Chapter 10: Cooking food, calling Yuan!

If we continue to release the blue kite with the string hanging on it, it will be safe, but this behavior is like letting the eagle dance with a chain.

If you want to bring out the full capabilities of the Great Blue Kites as quickly as possible, the ultimate answer is to pinch the string and spread it out in twos.

If you want to cut the line and spread out the hawk, in fact, the hawk is already basically familiar with humans. What’s missing is just to establish the conditioned reflex of calling far.

What does “calling far away” mean? It means that the hawk is placed in one place, and the hawk handler holds the meat several dozen meters away, and calls the hawk back to his hand by shouting commands or blowing a whistle.

Yue Feng’s original plan was to slowly develop affinity and familiarity in actual combat, and once the eagle had become completely familiar with the string, he would then consider taking the string off and calling it far away.

Now the training plan has to be brought forward.

Yue Feng made up his mind not to let the eagle eat all the turtledove meat at once, but let it eat until it was about 30% full, and then hid the turtledove.

At this moment, the Great Blue Kitten’s chest crop was slightly bulging. Several consecutive hunts had consumed a lot of energy. After standing firmly in Yue Feng’s hand, the little eagle began to twist its neck to push food into the bottom crop.

Yue Feng held the little eagle for a while, then turned around and walked towards home.

Today’s training is over. I went home to relax and prepare today’s food for the eagle. I tried to make it do boxing jumps and call far. I finished everything in two days.

When Yue Feng was walking back to the entrance of the village store with the hawk, he happened to be met by several women from the village.

“Hey! Xiaofeng, where did you catch an eagle? It looks quite big!” Li Yinhua, the owner of the convenience store, looked up and down at the eagle in Yue Feng’s hand and greeted him enthusiastically.

Yue Feng pursed his lips slightly and responded: “Aunt Li, Aunt Zhao, Sister Liu, you guys are just playing around here. I found this on my farm. Keep it for a few days and play with it!”

Yue Feng had experienced the gossips in the village in his previous life. He knew that this was not a place to stay for long. After she said a few simple words to him, Yue Feng left.

After Yue Feng walked away, Li Yinhua, who was smiling just now, pouted and complained: “The second kid of the Yue family is also confused. Eagles eat meat. People can’t eat meat now, and they still raise eagles for fun?”

Another woman echoed, “I heard that Yue Feng went to work at the forest farm a few days ago and was beaten back. There was a big bump on his head and he was unconscious on the kang for several days before he woke up! Could it be that he was beaten to a pulp? He thinks he is a prince!”

……

Facing such gossip and criticism behind his back, Yue Feng simply ignored them. These old ladies with long hair and short vision had no idea that his buddy was not training an eagle just for fun, but to accumulate strength through this little eagle and escape the fate of a cowardly life in his previous life!

After returning home with the eagle, Yue Feng tied the eagle to the back of a chair at home. Then he went out with his bag on his back, took out the two live chickens caught by the eagle and gave them to his mother who was preparing lunch.

“I caught one with an eagle! I caught three this morning, a turtledove and two sandpipers. I cut the meat of the turtledove into pieces to feed the eagle, and I cleaned up the two chickens and stewed them with potatoes for lunch! When the eagle can be released more smoothly, I will go to the foot of the mountain to catch a flying dragon!” Yue Feng proudly told his mother about his harvest.

At first, the family’s attitude towards Yue Feng’s eagle raising was basically neutral. They did not encourage it, but they did not oppose it either.

But after Yue Feng gradually delivered his results, his mother’s reaction was obviously more approval of her son’s achievements.

“Wow, they are caught alive. These two sand chickens are quite fat!” Mother Meng Yulan said happily while holding Yue Feng’s morning spoils.

“Well, I exchanged them for dead turtledoves after I caught them! Mom, do we have any torn socks at home that can’t be worn? I plan to sell them in the city when I catch too many!” “Yes, I kept all the socks that were worn out and couldn’t be repaired over the years and couldn’t bear to throw them away! I’ll find them for you later!”

“Yeah!” Yue Feng responded, took an empty bowl from the stove and cupboard, carried the leftover turtledove and walked out of the north room.

After plucking the feathers and cleaning up briefly, Yue Feng divided the remaining pigeon meat into seven or eight pieces. He threw away the large feathers and collected the soft fluff.

This step, in the jargon of falconry, is called feeding, which means preparing food for the eagle.

If the eagle handler wants to control the eagle’s condition as much as possible, the step of preparing food is essential. When the eagle is losing weight, feed water food; when the eagle is gaining weight, feed blood food. The eagle handler controls every bite of food.

No matter whether it is a big eagle or a small eagle, what they pursue is a full and clean belly.

A fat eagle means it has plenty of energy, and a clean chest means it is full of energy and will be full of fighting spirit when it goes out into the enclosure.

To achieve this, the level of eagle handling skills required is quite high, and subtle adjustments must be made based on actual combat performance. Yue Feng had been flying eagles for more than ten years in his previous life, so he knew all the tricks involved.

If you want to train the eagle to fly far, the eagle handler must have food in his hand, and it is best to have blood food.

Yue Feng cut the meat from the turtledove’s breast into small cubes. Then he hid two pieces in his palm and returned to the yard with the hawk mounted on top.

The eagle was placed on a wooden rack at the base of the south wall and a string was hung to ensure that there would be no accidents. After making all the preparations, Yue Feng put on two layers of thick gloves on his right hand. Then he turned his back, stretched out his right arm, pinched a piece of meat at the base of his thumb, and stood about half a meter in front of the eagle.

“Hey!!!” Yue Feng growled and showed the meat in his hand to Xiaoying.

The sound of “Hey” was the feeding command that established a conditioned reflex. The little eagle didn’t know what was happening at first, but after seeing the meat in Yue Feng’s hand, the little guy decisively jumped from the wooden rack to Yue Feng’s right palm. With its two big claws as sharp as daggers, it stepped on the piece of meat and began to tear it apart and eat.

While the eagle was eating meat, Yue Feng would shout “Hey! Hey! Hey” every few seconds to help the eagle get used to this command.

After the eagle finished eating a piece of diced meat, Yue Feng put the eagle back on the wooden rack again. This time, he increased the distance between him and the eagle from half a meter to two meters.

As he stood still, a piece of meat appeared in Yue Feng’s hand as if by magic.

Hey!
The next second, the little eagle heard the call and flew to Yue Feng’s right hand again without hesitation and continued to eat meat.

Just now when the distance was half a meter, it was at most called jumping fist, which means jumping from a standing position to the fist of Eagle Handle Style. The second time, the distance was two meters, which was far enough to be considered as a beginner’s move.

Yue Feng let Xiaoying finish the second piece of meat, and then repeated the previous steps.

This time the distance was increased to eight meters. Yue Feng took out another piece of meat and hid it in his palm and continued to shout from afar.

The high-intensity lifting, controlled eating and bravery of the previous few days played a decisive role at this moment. Even though the distance was eight meters, the next second after the piece of meat was revealed, after a command was given, the Big Green Kites flew straight towards Yue Feng again.

(End of this chapter)