Chapter 152 Orchid Stack
Chen Pao: “You say!”

“This autumn, I took Xiao Tao, Xiao Wen, and Xiao Wu from our village to the mountains to fly kites and catch sand pheasants and flying dragons. You should know that we were going to the city to sell them for money!”

“Yes, I know! I have seen those children, they all have good personalities! They are all good kids!”

Speaking of the brothers Xiao Tao, Xiao Wen and Xiao Wu, Chen Pao had a very good impression of them. The last time he carried the pig to Yue Feng’s house to express his gratitude, these kids were busy working in Yue Feng’s house. They really treated it as their own home and did not act dishonestly at all.

Yue Feng smiled and nodded: “I think that next year, I will continue to expand the falconry team, find more sales channels for fresh game, and recruit more members.

We villagers who cannot go to the city to work can also make money by living in the mountains. By hunting and releasing hawks, we can not only support our families, but also make a fortune!

I will pass on all the skills of catching and training falcons to you. You have a high reputation in the village and are good at judging people. Please help me arrange everything, find the right candidates, and then select the right falcons to hunt.

By then, we can not only enjoy hunting with hawks, but also make more money during the slack season! Why not do it? “

Yue Feng told Chen Pao all his thoughts.

Before receiving the slow-flying eagle from Yue Feng, Chen Pao’s understanding of the benefits of flying eagles to hunt small areas was actually very limited.

This is also the current cognition of most old hunters. How much meat can you get from catching a rabbit or a pheasant? It is far less exciting and profitable than carrying a hunting rifle and going into the mountains to hunt roe deer and wild boars. Killing a wild animal can provide meat for several months.

But after releasing the eagle for a month, Chen Pao found that this idea was not objective.

A big eagle is out in the air, carrying both dry and dry prey, and can catch at least five or six rabbits and three or five pheasants a day.

After deducting the meat for raising eagles, there is still a large amount of surplus. No matter whether it is kept for oneself or sold for money, the accumulated amount over an entire hunting season is not a small sum.

In this day and age, the supply of wild game such as pheasants, wild rabbits, sand chickens, flying dragon birds, etc. is very abundant. It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that they are inexhaustible. However, several members of Yue Feng’s team have been catching them in the mountain areas they often go to all autumn. Now that the weather is good, they go up the mountain again and the harvest is still good.

It would be very feasible to organize potential talents in the surrounding villages and release hawks to catch rabbits and pheasants in the areas near the villages at the foot of the mountain, or to go to other mountain ridges that have not been visited to catch sand chickens, flying dragons and other wild game.

The threshold for falconry is more about the skills of training and catching falcons. Once you have truly mastered these core skills, the material threshold for starting to release falcons for small-scale hunting is very low.

In the Northeast, only one crop of grain is grown throughout the year, and the winter is long. Farmers in the village are not busy for long throughout the year, so they have plenty of time during the slack season.

If it is true as Yue Feng said, organizing an eagle hunting team, and then spreading people to the surrounding villages, hillsides, and even the relatively safe forests around, and then gathering the prey captured every day and selling them to the city, this would be a win-win situation for all parties.

“Aren’t you afraid that the falcon training skills will be leaked and learned by people with ulterior motives?” Chen Pao pondered for a few seconds and continued to ask.

“Of course I’m afraid, but there are a lot of details here that are hard for outsiders to learn unless they are willing to teach!
Most people know each other well about the dozen or so villages around us. How big a risk can it be if you just do a little checking?

Compared with the benefits, this risk is not worth mentioning!
Besides, it’s easy to catch prey by releasing hawks, but not everyone can bring the live game into the city and exchange it for money!

If the quantity of wild game increases, I will expand more sales channels. The coal mines, lead and manganese mines, forestry farms, food factories, and canteens of major government agencies around our villages and towns are all potential customers for these wild games!
By then, I will find a way to control all these sales channels, which will be like adding an extra layer of insurance and further reducing risks!”

Chen Pao was shocked to hear that Yue Feng’s thinking was so divergent and he already had a clear understanding of the subsequent layout.

With his vision as a man who had lived for more than fifty years, when he first heard about this matter, he only thought about the food on the three-acre land in front of his home, and never thought about selling the game to the city.

But the young man in front of him, who was only 20 years old, had already considered all these factors. This made Chen Pao sigh that the younger generation was better than the older generation, and the young people had their own ideas.

“Okay! I think the approach you mentioned is feasible! If that’s the case, I can help you with this!”

Chen Pao was not a person who would dither. After understanding Yue Feng’s ideas, he felt that it could be done, so he agreed decisively.

“Hehe! It’s me, Uncle Chen, who is so courageous! When the time comes, we can discuss the details carefully!”

Yue Feng chuckled, and a stone in his heart fell to the ground.

A person with a business mindset must not always be in the mindset of a small farmer.

It is certainly low-risk and less likely to make mistakes if you take a few people with you to guard this way of making money.

But the power of a few people is limited after all. If the falconry team expands, as long as their respective hunting grounds are arranged so as not to overlap, the amount of game caught every day will naturally increase.

If you want to make big money, it is not enough to rely on yourself or a few people. You have to expand the pie so that the profit can be higher.

None of the people who drive a Labor Day bought it with money saved from working. Only with the organizational division of employees under him could Yue Feng liberate himself.

The density of wild animal resources in the Changbai Mountains near my home is terrifying compared with that in later generations. If we organize a few more hunting teams and include suitable places such as buffer zones at the foot of the mountains around different villages, earthen ridges, secondary forests, and selective logging areas into the range of releasing falcons, we will definitely catch a lot of falcons in the autumn.

As for the doubts that many people may have, such as whether the prey in the mountains is refreshed at fixed points and you can never catch them all, this statement is actually very easy to explain.

The so-called mountain forest is not a hill with a radius of several kilometers. You can walk around the top of the hill by walking on two trails.

The large and small ridges at the foot of Changbai Mountain stretch for hundreds or thousands of kilometers, and the buffer zone where human activities occur occupies most of the area close to the village gathering area.

The land here is vast and the population is sparse. If a few people were to spread out over the mountain ridges that are dozens of miles long, it would be like throwing a few grains of salt into the Heilongjiang River. Would people downstream still be able to taste the saltiness?

As long as we do not over-exploit resource potential during the breeding seasons of chickens, rabbits and other animals in spring and summer, there will not be major fluctuations in the population density of grown pheasants, rabbits, flying dragons and other birds. This can be a sustainable way to make money in the short term.

As for falconry, the only things that can be released in spring and summer are pine nuts and sparrows. Kites and eagles have to be put into cages to molt, and it is impossible to go up the mountain to hunt on a large scale. This gives the game of the breeding season a breathing space. When the north wind blows in autumn and the leaves start to rustle, the game that was bred in spring and summer can be released in the mountains to catch. It can be said that the sport of falconry is perfectly in line with the sustainable development of nature.

…The two of them chatted for a while, and the sky outside gradually turned white.

The clock hanging on the east wall rang six times, and Yue Feng sat up from the bed.

He put on his clothes, folded the quilt, rolled it up and put it in the kang cabinet, poured water from the thermos to wash his face, and then Yue Feng and Uncle Chen, holding the shoulder bag they brought when they came yesterday, left the house.

In the northeastern villages where winter has arrived, ninety-nine percent of the people are still in their warm beds at this time in the morning. The father and son walked out of the village steadily, with only a few occasional barking of dogs heard along the way.

“I don’t know if that slow peach tip has been caught!” Chen Pao was a little nervous as he walked along the road.
Yue Feng smiled and said, “Don’t be nervous! What belongs to us won’t escape, and what doesn’t belong to us, there’s no point in being nervous! There was no wind last night and this morning, I estimate that there is a high probability that we can catch it!”

When the father and son walked to the edge of the woods where the net was set, they saw from a distance that the self-trapping net that was set up last night was triggered.

It was the slow peach with a bell tied to its tail. At the moment, it was wrapped in several layers of nets and was struggling weakly on the ground.

Every time it struggled, the bell on its tail rang once or twice. The sound of the bronze bell struck Chen Pao’s heart.

“Hey! Caught it!” When Chen Pao saw that his eagle was caught, he immediately quickened his pace and almost ran towards the place where the net was set.

Yue Feng also quickened his pace and caught up quickly.

After spending four consecutive nights outside, this slow-moving eagle had recovered at least 70% of its wildness. When it saw Yue Feng and Chen Pao coming over, the motionless big eagle started to cry out “jijiji”, its mouth wide open and its face full of fear.

“Fuck! I didn’t believe you when I told you that you were a flat-haired beast that I couldn’t tame. Now I’ve taught you a lesson! It’s only been a few days and you don’t recognize me! Why are you yelling? I’ll deal with you when I get home!”

When Chen Pao saw the big eagle struggling and screaming on the ground, the anger that had been accumulating over the past few days suddenly boiled over.

Yue Feng took out the eagle coat from his bag, put on some leather gloves, and then squatted down to take off the net.

Judging from the traces on the ground, the eagle had been in the net for no more than 15 minutes. It must have been just after daybreak when it discovered the pigeon bait tied to the self-trapping net. It attacked from the east woods and was covered by the self-trapping net in one round.

Yue Feng first untied the rope under the trap net, then sorted out the layers of net wrapped around the eagle, and finally took the eagle out of the net. He put a coat on the eagle’s arms and tightened it with the drawstring underneath a few times. The big eagle, Slow Taojian, which had left everyone helpless yesterday, was back in Yue Feng’s hands.

“Look, isn’t that it? You hold the eagle first, I’ll put away the net!”

Yue Feng returned the wrapped eagle to Chen Pao, then carefully gathered up the pieces of the net that had been caught in the trap and stuffed them into his bag.

“Every man has his own specialty. When it comes to catching eagles, you are the best! Let’s go home and have breakfast!”

Chen Pao was in a very good mood after getting the slow peach-pointed eagle again. He gave Yue Feng a thumbs-up gesture, and felt relieved. Even his steps became much lighter.

The father and son walked out slowly from the edge of the grove. About twenty meters away, Yue Feng suddenly spotted a blue-gray figure, slightly larger than a swallow, holding a sparrow in its mouth. It flew quickly over his head and went straight into a grove not far from the other side of the river.

“Hey! There’s this thing over here!”

Yue Feng stood still, and after seeing the stunning shadow just now, he couldn’t help but sigh.

Hearing the greeting, Chen Pao stopped and turned around to ask curiously, “What? What are you looking at now?”

Yue Feng stared at the forest where the blue-grey figure had just appeared and said motionlessly, “Orchid pile! I didn’t expect there would be such a rare thing in the small forest near the village!”

“What is an orchid? A kind of bird?” Chen Pao was confused and had no idea what it was referring to.

“A kind of young eagle, commonly known as Duozi, scientifically known as the Merlin, the female is called Malian, the male chicks are called Taohua, and after they change into adult feathers they are called Lanhua!
If I was not mistaken just now, it should be an orchid that has changed its fur!
This thing is a rare species. You think it’s hard to tame this slow-moving eagle. If I have nothing else to do tomorrow, I will come here with a net for catching eagles and see if I can catch this eaglet. Then I can raise it at home for fun. I can also release a few house sparrows or something like that on the street outside my house or on the roadside!

If you have it, you don’t have to wait until the end of April to get pine nuts for the big eagle in the spring! Although this little eagle is a bird of prey in the falcon family, it works very skillfully!
The most important thing is that if you use the right technique, you can train this thing! Last time I told you about using bait to sway a falcon, this can also be done with the merlin falcon. Make a smaller fake bait, let the falcon recognize it, and then fly it around with the bait every day. This can not only train the falcon’s physical fitness, but also exercise your body!”

“Can you keep it tamed? That’s great! Are you sure it will still be here tomorrow? Otherwise, let’s go home and eat first, and then come over after dinner!”

When Chen Pao heard that this little eagle was a rare species and had many advantages, he immediately became interested.

Yue Feng shook his head: “Don’t worry, the birds that can spend the winter here are all from the Wa Lin. The surrounding area is their activity area. Unless there are special circumstances, they will not run around!

Just now I saw it holding food in its mouth. If it is full, it will be hard to catch it if we set the net again today!
I didn’t bring a net to catch the eaglets, nor did I catch a few sparrows as bait. I can always come back another day!”

“Okay, I’ll listen to you. Let’s go back first and catch it tomorrow when we have time!”

After this little episode, Chen Pao became quite interested in the gray-backed falcon mentioned by Yue Feng.

Along the way, Chen Pao asked many questions about the gray-backed falcon, and Yue Feng told him all of them in general. The journey was not far, and when they returned home, Chen Pao immediately made arrangements to take the slow peach tip out of the hawk’s coat.

“Are you going to take this eagle back first? And then send it to me after it’s trained, or what?” Chen Pao asked.

Yue Feng smiled and shook his head: “The eagle is given to you, you can do it yourself! I will tell you the process, you just need to follow my instructions!
This kind of rebellious eagle is easy to manipulate. Even though it is now frightened with its eyes open and mouth open, and it chirps at the slightest movement, it will return to its original form in less than two whole nights!

When I was tying the eagle with my coat just now, I felt the fat on the eagle’s tip. You are really willing to do that. It’s only been less than a month and the eagle has become so fat!”

“Didn’t you tell me last time to feed this eagle alive and prepare its feather shaft every day? I did as you said!
When I was gaining weight, I also observed the eagle’s performance. After the weight was increased, I didn’t find any obvious signs of growth retrieval, so I boldly started to gain weight!

Could it be that even if you put on some fat and release the eagle, you still need to be cautious?”

(End of this chapter)