Chapter 57 Preparations before hunting the big eagle, catching sparrows

If you want to catch a big eagle, you can’t just set up a few cage nets in the woods near the river to catch it. You have to go to the most conspicuous hills with the best terrain and open a new falconry hunting site.

If you are lucky, you may encounter an eagle that suits your taste after one or two days on the mountain. If you are unlucky, you may catch a lot of eagles but not a single real one during the ten days or half a month you stay on the mountain.

It is difficult to catch a big eagle. Even if you catch it, the difficulty of training it still starts from five stars.

Any large eagle caught in the net that year would weigh between 2.12 jin and 2.45 jin. If a healthy eagle that had just been caught was only fed water but no food, it would have no problem surviving for ten days or so.

The ten days or so mentioned here do not mean the kind of ten days or so where you keep an eagle on the alert during the day and sleep at night.

Instead, it takes ten or eight days of almost sleepless nights. The better the eagle’s physique and the tougher its temper, the longer the period of training will be.

In his previous life, Yue Feng had encountered an eagle that took half a month to eat happily. It took the eagle 21 days from the time it was put into the net to the time it landed and started working.

Yue Feng definitely cannot handle it for such a long time alone. His father’s leg injury hasn’t healed yet, and Yue Feng doesn’t want him to be too tired.

Forget it, forget it, since I have promised them, I will just grit my teeth and do it. At worst, I can ask my mom and dad to take over. It will only take ten days or half a month. I can get through it if I grit my teeth.

Yue Feng had made up his mind. When he returned home and had dinner with his friends in the evening, Yue Feng raised this issue in public.

“In the next period of time, there will be some minor changes to our eagle hunting team’s mission, so I’d like to tell you all about it in advance!”

“What’s wrong, Brother Feng?” Xiao Tao asked first.

“The Second Canteen wants live pheasants and rabbits, I agreed!

So in the next period of time, I will stay in the mountains for a few days, as short as three to five days, as long as seven to ten days! When I catch the big eagle, I will come back!
During the time I’m on the mountain catching eagles, Xiao Tao will be in charge of the daily delivery of goods. I’ve been flying this big blue kite, and each of you will take turns flying it for a day. You can’t let the eagle sit idle, otherwise it will rebel!”

“Want to go up the mountain to catch eagles? I’ll go with you! Let my dad do the delivery!” Xiao Tao said with a lick on his face.

“No need, autumn is a good time to catch chickens, there is only a short time, I can do it myself, you guys can take advantage of it now while there are many birds and it is easy to catch them, catch more and earn more money!

It will be much more difficult to go up the mountain to catch chicks after the temperature drops significantly!

I’m temporarily taking a leave of absence to go falcon hunting, but the family’s income depends on your daily catch, so we can’t slack off!”

Yue Lei nodded at this time: “I, your mother and your uncle Li are at home, don’t worry! What do you need to prepare? I will help you arrange it starting tomorrow!”

“Four sets of 16 pieces of five-finger-wide eagle-catching nets! One set of hand-pulled nets that are six meters long and two and a half meters wide! Tomorrow I will go catch another tiger, and then go to my second brother Qian’s house to buy a few raindrop pigeons. That’s basically enough! I’ll come back every day and make up for whatever is missing!” Yue Feng calculated while counting on his fingers.

“Okay, what size of mesh do you want for the self-trapping net?”

“One and a half meters long and one and a half meters wide will be enough!”

“That’s it!”

……

After a brief team meeting, Yue Feng decided to go up the mountain to catch the eagle.

At dawn the next day, Yue Feng left home carrying a shovel.

If you want to catch a big eagle, you must catch a shrike before you go up the mountain. When an eagle passes by the eagle farm, the shrike will detect the bird of prey in the sky in advance and warn the eagle hunter. The shrike is a bird that likes to eat mole crickets.

Yue Feng didn’t even have time to eat breakfast and went out with a shovel, going to the fields to catch mole crickets while there was dew in the morning.

Yue Feng had done this kind of work many times in his previous life, so it could be said that he could catch them easily. He went to the pile of earth at the edge of the field where mole crickets were active, turned the soil with a large shovel, and quickly caught six or seven live mole crickets.

With the mole crickets, Yue Feng went to places like the edges of fields and woods outside the village and set six bird traps in a row.

Yue Feng’s grandfather taught him how to make the noose. He inserted two slightly longer branches into the soil, then fixed a rope at one end of one of the branches and tied a slipknot at the other end of the rope. He then tied half of the wings of a live cicada and hung it in the air. The noose was placed below the live cicada, and the mechanism of the noose was stabilized with a horizontal stick and a thin stick.

A live mole cricket hanging in the air will keep struggling, which can easily attract the attention of a shrike. When the greedy shrike flies over to eat the cricket, it can easily step on the horizontal stick that the hunter deliberately placed for the shrike to land on.

As soon as the bird stepped on it, the force balance of the horizontal stick was broken, the originally taut noose mechanism was triggered, and the noose was immediately put on the shrike’s feet.

As long as there are shrikes around, this method of catching them is almost always successful.

Yue Feng caught enough mole crickets, then went around the village where there might be shrikes, designed a trap, and then went home to eat.

After breakfast, everyone else took their eagles up the mountain to go out of the enclosure. Yue Feng found some thick cotton thread and made a collar for tying a shrike on the edge of the kang.

Yes, you read it right. When you raise a shrike like a sparrow, you don’t tie its legs, you tie its neck.

Unlike birds of prey, the shrike’s claws are very weak, and if its legs are tied, it is easy to fall off its hips, but if the neck is tied, there will be no such problems.

Yue Feng put on a neck collar, put on a pair of work gloves, and went out of the house to check the harvest of the agencies one by one.

The first two mechanisms were not triggered. When I inspected the third mechanism, I heard the iconic rattling sound of a brown-backed shrike from a distance.

It was caught. At this moment, the unfortunate creature’s paw was caught by a noose and it was flying around a pole stuck in the ground.

Seeing this, Yue Feng did not dare to be careless. He put on work protection gloves and walked over quickly.

Although this shrike is not a bird of prey, its beak is sharper than that of an ordinary eagle. Not only is the tip of its beak hooked like a bird of prey, but it also has a tooth-like notch similar to that of falcons. If you get bit by it without protection, you will definitely bleed.

Wearing gloves, Yue Feng went over and grabbed the adult male shrike, holding the bird’s body in his palm, revealing the entire bird’s neck and big forehead.

After removing the noose from the shrike’s legs, Yue Feng took out the collar he had made at home from his pocket and tied it directly to the shrike. Then he put away the other mechanisms and returned home with the shrike.

A newly caught wild tiger tigress is very aggressive and it is extremely difficult to get it to behave in your hand or stand on a pole.

But Yue Feng has a secret weapon.

After Yue Feng tied the neck rope to the standing pole, he took out a washbasin and filled it with water with a ladle.

Today is the third update. I will start the second round of recommendations tomorrow. I urgently need your votes! !

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(End of this chapter)