Chapter 190 The Old Hunter Kills Xiong Cangzi
After feeding the red dog, all the preparations before killing Xiong Cangzi were completed. Uncle Zhao put his barreled gun on his shoulder, locked the door, waved his hand, and said, “Follow me!”
Starting from Uncle Zhao’s cellar, we headed straight to Heixiazi Ridge. The old man led the way along the way, and we basically walked in a straight line.

On the way, Uncle Zhao spoke very little and basically just kept his head down. A man in his sixties, his leg strength was better than that of young people as he walked on the rugged mountain road. Even Xiaowen, who was dragging a slightly heavier sled, could hardly keep up.

Judging from the map, Heixiazi Ridge is not far from Uncle Zhao’s cellar. It is at most about seven or eight miles along the mountain road. However, the surrounding area is densely covered with gullies and forests of all sizes. Yue Feng and his gang followed Uncle Zhao for at least an hour and a half before they reached their destination.

This is a forest full of thick lime trees. The area is relatively open. The presence of the big trees blocks the sunlight from the small trees, shrubs and weeds, so there are fewer vegetation on the ground.

At a glance, you can see at least 100 to 200 meters. In the mountains and forests, such bright places are relatively rare. Most of them are mixed forests with visibility less than 100 meters.

“The black bear’s stable is not far ahead! This bear has stayed in this area for at least six or seven years, and I have never touched it. Now that you are here, it is a disaster for it!” Uncle Zhao said with full energy.

“That bear must be at least six or seven years old, right?”

“The bear should be over ten years old!
A blind black bear has to live with its mother bear for three years when it is still a cub. It will not leave its mother bear until it grows to two or three hundred kilograms and can survive independently in the wild!

This is a male bear, and he stays in the same warehouse every year!”

As they were talking, Uncle Zhao brought Yue Feng and the others to a sturdy lime tree.

He walked half a circle around the lime tree, then looked up and pointed at the trunk.

Everyone looked up along the tree trunk and saw a tree hole about two and a half meters above the ground, facing southeast.

“This blind black bear usually likes to hide in a sky warehouse, which is a hole in a tree.

This tree hole is equivalent to its house. Every autumn before the leaves rustle, it starts to decorate and clean it. Using its claws, it digs out the rotten parts of the inner wall of the trunk and cleans the tree hole!

Corresponding to the sky-high warehouses are the underground warehouses. If a mother black bear is with her cubs, she may spend the winter in an underground warehouse, which is usually a rotten and hollow tree hole under an older tree stump or fallen tree. It is intentionally dug and expanded until there is enough space for hibernation!

Most of the underground dens are occupied by bears. Most of them are in stone caves, and there are very few earth pits, but there are occasionally some!
Although black bears and brown bears are both bears, they cannot live in harmony in the mountains. If their territories intersect, brown bears will consciously attack and hunt black bears!

But this situation is relatively rare, and only occurs occasionally during good years!”

“A good harvest? Uncle, what does a good harvest mean?” Xiao Tao asked curiously.

“Every blade of grass, every tree, every flower and every fruit on this mountain seems to be the same every year, but in fact, whether it is lush or withered, it has a certain growth cycle. If you have seen the annual rings of the big trees that have been cut down in the forest farm, you will have a certain understanding of this.

If there is plenty of rainfall and the temperature and light are suitable, then the plants and animals will grow well. This is called a good year. Trees and plants will produce more fruits and seeds. The mountain animals that rely on these things for survival will give birth to more cubs. With sufficient food, the survival rate of the cubs will also be higher.

The annual rings of the tree this year will grow wider than other annual rings in adjacent years!
There are good years and naturally there are bad years. In some years, there is little rain and the temperature fluctuates greatly, which affects the growth of plants. Then all kinds of animals on the mountains will be unlucky.

If the situation is serious, animals such as wild boars and blind bears will go down the mountain and go to the farmland at the foot of the mountain to collect food and gain weight!
Even tigers don’t want to provoke humans, but in bad years, they sometimes have no choice. If they can’t gain weight in the autumn, they won’t survive the winter, so they have to come down from the mountains to harass people!”

Uncle Zhao is indeed an old hunter who has spent his entire life in the mountains. He is well versed in the ecological changes in the mountains and forests and the principles contained therein.

“Putting aside the influence of the season, under normal circumstances, do black bears and brown bears live in different places?” Xiaowen continued to ask.

“Yes! Black bears are mostly distributed in low-altitude forest areas, while brown bears are more likely to be distributed in high mountain areas with higher altitudes!
Black bears are much smaller than brown bears, and brown bears can grow to over a thousand pounds! This means that brown bears can withstand harsher environments and occupy larger territories!
However, in terms of economic benefits, hunting brown bears is not as cost-effective as hunting black bears. The gallbladder of a black bear, after being dipped in water and dried in the shade, is much more expensive than that of a brown bear!
Moreover, the higher up the mountain, the worse the transportation. If there are not enough people, it is difficult to even turn over and open the body of a brown bear that weighs hundreds or thousands of pounds! Not to mention dragging the dead bear’s body down the mountain!
Look at the cave entrance to tell if there is a bear inside. It is actually very simple. If there is frost, there is a bear! The bear squats inside the cave to breathe, and the hot air rises to the cave entrance, where it will be frozen into frost by the cold air outside!
After talking about this and that for a long time, I will tell you how this knowledgeable hunter killed Tiancangzi!

After finding Xiong Cangzi, the first thing to do is to leave a way out!

Humans can kill bears, and bears also have the ability to kill humans, so even the best hunter has to find a way to escape in the event of a failure.

Be fully prepared. If you fail, at least you won’t lose your life!

There are several common steps.

The first step is to clear the area. Use a knife to clear away all the small trees, bushes, and vines within a few dozen meters around the bear’s warehouse to prevent the bear from tripping and falling when running away! Without these obstacles, the hunter’s dog will not be easily injured.

The second step is to level the field. After clearing the trees, use your feet to tamp down all the snow around you little by little! Snow will affect the movements of people and dogs and increase the risk!

Once the place is cleaned up, the third step is usually to make a fire or dig a pit!
A bear can run much faster in a straight line than a human. If you fail, it is almost impossible to escape by running in a straight line. So if you want to prevent the bear from catching up, you can only run in an arc!
On the ground, pick up a pile of firewood and make a big fire. If you lose control, run around the fire to delay time and create opportunities for your teammates!
If the soil is loose and not frozen, you can dig a hole, but the workload is relatively large. In most places, the frozen soil is hard and difficult to dig, so it has been used less and less in recent years!

After the big fire is lit, the site preparation is complete!
The next step is to call Cangzi!

Calling Cangzi means waking up the sleeping bears and letting them come out of the tree holes!

There are two types of calling a bear: gentle calling and violent calling. The gentle calling is to knock with a stick or make a noise, etc. It takes a longer time and the effect is slower to see, but the bear will be less irritable after being woken up, and the danger is slightly lower.

The violent call is more violent. Firecrackers, gunshots, or throwing burning wood into a tree hole are all considered violent calls! The bears awakened by the call are very aggressive and extremely dangerous!
I learned from the older generation how to kill the bear warehouse, there is an extra step, called filling the warehouse!
If this can be done well, it can greatly reduce the risk and increase the safety of killing bears in the warehouse!”

“What does filling the warehouse mean?” Yue Feng asked curiously.

Yue Feng knew all the rules of killing bears that Uncle Zhao had just talked about, but he had never heard of filling the warehouse. It should be the hunting habit or experience of a small number of hunters.

“Filling the bear’s cage means stuffing a wooden stick as thick as a wrist into the bear’s cage before calling for it to be cradled!

The stick cannot be too thick, as it will get in the way and not be able to reach the bottom. It cannot be too thin either, as it will not be able to stop the bear from leaving the cave.

If it’s too short, the bear will move to the bottom and it won’t work. If it’s too long, it will block the entrance of the cave and the bear won’t be able to climb out, which will waste time!

How do you determine the appropriate length of the stick for filling the warehouse? I’ll show you on the spot! “While speaking, Uncle Zhao took out a small hand axe from his waist, held the hand axe in his right hand, and walked under the Xiongcangzi tree.

Start tapping the tree trunk gently from about half a meter above the ground.

While knocking, he moved the axe upwards. As he moved it, the sound echoing in the tree hole also changed significantly.

At the bottom, the solid part, the sound is relatively crisp, but as it goes up, the sound becomes much hollower and duller.

At the critical point where the sound changed from crisp to muffled, Uncle Zhao made a mark on the tree trunk with the blade of the axe.

“From here down, it’s solid. The bear is squatting here now! Starting from the position of the bear’s feet, the distance to the top of the cave entrance is the height for filling the warehouse and cutting wood!

You all have knives, right? Come over here, each of you, chop up a few sticks!”

Uncle Zhao started teaching almost from the principles, using on-site practical teaching to make the principles clear. Everyone could understand and immediately dispersed to get busy.

There were fewer thin trees in this mixed forest, but there were some. Soon, each of us cut down a few sticks that met the requirements and brought them back.

Uncle Zhao took a quick look at the sticks he had brought back, picked out a few thinner ones and threw them aside: “The rest are enough, pass them to me, and then start filling the warehouse!”

Seeing the old man holding a stick and preparing to put it into the cave, Yue Feng was a little confused. Isn’t he afraid that a bear will suddenly come out?

“Uncle, if it’s stuffed like this, won’t the bear be woken up?” Xiaowen asked.

“It’s okay! After the snow, black bears sleep very deeply in Xiongcangzi and won’t wake up so easily.

For a warehouse this thick, seven or eight sticks should be enough! If you do this by yourself, remember to put it close to the side, or the bear will grab the stick and move to the side!”

While he was talking, Uncle Zhao had already tied up his foot ropes, then climbed up a few steps with one hand holding the tree trunk, picked up the wooden stick with his right hand, and stuffed it directly into the tree hole.

Just as he said, push the stick down along the inner wall of the tree hole. When the bear feels it, it will subconsciously take it and move to the side. The stick is of the right size and length, and it will be quickly stuffed into the hole, with only less than ten centimeters of it sticking out at the entrance.

The next seven or eight sticks were filled in the same way, and in less than ten minutes, the filling was completed.

After filling the warehouse, Uncle Zhao removed the foot straps and put them away, then picked up his barreled gun.

“Take off the safety of your guns and get ready to work! We have more people and more guns, so just use force!”

Three seconds later, Uncle Zhao raised his gun and fired a shot at the bottom of the tree trunk.

The next second, the male bear who was sleeping in the tree warehouse was awakened by the gunshots. A muffled bear roar was heard, and then a wooden stick with a little bit of its root exposed near the cave entrance shook.

The inner diameter of the hole in the tree bin had been cleaned by the bear itself so it wouldn’t be too spacious for squatting.

It’s not too tight, but after stuffing a circle of sticks, it’s much more difficult for the bear to climb out.

In a relatively closed space, the stick cannot be thrown out, so it can only be gathered to one side as much as possible to make it easier for the bear’s claws to gain leverage.

I saw the stick shaking for more than ten seconds, and then a bear grunted and climbed out of the tree cage.

After the male bear saw the humans outside the tree hole, he roared angrily again.

Ah~ Woo…

A low-frequency bear roar sounded at close range. Even though Yue Feng had experience and was mentally prepared, he still felt his body go numb as if he had been electrified. Xiao Tao, Xiao Wu, and Xiao Wen, who were standing beside him, all changed their expressions instantly.

At this time, the benefits of stuffing the stick into the body become apparent.

The bear wanted to get out, but the root of the stick was about ten centimeters longer, which was equivalent to reducing the size of the hole in the tree in disguise.

So it is more difficult for the bear to get out. After the head comes out of the hole, the body has to move around at the entrance of the hole before it can get out.

After Uncle Zhao fired the shot, he immediately opened the gun handle and took out the bullet shell. Then the spare bullet clamped between the ring finger and little finger of his left hand was instantly in place. In just over a second, the second bullet was loaded.

When the bear had most of its body exposed, Uncle Zhao aimed at the bear’s moving head and fired decisively.

With a loud bang, a gunshot rang out. The blind bear, who was struggling to climb out a second ago, had his skull ripped open by the bullet, and the huge bear corpse fell headfirst from the tree hole to the ground with a thud.

With just one bullet, the big bear weighing at least four or five hundred kilograms died on the spot!

As expected of an experienced hunter, his grip was firm and his timing of shooting was perfect!
If it’s too early, the bear will still be stuck in the tree hole, and it will take a lot of time to kill it and dig it out. After a long time, the bear bile will be absorbed by the liver.

If it is too late, the bear’s entire body will have emerged from the cave. If the bear cannot be killed with one shot, the hunter will be in danger.

Now Uncle Zhao fired the most accurate shot at the most appropriate time. His method of killing Xiong Cangzi has reached perfection!
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(End of this chapter)