Return to the small mountain village in 1983

Chapter 26 The fight over grouse

"Wang!!"

The moment he saw the rabbit, Xiongba ran after him.

After running about thirty meters, he knocked down one rabbit and bit it, while the other one disappeared.

"Nice job!"

Lin Heng watched Xiongba come back with the rabbit in his mouth and praised it fiercely.

"Ouch~"

Xiong Ba raised his head and made a happy voice, signaling Lin Heng to catch the rabbit.

"It's a pity. I'm still inexperienced, otherwise I could have caught two." Lin Heng took the rabbit and sighed deeply. It felt like such a pity. This might be the only gain this afternoon.

Weighing it up, we found that this gray rabbit weighed four or five kilograms, and it was frightened to death when it was bitten by the bully.

Rabbit skins and squirrel skins are about the same price, four or five yuan each. The most valuable ones are suede skins, fox skins, mink skins, antelope skins, leopard skins, and black bear skins are even more valuable.

In this era, the Qinling Mountains were rich in materials. All these things were available, but the quantity was not as high as in the Greater Khingan Mountains.

"Lin Heng, what did you get?"

At this time, the voice of my uncle Li Baiquan came not far away.

After two hours of cutting down trees, he saw smoke coming towards him while he was taking a break.

"A hare, Xiong Ba caught it." Lin Heng said with a smile.

"What a dog. Where did you catch it?" My uncle was envious. This dog was much smarter than the one at home.

"I picked it up in the town, but I didn't expect it to be so smart." Lin Heng said with a smile.

"Then when he grows up, he will breed my dog. My dog ​​happens to be a female." The uncle looked at Xiong Ba and said.

"That's no problem." Lin Heng agreed.

The uncle looked at Xiongba again, squatted down and touched it. His eyes were full of love. This dog had such a tall frame and looked unusual.

"Come on, let's look around again to see if there are any other prey."

My uncle is also a hunter himself, and his skills are pretty good. At this time, my hands started to itch, and I was eager to try Lin Heng's slingshot.

Walking into Tongshugou on this side of the mountain, the forest gradually grows taller.

Uncle Li Baiquan was shooting everywhere with a slingshot to practice his skills, while Lin Heng followed Xiong Ba everywhere to find prey.

"Hey, it's Gastrodia elata."

Suddenly Lin Heng stopped, looked at the plant in front of him and said, this is a stem from Gastrodia elata, orange yellow, more than one meter high, with small flower spikes on it, but they have not bloomed.

Gastrodia elata, like mushrooms, uses parasitic mycelium to grow. Flowers appear only in May and June every year and disappear soon. They do not have leaves like ordinary plants and can photosynthesize.

Generally, where there is Gastrodia elata, there must be Armillaria fungus, because Gastrodia elata is symbiotic with this kind of mushroom, which is a very strange phenomenon in nature.

Although it is rather strange, the purchase price of Gastrodia elata is not expensive. Lin Heng took a look at it, took a knife to cut an X-shaped mark on several trees nearby, and left.

Now is not the time to dig Gastrodia elata. The Gastrodia elata is the best and most plump in July and August.

"Oh, if I had known I had called Lin Heng and you came, I would have let a furry mouse escape."

At this time, uncle Li Baiquan's regretful voice came from the front. It was obvious that he had made a mistake in hairing the mouse.

Hairy mice are squirrels, as they are called in the local dialect, because squirrels have particularly hairy tails.

"I might not be able to hit it, the squirrel is too small." Lin Heng shook his head.

"Let's go over there and have a look. I don't believe we won't be able to catch a prey today." My uncle said unwillingly, and walked through Tongshugou to a taller forest.

Lin Heng looked at the sky and estimated that it was past five or six. It would be dark at half past seven, so he could still explore a little.

If it hadn't been for the recent construction of a house, he would have wanted to go into the mountains and explore for a few days. Only in autumn would there be more animals near human habitations.

Really large prey are found in deep mountains and old forests.

"Wang Wang!!"

Not long after walking into the forest, Xiong Ba suddenly called out again, and Lin Heng quickly walked over. “Well done, it’s a morel mushroom again.”

Lin Heng looked at Xiong Ba, who was shaking his head and tail and smiling from ear to ear. His sense of smell was really good at finding fungi.

"Ow~"

Xiong Ba was touched by Lin Heng and his eyes narrowed, enjoying it very much.

"You dog can still find fungi?" My uncle came over and was even more envious.

His dog doesn't have such a powerful skill.

"Yes, I just discovered it too." Lin Heng chuckled. This was indeed Xiong Ba's unique skill.

The morels on the ground here are another kind of delicious morels, they look fatter, and the wrinkles on the surface are light yellow.

It looks cuter than black-veined morels and tastes more fragrant. It is the most delicious among morels.

A total of more than thirty were picked, weighing almost two kilograms. This harvest put a smile on Lin Heng's face.

It would be great to have a dog that can find fungi. People have limited vision in the woods and the complex environment makes it easy to miss fungi.

However, dogs rely on their keen sense of smell to easily detect that even some fungi covered under leaves cannot escape their noses.

Uncle Li Baiquan looked at Xiong Ba and wanted to take him home immediately. How could Lin Heng find such a good dog? He was so lucky.

"Gada, Gada!!"

At this moment, the cry of a grouse suddenly came from the distance, and then I saw the grouse flapping its wings and flying through the sky, landing in the pine forest a few hundred meters away.

"It's a black-billed grouse!"

Lin Heng and his uncle looked surprised at the same time and hurried towards the place where the grouse landed.

Although grouse are not large in size, with a maximum weight of only two kilograms, the meat is much more delicious than pheasant, similar to bamboo pheasant, and second only to golden pheasant, which is the top delicacy.

"Wang Wang!"

Before he could reach it, Xiongba suddenly shouted.

Lin Heng glanced at him and reprimanded: "Don't bark, or you'll scare away the grouse."

"Ow~"

Xiongba screamed again with some grievance.

Before Lin Heng could understand what it meant, there was the sound of movement in the distance, and then an old man wearing military green camouflage clothes walked out, holding a shotgun in his hand.

"I discovered this black-billed grouse. You guys should go elsewhere." The old man glanced at Lin Heng and the other two and said first.

"Mr. Tian, ​​you are unreasonable. We arrived together. Why do you say you discovered it by yourself?"

Uncle Li Baiquan spoke first and was very dissatisfied.

This old man is none other than Murakami's old Orion Tian Baishun, the old man Lin Heng met when he came back from the mountain for the first time.

"What the hell, I've been here for a long time. Of course I found it. If you don't leave, I won't be polite."

Tian Baishun cursed in a low voice. If he hadn't been afraid of scaring away the grouse, his spit would have hit Li Baiquan's face.

"Old man, please leave. You can't scare anyone with the grouse flying over from the ditch below." Lin Heng did not back down.

Just kidding, that’s quite a few grouse.

Tian Baishun glanced at the bow and arrow in Lin Heng's hand, and rolled his cloudy eyes, revealing a hint of shrewdness: "Since you don't want to leave, how about we compete?"

"Compare?" Lin Heng frowned and looked at Tian Baishun: "How?"

　Some people may ask why the setting is in the Qinling Mountains, because the author lives in this large mountain range and has a good understanding of the customs and customs here.

　　I am not familiar with the Daxinganling Mountains in Northeast China, so I chose one I am familiar with to write about.

　　And there are a lot of prey in the Qinling Mountains, but now there are very few.

　　When my father was young, around [-], he saw clouded leopards and wolves.

　　
  　
  (End of this chapter)