Chapter 265 Beware of the dog legs!!
Have you ever seen bowling?
The effect of a swooping Black Hawk attack is similar to bowling, and a single swoop can completely destroy a clustered defensive formation.

The two little guys who were hit first were knocked down and couldn’t get up for a long time.

Another sable, which was luckier and did not suffer much damage, struggled to get up, but was soon knocked down again by the black eagle.

It took the Black Hawk three rounds of swooping attacks to kill the four prey, and all of them lost the ability to escape.

Yue Feng, Xiao Tao and the others stretched out their long legs and rushed over in two steps.

He pulled his hand out from the cotton wool and grabbed the back of the neck. The largest sable leader was taken down by Yue Feng in an instant.

Xiao Tao reacted quickly as well. He grabbed the little guy, who was confused by the big black eagle’s wings, by the throat with one hand left and one right.

Xiaowen followed behind and caught the last one like a lion fighting a rabbit.

At this point, all four sables were arrested.

“Huff, huff, huff… this is too much. We worked hard all day yesterday and only caught four.

“It’s only been less than ten minutes since I arrived, and I’ve already caught four of them. Aren’t sables solitary? How come they live in the same cave?”

The excited Xiao Tao was breathing heavily, tilting his head to look at the two sables in his left and right hands, and asked very excitedly.

Yue Feng also felt a little confused. After looking up and down at the size and fur color of several sables, he made a preliminary judgment.

“This should be from the same litter! The only one in my hand is a large female mink! The other three should be mink cubs that are less than two years old!”

“What? They’ve grown so big, and they’re still living with their mother mink? These three little minks caught an adult female mink yesterday, and they don’t seem to be much different in size!”

Xiao Tao was somewhat skeptical after hearing this explanation.

“They grow big because there is relatively enough food here, so they grow fast!
The sable is not a precocial mammal. From birth to independent life, the young mink must live with its mother for at least one to two years!
If the food in the area is relatively scarce, the time they live together will be shortened. The mother mink will expel the cubs after they grow to a certain size and have the ability to hunt independently, leaving them to fend for themselves!

Many sables that wander around without territory are driven out by their mothers when they grow up!

But if food is relatively abundant and the mother mink has an independent territory, she will take care of her cubs for another year or even longer!
There is a saying that some sables live in groups, which means that a mother mink is leading a group of grown-up pups that have not yet left the nest!”

“Um…then these four minks, will they not have cubs in their bellies?” Xiaowu asked weakly.

Yue Feng nodded: “The sub-adult sable that hasn’t left the nest is definitely not capable of reproduction, so it’s 100% not pregnant!
This female mink with cubs will not be in heat and accept the pursuit of other male minks! So these four sables have no cubs!”

“This… is a pity! Should we take them back and kill them for the skin? This head should be big enough for a standard large skin! The two I have are both female minks!”

“This is just a little male mink in my hand!”

Four sables, three females and one male.

Yue Feng is a hunter. He is very open-minded about hunting prey for meat or fur. He thinks it is the right thing to do if he encounters one, so he kills it. There is nothing to be fussy about it.

However, due to hormone levels and age, the quality of the fur of these three sub-adult cubs is far inferior to that of adult sables.

If you take it home and slaughter it at night, it would be a bit of a pity and the leather grade would also be affected.

“This big mink must be slaughtered! Take the three cubs back and raise them together!
The quality of leather is poor now. Even if we sell it, the size is big enough, but the quality is not up to standard. It can only be rated as Class II Grade A and cannot be sold at a high price!” Yue Feng said.

“Okay! Xiaowu, give me a hand and take out the bag containing the prey! Ma Dan killed four martens at once. If there is another nest like this, there won’t be enough space to hold the martens!” Yue Feng muttered.

Soon, the brothers helped each other and put the four sables into cloth bags.

Afterwards, Yue Feng took out some meat and used a series of PUA moves on the big black eagle, including petting its fur, feeding it meat, and flattering it.

In the perception of the big black eagle, catching such a small thing does not pose any challenge at all, but the emotional feedback and material rewards given by the owner are very generous.

The meat fed to the eagle today was replaced with the bear heart meat brought back yesterday. Even though it was frozen meat, it tasted much better to the big black eagle than the venison before.

After this little episode, the big black eagle flew into the sky again and continued to circle, while Yue Feng and his team prepared to continue searching.

At this time, Yue Feng looked at the scattered black mud at his feet and suddenly reacted.

“We missed something! We haven’t recovered from the hole that Da Huang dug!”

“What? We’ve already caught all the sables, so just let them go. In a few days, the northeast wind will blow the snow and cover up all the traces.”

Xiao Tao shook his head after listening to this. This somewhat reckless guy always thinks in a linear way.

“Brother Feng is right! If we don’t recover, if someone else passes by and sees us, as long as they observe carefully and think about it, they will immediately figure out what’s going on, and then our secret will be known to others!”

While Xiaowen was speaking, he had already started rummaging through his hunting bag.

Quickly, he found a handmade stiff brush made of wild boar bristles from the bottom of his bag.

This was the handmade tool that Uncle Zhao gave them when they went to Uncle Zhao’s cellar last time. It was quite effective in cleaning up the traces and restoring the original appearance when setting traps. “Then… cover the hole again?”

“I come!”

Xiaowen quickly used the knife to slowly smooth out the snow pile next to it, and finally used a wild boar bristle brush to carefully brush the top layer, restoring it to about 70% of its original appearance.

With this level of operation, it would be almost impossible for someone who does not have very strong observation skills to notice what is happening in the snow.

When the north wind blows again at night and the snow covers the place, everything will be completely restored to its original state the next day. Even if the person involved returns to the original place, it will be difficult to see the details of yesterday’s traces.

“Okay, that’s it! If I didn’t look for it specifically, I would not be able to see it under normal circumstances!” Xiaowen clapped his hands, very satisfied with his masterpiece.

“Keep going! I don’t know how dense the sables are here. We just caught a nest. Logically, there shouldn’t be any more in this area of ​​several hundred meters!”

Xiao Tao took a step forward and said.

As soon as he finished speaking, he took a step forward and heard a click, as if some mechanism in the snow shell was triggered.

“What the hell? I think I stepped on a wallet!”

Xiao Tao lowered his head to take a look, then grabbed the handle of the knife and dug it into the snow foam.

It really made it speak.

This is a small animal trap made of bamboo as the main material. In principle, it is actually not much different from the mouse trap used at home.

The only difference is that the whole rack is very light, at least half lighter than the iron clips.

In addition, both sides of the open clip are wrapped with a layer of thin cotton thread, and there is a thin piece of white paper on top of the trigger pedal, which should have been torn from some exercise book.

Such a bamboo clip is the local leather clip used for beating skins. Cotton thread is wrapped on both sides of the clip, so when the trigger mechanism closes, it will not be as sharp as a metal frame. In this way, the damage to the fur of the sable killed by the clip will be minimized.

As for why bamboo is used as the main material instead of stronger materials such as steel wire and steel sheets, there are also considerations.

Although metal animal traps are strong enough, they are too heavy and are not easy to use using the traditional method of arranging leather traps.

Heavy clamps are prone to collapse in the snow, malfunctioning when triggered, and metal is more likely to freeze in winter.

This is not easy to explain, so we need to start with the traditional method of arranging the wallet and the lower clip of the large leather.

Sable is a relatively alert animal. There are certain differences in the living habits between sables with territories and homeless sables.

Setting the trap is not done casually. Before setting the trap, hunters will generally look for sable footprints left on the snow and make relevant arrangements in areas where the footprints are densely packed.

How to arrange a wallet for catching sables?

In fact, it’s just a layer of window paper.

After the hunter determines the position of the trap, he will use tools to carefully dig out a cavity in the snow at the bottom of the snow shell from one side, leaving only a thin layer of intact snow shell on the top.

In order to prevent this thin layer of snow shell from collapsing, a layer of bow-shaped paper will be placed between the trigger pedal and the snow shell.

Don’t underestimate a thin piece of paper. With this thing, the pressure can be distributed more evenly, so that the snow shell will not be accidentally damaged.

Once the trap is set, the hunter will carefully clean up the traces and leave the area.

When the sable moves above the snow shell, if it passes by the location where the leather clip is placed, the fragile structural balance will be broken, the snow shell will collapse, triggering the pedal underneath, and then the clip wrapped in cloth will clamp the sable firmly.

The sable is not big in size, so the clamp is definitely not enough to deal with it. As long as it hits the torso, the sable will basically die.

The temperature is extremely low in winter, so there is no need to worry about the killed sables going bad. The hunter who sets the traps only needs to inspect the trap area at regular intervals. If he finds the prey, he can take it home to thaw it and skin it.

“Uncle, what should we do with this clamp? It’s been trampled by the snow!”

Yue Feng heard the call and took a look, and found that Xiao Tao had already stepped on the snow shell and it collapsed completely, and the wallet underneath was also activated!

My second uncle took one look and replied, “Just leave it where it is and don’t move it! The people who set the traps will definitely rearrange them later!

By the way, if there are traps around, be careful when chasing with your dog. If there are sable footprints on the snow, there may be other traps nearby!

This bamboo clip will definitely not break a dog’s legs, but it will hurt the dog if it pinches its paws!”

“It’s okay, I get it! I can’t be so unlucky, can I? Da Huang, you better be careful with your dog legs!”

Yue Feng greeted his dog as if he was joking, but less than five minutes after the joke, Yue Feng could no longer laugh.

Two chapters of 6000 words in the morning, and another in the afternoon
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(End of this chapter)