Chapter 145 Show off skills
Yue Feng touched the feathers on the big black eagle breast flower with satisfaction and asked with a smile: “Why did it run away?”

“No, it’s a wild animal. Isn’t it normal for it to run?”

“You run because you are afraid. If you are not afraid, then there is no need to run?” Yue Feng continued.

“Well, that makes sense, but we haven’t done any wire-hanging training on this eagle before. How do you know it’s not afraid anymore and won’t run away?”

Xiao Tao scratched his head, still full of question marks. He understood the logic of Yue Feng’s explanation, but still couldn’t connect it with his previous behavior.

“Falcons are smarter than eagles. In fact, the training has always been going on, but it’s just in a different way!

From putting a hat on the eagle to making it recognize the bait, it is all a disguised form of long-distance training!

It’s just that the indicator for testing the training results has changed from hanging up the line and calling for the ball to slip away to something else!

For example, I will show you now, and you can see for yourself!”

After saying this, Yue Feng took out another spare piece of meat roll from his pocket, put the eagle on the ground, and then without taking off the eagle’s hat, he took a big step and walked out for the fifth time, and then blew the whistle to represent feeding.

The next second, a scene that surprised Xiao Tao even more appeared.

The big black eagle, which was completely blind with its hat on, groped in the dark, stretched its wings, and boldly walked towards the place where Yue Feng was blowing the whistle after hearing the whistle.

When he got closer, Yue Feng touched the hook on Big Black Eagle’s mouth, and then gave the piece of meat to Big Black Eagle.

The big black eagle rubbed the meat roll with the tip of its beak to determine its location, then directly picked up the meat in its mouth and swallowed it.

“See? This is the reason why I took off my hat, spread my hat, and boldly went out to train eagles!”

Yue Feng placed his right hand in front of Big Black Eagle’s chest and moved it slightly upwards. Big Black Eagle noticed it and took a step forward tacitly to stand on Yue Feng’s hand.

“Fuck! This…how can they do this?” Xiao Tao opened his eyes wide, as if he had seen a ghost.

Can the eagle, wearing a hat and completely blind, actively look for Yue Feng, and even eat the meat accurately? Is this still eagle training? Why does it feel a bit like a magic trick?

“It actually looks mysterious, but the truth is very simple!
First of all, the IQ of falcons is much higher than that of eagles. Why don’t I use this method to train my eagle? Because it’s not suitable!
Falcons are smart birds of prey and they can understand humans more easily!
For example, when I bring the eagle home, I feed it with a hat on my head, and every time I feed it, I whistle to confirm the conditioned reflex signal. After a long time, the big black eagle knows that when it hears the whistle, there will be food!

Later, I fed the eagle meat in my hat to help it get used to the two different states of wearing and taking off the hat.

Later, let it recognize the fake bait!
This lure is just like the one we used last time to roll the Iron-backed Red Eagle. It tells the eagle that if it catches the lure, it will have meat to eat!

Over time, the eagle becomes familiar with the lure, and even when it is outdoors on the ground, firstly, the eagle is not afraid of people, and secondly, there is a familiar lure in front of it, so if it catches it, it will have something to eat.

Third, the eagle’s weight and physical condition have been under my continuous observation during this period!
If you have done these three things well, then you will be able to catch the small flying fish naturally!”

After listening to Yue Feng’s series of explanations, Xiao Tao seemed to be lost in thought. He could understand every step Yue Feng took, but when he put the internal logic together, Xiao Tao seemed unable to fully digest it for a moment.

“Well… now the eagle can run wild and chase the lure, flying up and down for many circles. What’s next? What should we train next?” Xiao Tao continued to ask.

Yue Feng raised the corners of his mouth slightly: “Later, I will gradually guide the Big Black Hawk to adjust the flight radius when diving to chase the lure! When I feel the time is right, I will let the Big Black Hawk take off!”

Xiao Tao nodded after listening and continued to ask: “Once the big black eagle can coil up, can we try to take it into the selective logging forest area to catch roe deer and deer?”

Yue Feng nodded: “The black eagle hunts by kicking rather than grabbing, which determines that its upper limit of prey is very high.

It has room to be used in large selective logging areas outside the dense forest areas!

With the addition of humans, there is no need for it to subdue or even kill the prey. It only needs to temporarily entangle the prey like a hunting dog until people get close, and that is enough!

Of course, this is just my initial idea. As for the follow-up, I need to conduct training in actual combat.

After all, this is the first time I raise a Gyrfalcon, so I need to slowly explore its specific potential limit!

What we need to do now is to find out the bottom of the eagle while ensuring that it is not injured or lost.

Anyway, my idea is very simple. At least the big black eagle can make up for the shortcomings of hunting dogs that cannot catch up with roe deer and other animals in the snow! If it can also be useful to other mountain animals, that would be even better! “

After listening to Yue Feng’s reverie, Xiao Tao nodded.

He now had some understanding of what Yue Feng had said to him before.

When it comes to falconry hunting, when the weight of the eagle exceeds the rabbit eagle’s, the bigger the eagle, the lower the cost-effectiveness!
After all, the bigger the eagle, the bigger its prey will be. However, there are few large mountain livestock, so there is naturally less room for eagles to maneuver.

In addition, with a powerful weapon like a gun in hand, there are many options for hunting the target prey more efficiently, and falconry may not necessarily have much advantage.

However, even if Yue Feng knew these principles, what would it matter? With a top-notch falcon that only the emperors of the Qing Dynasty could own right in front of him, could he still tie it up at home and let it eat and wait for death as a mascot? Yue Feng was not just pursuing that.

“Okay, stop thinking about it. It’s terribly cold outside. Today’s Black Hawk training is complete. Let’s go home early!” Yue Feng waved his hand, holding the eagle and striding towards home with Xiao Tao.

In the next few days, the weather was suitable and the wind level was low. Yue Feng would bring the big black eagle to this open space every day to swing the bait plate.

The big black eagle is in a very stable state. After gradually becoming familiar with the rules of swinging the bait plate, its daily flying posture, including the radius of flying around the lure, is improving little by little.

After reaching the level that Yue Feng expected, he decisively gave Black Hawk a new training subject.

He was seen alone with the big black eagle coming to the farmland outside the village. After taking off the eagle’s hat, he just stood there quietly with the eagle in his hand in the open field.

A not-too-strong north wind blew, and the black eagle’s instinctive memory awakened, and it quickly spread its wings towards the wind.

A few seconds later, the big black eagle kicked Yue Feng’s hand hard and flew straight into the sky.

Yue Feng just watched quietly as Dahei flew higher and higher in the sky, and then the circles it made became larger and larger.

Seeing this, some people may be eager to ask, what is this for? Are they releasing the eagle? The eagle has already flown away, so hurry up and blow the whistle to call it back. If the eagle flies high and far away, and the eagle doesn’t listen, then all the efforts have been wasted, right?

Of course Yue Feng was not going to let the Black Hawk go, but was carrying out the next training subject.

Yue Feng calls this subject fixed-point flying!

After the man and the falcon have established sufficient intimacy, the big black eagle will not run away with the mentality of escaping for its life after leaving Yue Feng’s hand, but will take off and wait for Yue Feng to take out the lure he had trained before.

During this waiting process, the black hawk will ride on the air currents to fly higher and higher, and the radius of the circle will become larger and larger.

This is a training subject that tests the falconer’s heart very much. If the falcon is not in the right position or has a little bad luck, the risk of the falcon drifting away is still relatively high.

However, Yue Feng was quite confident in his eagle training skills. He was sure that he had put enough effort into the big black eagle, and the affinity between him and the eagle was also sufficient.

The lifting of the frame day and night is his confidence, the weighing of the eagle diligently every day is his confidence, and the accurate measurement of gram of eagle food every day is also his confidence.

These detailed factors will eventually be reflected and rewarded in outdoor practical training.

When the big black eagle flew to a height of about seventy or eighty meters, Yue Feng felt that it was about time, and he slowly took out the lure from his pocket.

Show the bait and blow the whistle!

The big black eagle flying freely in the air, when it heard the whistle and saw the lure in Yue Feng’s hand, it decisively followed a smooth dive curve and rushed straight towards Yue Feng.

This time, Yue Feng did not continue to speed up and swing the bait to avoid the dive attack. Instead, he gave the Black Hawk an opportunity to catch the bait. The Black Hawk dived down at high speed and kicked the bait hard.

There was a crisp sound, and a bunch of stray hairs on the pheasant’s wings on both sides of the lure were kicked off.

The big black eagle succeeded in its attack and drew a check-mark-shaped trajectory at low altitude. It adjusted its posture in mid-air, turned back, and landed steadily on the ground next to the lure.

“Good kick!!”

Yue Feng cried out excitedly and clenched his fists tightly.

No wonder those princes and nobles all pursue hunting with the Saker Falcon. The power of that kick just now was so satisfying!

As the person who personally swung the bait, the sound of Big Black Hawk’s tiger paw kicking the fake bait rang in Yue Feng’s ears. The effect produced by the superposition of this sense of power and speed made people’s blood boil and they were extremely excited.

The big black eagle was already accustomed to the body movements, language, and sounds of its owner. It squatted on the lure and feasted on it, swallowing all the pieces of meat tied to the lure into its stomach.

After finishing half of the ration, Yue Feng blew the whistle as usual to let the eagle take the lead, then fed the eagle the other half of the meat roll with the feather shaft, and then carried the big black eagle home.

In the next few days, Yue Feng would come to the wilderness every day to repeat the fixed-point flying subject.

Under Yue Feng’s conscious control, the time the big black hawk spent circling in the air got longer and longer, from three to five minutes at the beginning, to more than ten minutes, and then to more than twenty minutes.

A few days later, the Black Hawk had been circling and waiting in the air for more than 40 minutes.

The truth that choice is more important than effort has once again been verified in Yue Feng’s actual combat training. No wonder our ancestors admired the best falcons so much, this thing is smart and it really saves trouble when training.

After two more days of intensive training, the Black Hawk could now stay in the air for more than an hour in fixed-point flying, with a flying altitude of about seventy to eighty meters and a circle radius of about three to four hundred meters.

At this point, having passed the fixed-point flying subject, Yue Feng continued with the next new subject training, follow-up flying.

Follow-up circling is the term relative to fixed-point circling. It roughly means that after the falcon takes off and circles, while waiting for the falconer to give the command, the falconer will move during the period. The training requirement is that when the falconer finds that the falconer has moved, the falcon will also move with it, and always stay within a certain range above the owner’s head.

If we use other birds of prey such as falcons with slightly lower IQs, the difference from fixed point to mobile following does not seem to be that big, but the training cycle may be very long.

The emotional bond between the eagle and the human is too shallow. After noticing that the human has left, the eagle may move around autonomously. If the eagle cannot hear the commands of the eagle handler beyond a certain range or there are other beings attracting the eagle’s attention, the eagle will drift away.

However, after the fat reserves of this guy Black Hawk were reduced, his affinity with people and his obedience in training became quite high. He was especially smart and could easily understand what people meant.

Yue Feng chose a sunny day that was suitable for outdoor flying training. After releasing the black hawk according to the usual procedure, it began to move consciously towards the southwest within a few minutes.

As Yue Feng walked, he would look up from time to time to observe the Black Hawk’s flying performance. When he found that the flight radius deviated slightly, Yue Feng would blow a whistle.

When the big black eagle heard the whistle, it initially thought that it would be given food next, so it returned to the sky above Yue Feng’s head and waited for the bait.

Yue Feng was slow to show the lure, so the big black eagle circled and waited patiently. Yue Feng continued to move, and the big black eagle continued to follow him. It was just the first time in the following training, and the big black eagle followed Yue Feng directly from the production site outside the village to his home.

This scene was a bit mysterious. Yue Feng displayed the fake bait in the yard of his home and then blew the whistle again.

Then the big black eagle that had been following in the air made another signature vertical dive, kicked the lure, and then landed at Yue Feng’s feet. It stepped on the lure and lowered its head to show off at the piece of meat.

After eating all the meat on the lure, the big black eagle was still not satisfied and suddenly opened its mouth when it looked at Yue Feng.

Quack, quack, quack!

The big black eagle, which had completed the training subjects in excess, actually started to scream at Yue Feng.

While calling, he repeatedly turned his head slightly, and the subtle body movements made him look very anthropomorphic.

How to describe it? It seems like it is saying, look how good I cooked, give me more delicious food!

Eagles usually kept at home rarely crow, the only exception is the young eagle in Yue Lei’s hands, which would crow to beg for food. Unexpectedly, this big black eagle also started crowed when it returned to Yue Feng’s home after training outside the village today.

The four dogs in the yard barked and wagged their tails when they saw Yue Feng coming home, but after the big black eagle descended from the sky, these dogs seemed to have seen a fatal threat and all lay there, not daring to move.

(End of this chapter)