healed, and the other had a broken leg in a cast. Both were injured and had not recovered yet, but at the moment they were full of energy and did not have the depressed temperament of an injured person at all.

“Really! Jianguo received a call from the township security department, and they gave him accurate information! After a six-month probation period, if there are no problems, he can be converted to a regular employee! Then the time comes, we two brothers will each have a spot!” Yue Lei was full of energy when he said this.

“Are there any other requirements for these two positions? If not, just let Xiao Tao and Xiao Feng go. At our age, we won’t be able to work for a few years before we retire!”

It is pitiful to see the love of parents. When Li Wentong heard that there was a vacancy for working in the forest farm, his first reaction was to give the position to his son.

Yue Lei repeated to Li Wentong what Yue Feng had just said at home, and Li Wentong couldn’t help but nodded after listening.

“Okay, this is a big deal, let’s keep it a secret first, and when the job is settled, we must hold a grand ceremony! I’ll pay for it, and we’ll call all our relatives and friends together to have fun!”

“Haha, fine! I won’t fight with you for this! Tomorrow Xiaofeng will lead people up the mountain to look for the black bear that walked on the ice. If you have any other instructions for him, tell him! After all, these kids have little experience in going into the mountains, and I’m still a little worried!”

“This black bear that walked on the ice and deliberately hurt people…”

When talking about the business he is good at, Li Wentong patiently talked to the brothers Yue Feng and Xiao Tao about things such as precautions, possible risks, habits and the differences from ordinary blind bears, etc. He repeated all the knowledge he knew in detail.

The two families had a lively time until after nine o’clock. Seeing that it was getting late, Yue Feng helped his father leave Li Wentong’s house.

The next morning, the four members of the hunting team gathered at Yue Feng’s house to have breakfast together.

Recently, wild boars and black bears have been dragged home, and the food at home has visibly improved.

The fat cakes were getting boring, so Yue Feng didn’t sell the meat of the young sow he caught a few days ago, but kept it for himself. Meng Yulan felt sorry for the children who didn’t have enough to eat in the mountains, so she chopped up green onions from a two-year-old sow, mixed it with mountain pepper water, and made meat patties for the children.

The white flour meat pie has a lot of fillings, the dough is chewy, and it is rich in oil and water. Eating one can satisfy your hunger for half a day.

Pair it with some pickled vegetables fried in animal oil, and finish with a bowl of salty dumpling soup with beaten egg. It goes really well with rice and is very satisfying.

After they were full, Meng Yulan packed lunch for the children in several aluminum lunch boxes. She cut the meat patties in half and put them in the lunch boxes, then put some pickles in them and filled the kettle with boiled water. Even if they didn’t catch any prey in the mountains, they could just pick up some firewood and make a small fire to heat up the dry food they brought up the mountain and they would be able to eat well.

After eating and drinking, Yue Feng led his team out, leading the dog, bringing the eagle, carrying a satchel, wearing leggings, and marching out of the village and heading straight for the No. 27 forest area in the back mountain.

When chatting at Xiao Tao’s house last night, Li Wentong also helped Yue Feng to analyze in depth the danger of the blind bear walking on the ice, and some reasons why it is difficult to fight.

First of all, any bear that walks on the ice, whether it ends hibernation actively or involuntarily, will have a very bad temper. The metabolic level of the bear in the non-hibernation state increases, and the severe cold environment requires a large amount of energy reserves to be consumed every day. The anxiety for survival will make the bear not miss any opportunity to hunt and eat.

During this season, the soft dates, pine nuts, hazelnuts, autumn nuts and other fruits on the mountain that can fill the stomach have long been covered by thick snow, making it very difficult to find these foods easily. At this time, the bears will change from omnivorous to carnivorous.

Carnivorous bears don’t have much to eat in the winter. They either rely on their keen sense of smell to find dead prey and eat the carcasses, or they expend their own physical energy to hunt.

Eating carrion depends purely on luck. If you come across animals that have frozen to death or died accidentally, you can eat them for a while, but this kind of thing is hard to come by.

If these scavengers cannot be found, the only option left is to catch other prey yourself.

There aren’t many prey species that bears can hunt reliably in the mountains. In terms of speed, it is difficult for them to catch up with prey such as roe deer by running. If they want to hunt successfully, they will most likely use ambush and sneak attacks like cats.

Ambushes and sneak attacks are extremely threatening to many animals. Once a bear has had a successful experience, its ability to survive will be greatly improved.

At this time, if the bear’s sneak attack target is not wild animals in the wild, but humans, the danger increases dramatically.

Humans are not as fast as roe deer and wild boars. If they are ambushed and caught by a bear, it is basically difficult to escape, and if they don’t die, they will be seriously injured.

In the previous incidents of black bears injuring people, except for the time when the bear attacked the Leng factory in the middle of the night and almost destroyed its den, in the remaining incidents, the black bears would eat on the spot after injuring people. The mule that was trapped had its internal organs removed, and another worker had a lot of flesh on his buttocks eaten.

These details all indicate that the black bear regards humans in the mountains as easier prey to hunt successfully. Repeated hunting has deepened its understanding, so it has become more aggressive and repeatedly attacks passers-by. After analyzing the objective situation, there is actually one more detail that caught the attention of Yue Feng and Li Wentong. However, after a discussion, there is no consensus.

The forest ranger team also has several dogs. Although they have not undergone systematic hunting dog training, they usually patrol the mountains with the ranger team and occasionally help the team members find traces of roe deer, hares, pheasants, wild boars, etc. The ranger team has guns, and with the help of the dogs, it is not difficult to hunt game every now and then.

However, these dogs, which are usually quite useful for doing small tasks, behaved very abnormally when tracking the black bears that caused the accidents on several occasions.

After locking onto the scent, they will symbolically chase it for a while, but will soon lose their target and come to a standstill.

The dogs in the forest ranger team were not the only ones in this situation. Before he went to Zhang Dayong for help to get help, Guo Jianfeng also went down the mountain to borrow a top dog who was said to be trained by an old hunter.

This dog is very good at tracking. According to the old hunter’s son, it can identify fish very accurately and can chase them for several miles.

However, the dog was easily lost when the hunter’s son led it up the mountain. It sniffed left and right and refused to move forward.

There is no shortage of guns in the forest ranger team. They are all 56 and a half rifles, and they can use as many bullets as they want.

What those guys lacked was the ability to spot their target. The forest area was so large that it would take a long time for a dozen people to search the mountain for a bear. What’s more, this bear was said to wear a hat to trick people into approaching, so its IQ must be much smarter than its peers.

Yue Feng didn’t have much experience with dogs in his previous life, and he heard this information from other people, which might not be accurate, so they decided to go up the mountain to Chaiji Road, where the blind bear had appeared several times, and try again.

Take your own dog for a spin first to test the waters. If there are any problems, make a decision after trying it yourself.

In this way, a group of four people went up the mountain from behind the village and headed straight towards Forest Farm No. 27.

According to the information we got from the forest ranger team, the workers were attacked by black bears several times when they were going up or down the mountain. The locations were not fixed and no useful location information was analyzed.

However, there was only one firewood trail leading up and down the mountain from the No. 27 Forest Farm. Yue Feng simply took his men and walked around the foot of the mountain first, observing the surrounding terrain and seeing if the dog could recognize it.

Here, let me share an extra piece of common sense. Animals such as wild boars, red deer, and even ordinary black bears actually mostly consciously avoid areas where humans often move around. Only silly roe deer and the like are not afraid of humans.

Therefore, in Chaiji Road, where people come and go on the mountain every day, the smell left by wild animals is much less than in other places. Occasionally, there is a smell left, but it is very simple, either from roe deer or small animals such as jumping cats.

Yue Feng led the dog and searched along Chaiji Road, from the foot of the mountain all the way to a location near the forest farm, but he did not find any useful smell information.

At this point, plan one has no effect for the time being, so we can only switch to plan two.

Yue Feng called out to Xiao Tao, and all four dogs spread out, focusing on checking the previous locations where black bears were suspected of attacking workers to see if they could find any remaining traces.

After another two hours of climbing over mountains and crossing hills, the two main dogs, Dahuang and Heilang, searched up and down in the ravine next to Chaiji Road for a long time, but did not find any obvious abnormalities.

At this time, nearly four hours had passed since Yue Feng led the team up the mountain.

The intense mountain trek, coupled with the low temperature outdoors, made everyone breathless. Yue Feng was thirsty and wanted to take a sip of water, so he took out a water bottle from his bag. The water bottle, which was filled with hot water in the morning, was now frozen into a lump of ice and not even a drop of water could be poured out.

“Boss, something’s wrong! We’ve searched this area almost completely, but the dogs didn’t react at all, and we couldn’t find anything valuable! Could it be that the offending bear has left this area and hid somewhere else?”

Xiaowen also had chapped lips, so he grabbed a handful of snow from the roadside and stuffed it roughly into his mouth.

Among all the predictions, the blind bear either ran away or hibernated. These two possibilities were the most unfavorable to Yue Feng and his team.

Although the forest farm agreed to Yue Feng’s conditions, the prerequisite was to resolve the current issue.

If we still can’t find the bear after all the hard work, it will be difficult to fulfill the agreed terms. They are not short of manpower, but just of professional personnel.

(End of this chapter)