vstars Chapter 157 Picking up deer in the snow
Chapter 157 Picking up deer in the snow
Siberian tigers are enormous, weighing over 500 kilograms. Even if their heart and lungs are severely injured, they can still pounce for dozens of meters.
The bullet pierced the Siberian tiger's face, and the back of its head was blasted into a bloody mist.
The enormous tiger's body, carrying a stench of blood, continued its charge towards Li Ju'an with its momentum. Song Desheng, watching from the side, felt his eyes burning, his heart pounding, and his soul leaping into his throat.
Li Ju'an pretended to roll to the side, and in a flash, he rolled into a three-meter-deep snowdrift. The waist-deep snow hadn't completely melted into ice yet. Covered in snow, he looked up. The Siberian tiger lay limply on the snow above, its angry eyes staring directly at Song Desheng. A bowl-sized hole had been punched into the back of its head, and brain matter was gushing out.
Song Desheng shouted excitedly, "Awesome, Brother Li! Such a big Siberian tiger, shot in the head with one shot!"
He longed to run more than four miles, his mouth full of wind, into the forest ranger's duty room and shout at the top of his lungs.
Lu Zhiqiang, standing a hundred meters away, was excited. He clenched his fist in the air and shouted, "I've got the tiger skin! I'm going to be rich!"
As soon as Song Desheng turned his head, he saw Lu Zhiqiang standing up perfectly fine. He was furious and rushed over to fight with him.
"Playing dead? Your grandpa's here and you don't even make a sound. The grandson just wants to watch his grandpa have fun, what's wrong with that?"
Lu Zhiqiang got a bit angry from being scolded and reached out to fight back, shouting, "What's it to me? I've been mimicking a bird's song for ages, and I haven't seen you turn around."
"What nonsense! You think you can imitate bird calls? Why don't you sing one for me?"
"Screw you!"
After the fight, Song Desheng checked Lu Zhiqiang's arms and found that they were both intact. His thick cotton-padded coat was missing. He then turned and saw Xiao Shi wearing Lu Zhiqiang's coat, his right arm bound, weak and unable to open his eyes.
He asked in bewilderment, "What are you cats doing here, acting like cowards? Why aren't you carrying the person back to rescue them?"
When Lu Zhiqiang mentioned this, he grabbed him by the collar and tried to pull him back: "Hurry up and leave, the wolf pack will come soon."
The snowdrift was about three meters deep and quite large. From inside came Li Ju'an's shouts: "Where the hell is my dog? Someone come down a leash right now!"
Song Desheng untied the rope from his waist, tied it to the end of the long hook, looped it around the fallen tree two or three times, fastened the lock, and pulled it a couple of times to test its sturdiness. Then he stood at the edge of the snowdrift, threw some snow into it, and shouted, "Hang it on your waist!"
He waited a while and noticed that Li Ju'an below hadn't made a sound yet. Curious, he looked down and heard Li Ju'an exclaim in surprise, "So many deer?"
The group reached the edge and looked down, taking a deep breath. The snowdrift was indeed enormous, almost a three-meter-deep depression. It was covered in ice and snow, making it too slippery to climb. Several red deer lay frozen to the west of the snowdrift, their limbs stiff and their hooves covered in frost.
"Holy crap, so many red deer?"
"Don't pull me up first, pull the meat first."
This snowdrift is next to the dugout, and it's the wolf pack's den. The wolves hunt in groups, driving their surplus prey into the snowdrift, and then dragging it out to devour when they're hungry.
Several people suspected that this was the snow den the wolves used to store venison after their hunt. There were at least seven or eight red deer. These red deer had made their way through the food-scarce winter, and who knows how many had died, all targeted by the wolves.
Li Ju'an grinned from under the snowdrift and said, "Isn't this a good deal for us? Let's pick it up."
He genuinely thought this hunting method was particularly good—following behind the wolf pack to pick up prey. It didn't waste bullets, though picking up the prey was quite tiring.
He hooked the long hook that Song Desheng had hung down onto the deer's chin and told Song Desheng to pull it upwards with all his might.
Song Desheng couldn't pull it, so he pulled Lu Zhiqiang and Lao Qian, and Lao Sun came to help.
Lu Zhiqiang was unhappy, muttering, "The wolf pack is coming, what can you guys do, drag them up here or back?"
Li Ju'an retorted, "It's not just the few of us. Where did you forget about the cannon emplacement of Yingtun?"
At daybreak, Zhao Pao would lead his men into the mountains to hunt tigers. The stench of blood in this area was strong enough to attract Zhao Pao's hunting falcons, and with so many men coming in, they could go wild. A few men and a sled could easily haul the deer back, and then they could divide the spoils. He and Zhao Pao of Eagle Village did not get along, but they weren't mortal enemies. Who wouldn't share the deer meat? Only a fool would; if they could get a share, they would.
With three or four people pulling the deer together, the speed was much faster. Lu Zhiqiang pulled hard while cursing and complaining that Li Ju'an was too slow, and that it would be too late to cry when the wolf pack came.
Li Ju'an looked up at the other side of the hill. The slippery dog, Tiechui, was still chasing the tiger cubs back and forth, and the hill was filled with flying snow particles and dust. He said, "Don't worry, if the wolf pack comes, the livestock will be more anxious than us. Can one of you come down? I'm exhausted by myself."
He pulled down the hook, along with the rope, and dragged Lu Zhiqiang down.
Lu Zhiqiang was so angry that he cursed and had no choice but to follow suit and skewer the hook into the deer's chin.
The snowdrift was long and narrow, and he wanted to move from the east side to the west side to hook the deer, but moving was a difficult task. He used both hands and feet, saying that wolves were cunning and the deer's hooves were not good for climbing, which would trap the deer in this snowdrift and kill it. He stumbled and fell, and as soon as he lay down, snow went straight into his collar, the icy cold stinging him.
Li Ju'an laughed heartily: "Now you know it's hard to move, huh? You can still make me do whatever I want."
Lu Zhiqiang lost his balance again, scrambling and rolling, using his hands and feet to scoop the snow out of his collar. The cold made him grimace, but it was quite a thrill.
Finding deer in the snow is fun, but it's incredibly tiring.
Li Ju'an pulled down the hook again, hooked it onto the deer's chin, tugged at the rope, and told Song Desheng to pull it up. He thought to himself, "It won't hurt him anyway. As for Lu Zhiqiang, let's go all out. He's tough enough to handle."
Seven or eight deer were all pulled up, and Li Ju'an also went up by pulling on the rope.
Lu Zhiqiang's hands were trembling. He put his thick cotton-padded coat on the injured Xiao Shi, who was shivering from the cold. He was also afraid that the strong smell of the tiger skin would attract the wolves, so even though he had the tiger skin, he didn't dare to put it on.
Now he told Lao Qian to throw down the tiger skin, quickly put it on his back, and then hang the hook around his waist with a rope, and told Li Ju'an and the others to pull him up.
He was also unlucky. There was a thin hemp rope tied around the connection between the hook and the wooden pole. He stepped on the edge of the pit and had just poked his head out when the thin hemp rope broke. The hook was still tied around his waist, but the hemp rope was pulled out.
"Damn it, even the ropes are picking on me today." He, still wearing the tiger skin, fell into the snowdrift and disappeared from sight.
The group burst into laughter, quickly pulling him up. They were surrounded by their spoils: a large tiger, seven or eight red deer, and tiger cubs in a snowdrift two hundred meters away.
At Gangliangzi, Tiechui was still chasing a smaller tiger cub, the snow kicking up clouds of dust as they ran.
A lot of time has passed, and the hunting dogs are still holding out with the tiger cubs.