Chapter 26: Grouse Scramble
“Woof!!”
The moment he saw the rabbit, Xiongba chased after it.
After running about thirty meters, he pinned one rabbit down and bit it, and the other one ran away without a trace.
“Well done!”
Lin Heng watched Xiongba coming back with the rabbit in his mouth and praised him highly.
“Awoooooo~”
Xiongba raised his head and made a happy sound, motioning Lin Heng to catch the rabbit.
"What a pity! I am still inexperienced, otherwise I could have caught two." Lin Heng took the rabbit and sighed deeply, feeling it was such a pity. This might be the only gain this afternoon.
After weighing it, I found that the gray rabbit was at least four or five pounds. It was frightened to death when Xiongba bit it.
The price of rabbit skin and squirrel skin is similar, four or five yuan per piece. The valuable ones are suede skin, fox skin, mink skin, antelope skin, leopard skin, and black bear skin are even more valuable.
In this era, the Qinling Mountains are rich in resources and all these things are available, but the quantity is not as much as that in the Greater Khingan Range.
"Lin Heng, what did you get?"
At this time, the voice of my uncle Li Baiquan came from not far away.
After chopping trees for two hours, he saw smoke coming while taking a break.
"It's a wild rabbit, caught by Xiongba." Lin Heng said with a smile.
"What a good dog! Where did you catch it?" My uncle-in-law was envious. This dog was much smarter than the one he had.
"I picked it up in town. I didn't expect it to be so smart." Lin Heng said with a smile.
"Then when it grows up, breed it with my dog. My dog happens to be a female." My uncle-in-law looked at Xiongba and said.
"That's no problem." Lin Heng agreed readily.
My uncle-in-law looked at Xiongba again, squatted down and touched him, his eyes full of admiration. The dog's skeleton was so tall and big, it looked unusual.
"Let's go and look around to see if there are other prey."
My uncle-in-law was also a hunter, and his skills were pretty good. He was itching to try out Lin Heng's slingshot.
Walking into Tongshugou on this side of the mountain, the forest gradually becomes taller.
Uncle Li Baiquan was shooting around with a slingshot, practicing his skills, while Lin Heng followed Xiongba in search of prey.
"Hey, it's Gastrodia elata."
Suddenly Lin Heng stopped, looked at the plant in front of him and said, this is the stem of Gastrodia elata, it is orange-yellow, more than one meter high, and there are small flower spikes on it, but they are not blooming.
Gastrodia elata, like mushrooms, grows parasitically by using mycelium. It only produces flowers in May and June every year, which then disappear quickly. It does not have leaves like ordinary plants and can photosynthesize.
Generally, where there is Gastrodia elata, there must be Honey fungus, because Gastrodia elata coexists with this mushroom, which is a very strange phenomenon in nature.
Although it was rather peculiar, the purchase price of Gastrodia elata was not expensive. Lin Heng took a look at it, took a knife and cut an X-shaped mark on a few trees nearby, then left.
Now is not the time to dig Gastrodia elata. Gastrodia elata in July and August is the best and most plump.
"Oh, I should have called Lin Heng to come. I let a hairy mouse run away."
At this time, the regretful voice of my uncle Li Baiquan came from the front. It was obvious that he had made a mistake in catching the mouse.
A hairy mouse is a squirrel, which is what it is called in the local dialect because the squirrel has a lot of hair on its tail.
"I may not be able to hit it. The squirrel is too small." Lin Heng shook his head.
"Let's go over there and take a look. I don't believe we can't catch any prey today." My uncle-in-law said unwillingly, and crossed the Tongshu Valley and came to a taller forest.
Lin Heng looked at the sky and estimated that it was around five or six o'clock. It would be dark at half past seven, so he could still explore.
If he hadn't been building a house recently, he would have wanted to go into the mountains to explore for a few days. There are more animals in places near human habitation only in autumn.
The really large prey are all in the deep mountains and forests.
“Woof woof!!”
Not long after entering the forest, Xiongba suddenly called out again, and Lin Heng hurried over.
"Nice job, it's another piece of morels."
Lin Heng couldn't stop smiling as he watched Xiongba shaking his head and tail at him. Its sense of smell for finding mushrooms was simply amazing.
“Ouch~~”
Xiongba narrowed his eyes when Lin Heng touched him, enjoying it very much.
"Your dog can also find mushrooms?" My uncle-in-law came over and became even more envious.
His dog doesn't have such powerful skills.
"Yes, I just discovered it too." Lin Heng chuckled. This was indeed Xiongba's unique trick.
The morels on the ground here are another kind of delicious morels. They look fatter and have light yellow wrinkles on the surface.
It looks cuter than the black-veined morel and tastes more fragrant, making it the most delicious of all morels.
In total, he picked more than thirty, weighing almost two kilograms. This harvest made Lin Heng's face full of smiles.
It's great to have a dog that can find mushrooms. People have limited vision in the woods, and the environment is complex, so it's easy to miss mushrooms.
However, dogs can easily discover mushrooms with their keen sense of smell; even some mushrooms covered under leaves cannot escape their noses.
Uncle Li Baiquan looked at Xiongba and wanted to take him home immediately. How did Lin Heng find such a good dog? He was so lucky.
“Gada, gada!!”
At this moment, the call of grouse suddenly came from the distance, and then the grouse was seen 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-in-law both showed surprise and hurried towards the place where the grouse fell.
Although grouse are not big in size, with the largest weighing only two kilograms, their meat is much tastier than that of pheasants and is similar in taste to that of bamboo chickens, second only to the top delicacy such as the golden pheasant.
“Woof woof!”
Before he got there, Xiongba suddenly shouted.
Lin Heng glanced at him and scolded him, "Don't shout, be careful not to scare away the grouse."
“Ouch~”
Xiongba cried out again, somewhat aggrieved.
Before Lin Heng could figure out what it meant, he heard footsteps in the distance, and then an old man in military green camouflage clothes came out with a shotgun in his hand.
"I discovered this black-billed grouse. You guys should go somewhere else." The old man glanced at Lin Heng and the others and spoke first.
"Mr. Tian, you are being unreasonable. We got here together. How can you say you discovered it yourself?"
My uncle-in-law Li Baiquan spoke first and was very dissatisfied.
This old man was none other than the old hunter Tian Baishun from the village, the old man whom Lin Heng met when he came back from the mountain for the first time.
"Bullshit, 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 the grouse away, his spit would have landed on Li Baiquan's face.
"You'd better leave, old man. The grouse are flying over from the ditch below, you can't scare them." Lin Heng did not give in.
Just kidding, that’s a lot of grouse.
Tian Baishun glanced at the bow and arrow in Lin Heng's hand, his cloudy eyes turned, revealing a shrewd look: "Since you don't want to leave, how about we have a competition?"
"Let's compare?" Lin Heng frowned and looked at Tian Baishun: "How do we compare?"
Some people may ask why the background is set in Qinling Mountains. This is because the author lives in this mountain range and is more familiar with the local customs and culture.
I am not familiar with the Greater Khingan Range in Northeast China, so I chose one that I am familiar with to write about.
There are plenty of prey in the Qinling Mountains, but there are fewer of them now.
When my dad was a child, around 1990, he saw clouded leopards and wolves.
(End of this chapter)
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