Chapter 146 Heat

In the past, when Yue Feng was raising the eagle, fishing the eagle and feeding it at home every day, he liked to do it next to the dog kennel in the yard.

If you want the dog and the eagle to help with hunting, there must be some requirements for the dog and the eagle to be familiar with each other. Yue Feng attaches great importance to these details.

It’s just that normally eagles are held in people’s hands. Today was the first time it dropped from the sky in front of the dogs, and it seemed that the dogs were scared to death.

shhhhh!

Yue Feng whistled twice and took out the slices of meat to feed the eagle today from a bag at his waist.

The big black eagle hopped a few steps, then leaped up and landed on Yue Feng’s glove. While squawking, it raised its head and took the piece of meat that Yue Feng handed over.

After finishing today’s meal, Big Black Eagle was still a little reluctant to leave, but the hunger in his internal organs slowly disappeared. Big Black Eagle squatted on Yue Feng’s hand, and his feathers became fluffy again.

Looking at the scene in front of him, Yue Feng’s heart was slightly touched.

It hasn’t been long since the big black eagle was able to circle in the air and follow him on his way home!
While we are in good shape today, how about doing a temporary project for extra practice?
After a slight hesitation, Yue Feng made up his mind. He immediately walked up to the tied black wolf with the eagle on his hind legs.

“Black Wolf, I’m going to let you play with the big black eagle for a while, but you are not allowed to bite it. Do you understand?!” Yue Feng pointed at the big black eagle and said to Black Wolf.

The black wolf was obviously a little afraid of the big black eagle, but his master was in front of him and he would definitely not hurt him, so he hummed a few times and wagged his tail again.

Upon seeing this, Yue Feng untied the rope that tied up Black Wolf, then took a small stool and sat in front of Black Wolf.

The black wolf knew that the animal wanted to play with it, so it came up flatteringly, wagging its tail.

Yue Feng touched the dog’s head, then placed the leather glove on his right hand on the black wolf’s back.

“Don’t move! Don’t move!”

After calling out, Black Wolf stood still obediently. Yue Feng picked up the cowhide gloves and let the eagle stand on the gloves, and then put them on Black Wolf’s back.

When it was first put on the ground, the big black eagle was quite nervous. Its feathers tightened and its wings spread and fluttered a few times to maintain balance.

However, with Yue Feng’s encouragement, the black wolf did not move. The big black eagle felt that his dog did not seem to be aggressive, so he folded his wings, stepped steadily on the gloves, and stood on the dog’s back.

To be precise, the word “stand” is not quite accurate. It should be said that the big black eagle squatted on the dog’s back.

The standing posture is slightly different from the squatting posture. Squatting here shows that the black eagle feels more secure. It knows that the dog is also a family member and will not attack itself.

People with high IQs are different. For example, in the process of affinity between a falcon and a dog, the falcon needs to live with the dogs for at least half a month before they become familiar with each other. However, in front of the big black eagle, this process took less than ten minutes.

Of course, the usual raising of the eagle and being friendly in front of the dog were also not omitted, but today was the first time that the eagle and the dog were allowed to have close contact in a conscious way.

It worked in one go! The big black eagle gave Yue Feng another surprise!
How can I describe this feeling? It’s like a principal of a driving school who recruits a new student. He didn’t put much effort into teaching the student, but the student passed all four exams in one go. It was so smooth and he felt a great sense of accomplishment!

Yue Feng was happily watching the big black eagle standing motionless on the black wolf, when suddenly the big black eagle reacted again.

I saw it spread its wings again, fluttering them continuously and calling again.

Quack, quack, quack!

A series of cries sounded, and the black wolf was a little scared. Its ears were pursed like airplane ears, but its owner didn’t let it move, so it still stood there and dared not to move.

Yue Feng finally understood. He originally thought that the big black eagle would only scream because the human and the eagle were close enough, and he was about to split it in two.

The big black eagle was barking, not at people, but at the dogs in the yard!
Is this fear? Or intimidation? Or a greeting?
Yue Feng couldn’t understand the logic behind the black eagle’s behavior for a moment, but since it didn’t actively attack the dog, nor did it fly away in fright, it wasn’t a big problem.

The eagle squatted on the black wolf’s back for a while. Yue Feng took off the eagle and its gloves, put a hat on the big black eagle, and put it on the ground beside him.

The big black eagle was finally taken away, and the black wolf visibly relaxed. It wagged its tail at Yue Feng and even tried to lick Yue Feng’s hand.

“Good dog, be obedient! This is our eagle, your friend. You are not allowed to fight with it, let alone bite it. Do you hear me?!” Yue Feng pointed at the big black eagle next to him and continued speaking, regardless of whether Black Wolf understood or not.

Wang Wang!

The black wolf barked twice in succession, and even came close to the big black eagle to lick its fur. The big black eagle had his hat on, and didn’t know that the dog was licking it, and thought that Yue Feng was touching it.

Seeing this scene, Yue Feng’s brain almost short-circuited. Did Black Wolf recognize Big Black Hawk as his boss?
Thinking of the dogs’ unified movements and expressions when the Black Hawk landed in front of Yue Feng just now, Yue Feng felt relieved.

Eagles are the top predators in nature. In the wild, the Saker Falcon has no natural enemies except for the eagle owl, which poses a very low risk of attacking at night.

The ancestor of dogs is wolves. Even if they encounter a pack of wolves, the gyrfalcon has absolute dominance. Wolves have no way to deal with birds of prey. Even smaller subadults or half-grown cubs are on the gyrfalcon’s menu.

I’m quite satisfied with the progress we’ve made today, and I’ll take my time with the rest!

Yue Feng played with Ying and the dog in the yard for a while, and then he carried Ying back to the north room to warm himself by the fire.

In the next three days, Yue Feng continued to strengthen his proficiency in the training subject of following the flying disk. He slowly moved from the open fields to the sparsely wooded dirt ridges on the back mountain, and then gradually strengthened his proficiency towards the forest area with denser pine trees.

In general, the performance of the black eagle was getting better and better. Even if Yue Feng entered a relatively dense larch forest area, the black eagle could accurately determine Yue Feng’s position. As long as a whistle was blown every once in a while, the black eagle could easily determine Yue Feng’s activity area and follow him obediently overhead. The longest circling and following time even lasted for a full hour and a half.

Another round of flying training was over, and the big black eagle followed Yue Feng’s head back to his home yard as usual.

Yue Feng untied all four dogs at home, then took out the lure and blew the whistle. The big black eagle fell from the sky again, accurately grasped the lure and landed on the ground, continuing to eat the meat tied to the lure without raising its head.

As for the four dogs in the house, none of them dared to compete with the big black eagle for the meat. They all lay beside Yue Feng, and were even a little scared, fearing that their big brother who could fly would be unhappy and want to beat people (dogs).

Big Black Hawk seemed very satisfied with the performance of the dogs at home. After eating the meat on the lure, he barked a few times at the dogs, then turned his head to look at Yue Feng pitifully.

Yue Feng found that this big black eagle was really smart. It behaved quite majestically with the dog, but when it turned to face him, it gave people a feeling of being somewhat flattering.

The way it looks at you with its head tilted makes people want to immediately take out the slices of meat prepared in advance and feed them to the big black eagle without hesitation.

Yue Feng let out a long breath, blew the whistle, took out the meat, and fed the big black eagle until it was 70% full.

The amount of food fed to the eagle this time was the first time that the eagle was fed so much in the past half month of falcon training.

It must be said that doing so is somewhat risky. If the eagle becomes fatter and its controllability decreases, it would be like shooting oneself in the foot.

However, when Yue Feng made the decision to feed the eagle, he had already considered that the extra 20% of meat would not be enough to make the eagle regain its full weight immediately. Even when it was weighed again tomorrow morning, it might only gain half an ounce or one ounce of weight.

The purpose of Yue Feng doing this was to tentatively test the changes in the black eagle’s reaction to commands after it grew fatter.

After all, from the beginning of tinkering with this eagle to now, the process has been too smooth. To exaggerate a little, this big black eagle is simply a flying dog. For various training subjects, as long as Yue Feng follows the standardized procedures and lets the eagle know what he means, this guy can complete them easily and perfectly.

If Big Black Hawk can pass today’s fattening training feedback test, Yue Feng should consider adjusting the daily food portion to improve Big Black Hawk’s fattening condition.

Ideally, if the eagle’s fatness returns to its full state and it can still maintain a high level of obedience during training, its performance in actual combat will definitely be at least half a level higher than it is now!

When people train eagles, they initially rely on controlling the overall fatness of the eagle, and with enough contact and feeding techniques, they can improve the affinity between the eagle and the human.

However, a decrease in fatness is a negative buff for an eagle. Low fatness means poor physical strength, and poor physical strength will affect its performance during training. An excellent falconer is best at making the best choice between affinity and fatness.

Yue Feng spent the next half day in some anxiety. He set up the hawk and handed over the shift according to the routine. In the afternoon, Yue Feng continued to ride his bicycle to the canteen to deliver game. After dinner in the evening, he went to bed early. He got up in the middle of the night and handed over the shift to his father, and continued to set up the hawk to observe the lanterns.

The next morning, as soon as the big black eagle came out of the axe, Yue Feng immediately took the eagle to the scale.

Big Black Hawk ate only seven-tenths full yesterday, and his weight increased from 3.45 jin to 3.56 jin.

The meat, which exceeded the normal feeding standard by two taels, made the big black eagle gain one tael and one qian in weight.

Considering that the eagle had gained weight yesterday, Yue Feng did not include the difficult and risky mobile following training in today’s training plan.

We returned to the wilderness with the eagle and had a basic mobile following training.

The following training performance surprised Yue Feng a little. It seemed that the big black eagle was used to the mode of getting along with people. After gaining weight, the flying altitude of the circling flight increased significantly, and the flying radius was slightly larger, but the controllability was still very good.

During the circling and following process, when the whistle is heard, the flying position will be adjusted immediately, and the reaction speed will not decrease.

When the eagle followed the man back to the yard, Yue Feng took out the lure and blew the whistle, the eagle still swooped down decisively to eat the food, without any hesitation or reaction to the whistle, etc., which showed any signs of reduced control.

Yue Feng can accept the increased flying altitude and circling radius in these two training performances. This is a good thing, which means that in actual combat, we can have a higher altitude and a larger search radius.

This was the result of the eagle’s improved physical fitness. Yue Feng didn’t mind it at all. Instead, he was very happy.

The bold guess was verified by actual combat training, and Yue Feng fed the big black eagle until it was 70% full.

In the next few days, Yue Feng consolidated the previous training subjects almost every day, and Ying’s weight recovered from more than 3.4 jin to about 3.7 jin.

At this point, Yue Feng temporarily did not dare to continue fattening the eagle, because the black eagle’s flying radius had expanded from the previous two or three hundred meters to four or five hundred meters, almost doubling compared to the beginning.

The larger the flying radius is, the better it is. After all, people’s field of vision in the mountains and forests is limited. The larger the flying radius is, the more difficult it will be for people to find the eagle in the sky with the naked eye.

The current level has basically reached the upper limit of Yue Feng’s risk assessment. If we want to improve it further, we must build more trust through actual combat before we can continue.

It took 23 days in total, and Yue Feng’s training of the Big Black Hawk basically met expectations. He performed well in all the early basic hunting training subjects.

This means that it is time to find an opportunity to take the big black eagle to a selective logging area to practice actual falconry training!

That afternoon, Yue Feng held a meeting with several teammates. Everyone was quite excited when they heard that the big black eagle was going to go up the mountain to become a eagle.

After all, among so many hunters around Fang’an Village, Yue Feng is the only real expert in raising eagles and hunting. And this legendary Saker Falcon that grows into an eagle in the mountains is even rarer than others.

Xiao Tao and brothers Xiaowen and Xiaowu follow up on Yue Feng’s training progress every day. After such a long time, it is finally time to test the results.

After making up their minds, the four brothers gathered at Yue Feng’s house early the next morning.

Because it was the first time for the big black eagle to grow into an eagle, Yue Feng did not bring all the dogs up the mountain today. He only brought the smartest black wolf.

Four people, a gun, a dog, and a Saker Falcon went up the mountain. Their target hunting ground was Forest Farm No. 13, which was not far from Hunting Ground No. 12.

After this period of recuperation and development, the complexions of several members of Yue Feng’s team have become rosy at a speed visible to the naked eye. They have dragged wild boars home several times in a row, and the meat reserves at home are enough to last until the New Year. They normally go up the mountain to release hawks and catch pheasants. Although the daily income from prey has been much less due to the cold weather, at the end of the month, the total income is at least a hundred yuan. Every time everyone goes up the mountain, they are very enthusiastic.

After leaving the village, the four brothers walked along the nearest mountain trail, crossing mountains and ridges on foot. After about two hours, they arrived at their destination, the No. 12 mountain field.

(End of this chapter)