Chapter 388: Discovery in the Mountain Stream
"Xiongba, look for the trace of this wild boar. If you find it, you will have enough food to eat for several days."
Lin Heng touched Xiongba's head and said, "As soon as we arrived at the mouth of the stream, we found wild boar footprints. It seemed that they had been here last night."
“Ouch!”
Xiongba lay on the ground, sniffed, then followed the trail forward, with Lin Heng and the other two following closely behind him.
"These two-finger footprints belong to a little wild boar." Hai'an said while tracking.
Father Lin nodded and said, "Little wild boar is good. The meat is not fishy or woody."
"I hope we can find it." Lin Heng smiled. Many times it is difficult to track by relying on footprints or something like that.
After walking for more than ten minutes, they came to a pine forest, and the trail suddenly stopped. They searched nearby for a long time but couldn't find it again.
"It's okay, let's go back and look for ginseng and dig herbs." Lin Heng shook his head. Although he didn't find ginseng, he still picked up a lot of Ganoderma lucidum along the way.
When they returned, they focused more on ginseng. They searched carefully for a whole day, but found nothing even after searching the entire mountain. During that time, they only dug up some other herbs and yams, and picked up some chanterelles.
Apart from these, they placed a few Yama Wang cranes on the animal path, and did not catch even a pheasant.
At dusk, the three of them sat on the top of a high mountain to rest. They could see the mountains stretching out as if to the end, and the vast Taibai Mountains hiding under the sun at the end of their sight.
Bathed in the evening glow, Lin Yue smiled and said, "What a failed day."
"What's the big deal? Which mountain hunter dares to say that he will get a 100% reward?"
Father Lin smiled and shook his head, took out a pot of rice wine he had brought from the mountains and said, "Drink some, and let's go back to the camp."
"good."
Lin Heng smiled and nodded, then he took the kudzu leaves beside him and folded a small wine bowl, filled three bowls with wine, drank it all facing the setting sun, then stood up and walked back.
"There are taro roots by the ditch. Let's dig them up and eat them."
Walking to the edge of the ditch, Lin Heng said in surprise that their current location was further downstream than where they found the poisonous snake yesterday.
"It is indeed taro." Father Lin came over with a hoe and dug out more than ten fist-sized taro. They peeled the skin and washed it on the spot, then filled two bags of water with water and returned to the camp.
Here in the camp, the Ganoderma lucidum and other herbs were half dried after being exposed to the sun all day, and the fire made at noon had been put out, but a pot of unfinished chicken soup was still there.
"Dad, please pack up the herbs and let's go hunting. We might have a chance at dusk." Lin Heng said to his father.
"Okay, but you two shouldn't separate. It's not safe for one person to run around alone," Lin's father said.
"Don't worry." Lin Yue nodded.
They left the small dog Fengshou here to accompany Lin's father, and took Xiongba to continue patrolling the mountains.
They were holding flashlights and were mainly searching along the mountain stream. At night, the bamboo partridges and golden pheasants liked to rest on the trees beside the ditch, and would usually crow before dark.
"Hey, there are quite a few little quails over here."
After walking two or three hundred meters downstream along the stream, Lin Yue made a discovery.
"Leave it to me. After you're done, check to see if there are any quail nests nearby."
As Lin Heng spoke, he took the slingshot and quietly walked up, killing two of them at an interval of five or six meters. The others ran away like the wind.
"Sure enough, there is a nest, but unfortunately there are only three eggs." Lin Yue's voice sounded from behind.
"Take them all." Lin Heng said. He held a slingshot and shot all the birds he could find along the way, not even the green frogs by the mountain stream.
These are mainly brought back to be cooked and fed to the two dogs. They are very tired after running in the mountains all day, and they cannot only eat starch, they need some meat to supplement.
Before I knew it, the sun had set, there was still a last hint of yellow on the horizon, and the moon and stars had already appeared.
"Listen, that's the bamboo partridge calling, right?"
Suddenly Lin Heng stopped and said.
Lin Yue listened and said excitedly: "Yes, this is a group of them. They seem to be in the row of thorny fir trees opposite?"
Bamboo partridges are a very good kind of prey. Although they are smaller than golden roosters, each weighs about 7 taels, and only 5 taels of meat can be obtained after killing them all. However, there are usually 6 or 7 of them in a group, so you can always get a good harvest with one shot.
"Probably." Lin Heng nodded.
The two men approached and listened carefully. After determining the approximate location, they did not move forward immediately. They remembered the location and waited until it was completely dark.
Then they continued to move on to other places, and set a noose wherever they found traces of prey.
Soon it was completely dark. Unfortunately, they didn't find any golden pheasants or pheasants. They walked back to the thorny fir forest and searched for a long time with flashlights but couldn't find any.
"here!"
Suddenly Lin Yue spoke, and Lin Heng turned his head and saw six or seven bamboo partridges resting on the branches of the thorny fir tree above.
"You hit me, and I follow." Lin Heng said, and opened his mouth silently.
When you can't cover your ears to avoid the sound, opening your mouth is the best option.
Lin Yue paused for a moment, and with a bang, two bullets from the double-barreled shotgun were fired at the same time, and a large amount of iron sand scattered towards the group of bamboo partridges.
Accompanied by continuous echoes, the bamboo partridges fell down like stones without any struggle, and not a single one survived.
"Haha, there are six of them. Today's trip is not in vain." Lin Heng picked them up and walked over and said happily.
"Indeed, it's enough for us to eat for a few days." Lin Yue said with a smile
Lin Heng said, "This time we killed them and put them in a pool of water in the mountain stream to freeze. I suspect the water there is only about 5 or 6 degrees."
The reason he said this is because he found tadpoles in the pond today, and they were as big as mineral water bottle caps. It was incredible to find tadpoles in August.
But actually this is easy to explain. Tadpoles need temperature to develop. This situation often occurs when the temperature is too low and there is no food.
He had seen these huge tadpoles not only here, but also in some places in the Red Maple Mountain stream and in other places.
The common feature of these places is that the water is extremely cold. He reached his hand into the water to catch tadpoles, but he couldn't bear the cold for thirty seconds.
Therefore, such a low water temperature can definitely keep the meat in it for two or three days without spoiling.
"Okay." Lin Yue nodded. He knew this too. When he was a child, he caught normal tadpoles and threw them into a super cold pond. Then the tadpoles grew bigger without growing.
After searching the area for some more time and failing to find any other prey, the two men came to the stream and walked upstream while checking to see if there were any fish or anything.
"It really is. Look at this fish. It's so big, more than ten centimeters long." Lin Yue said in shock as he dived into the water.
They saw stream grouper, grouper, and giant loach in the water. Perhaps because no one caught them, these fish had all grown to their physiological limits.
"Let's catch them with a net tomorrow." Lin Heng said with a smile. The water level was a little high right now, and it was too cold. He didn't want to reach out and catch them at all.
They brought small fish nets with them, so they can cut down a tree and assemble them tomorrow to catch fish.
"It's really big. This fish is also very beautiful."
Lin Yue sighed, and the two of them walked up while talking. Even the Xiongba of Shuibing was unwilling to touch it. The mountain stream was completely blocked by trees on both sides, and it was difficult to see the sun at ordinary times.
The two men kept moving forward with flashlights in their hands. Suddenly, Lin Heng rushed forward and stepped on it without even saying a word.
After stepping on it, Lin Heng exclaimed: "Damn, what a big old turtle! It bit my foot!"
The freezing water made him unable to hold on. When the water cleared, he saw an old turtle the size of a human face biting the upper of his shoe and struggling.
"Your hands are getting faster and faster." Lin Yue said admiringly.
"Of course not. It will be bad if this guy runs away if it's too late."
As Lin Heng spoke, he handed the flashlight to his elder brother and reached out to grab the turtle. The cold water turtles in the deep mountains are more valuable and nutritious than those in the big rivers.
Lin Heng grabbed his neck with one hand and his body with the other, and pulled hard twice before he pulled it off, but a piece of plastic on the shoe upper was missing.
"Although it looks like it only weighs three or four pounds, I estimate that this guy must have lived for at least ten years." Lin Heng said excitedly as he looked at this guy.
The belly of this wild turtle is snow-white with obvious scratches on it. There are many rocks in the mountains and it is not flat at all.
"Of course. You can sell this for hundreds of dollars if you take it to Taibai Hotel." Lin Yue said with a smile. He had seen the wild animal purchase list that Lin Heng got from Taibai Hotel. This kind of deep mountain cold water turtle costs hundreds of dollars each and is very valuable.
"It is indeed this price." Lin Heng said with a smile.
Putting the turtle in a cloth bag, Lin Heng said, "Let's go. Maybe we can see it again if we go up."
"Yes, there are not many people coming to this deep mountain, so there should be quite a few." Lin Yue nodded.
However, when they returned to the shelter, they did not find any trace of the turtle.
Carrying the things back to the shelter, Father Lin saw the flashlights of the two and said, "How did you harvest today? I have prepared the meal."
"This time the harvest was pretty good. I shot six bamboo partridges, my brother got a turtle, and there were a lot of birds and frogs."
Lin Yue came over holding a bamboo chicken and said.
Lin Heng put the turtle on the ground and poured out all the prey in the bag, including more than twenty small birds of various kinds and a dozen frogs.
"Why are you making these? Nothing else can be eaten except quail, right?" Father Lin widened his eyes.
"This is food for Xiongba and the others. Have they boiled some water for you?" Lin Heng asked. They brought an iron pot and an aluminum pot with them.
"No, I made rice in the evening." Father Lin shook his head, then looked at the old turtle and bamboo chicken and said happily.
"Then let's boil some water after dinner." Lin Heng nodded. They had already fetched the water.
We had rice for dinner, and the dish was the leftover pheasant and grouse roasted with taro from yesterday, which went really well with a little dried shrimp and chili sauce.
Tonight the three of them finished all the chicken soup and rice, then took the pot to the stream to wash it, filled it with water and came back to boil it.
After cooking, blanch the bamboo chicken and the small birds first, pluck out the feathers, add water back into the pot, cook the small birds and frogs in, and wait for a while before you have enough to eat.
They went to the stream with flashlights, gutted the bamboo chicken, cleaned it, and removed the internal organs for the chicken noodles tomorrow morning.
As for the chicken, they found the pond that Lin Heng mentioned and tied six chickens together and put them in. There were not many stream groupers in the pond, so they just ignored them as they couldn't eat much.
But fearing that other animals would come to steal the food, Lin Heng set up four Yama Wang Hangs on both sides of the bank. If any prey really came, it would be caught.
"What are you going to do tomorrow?" Lin's father asked on the way back.
Lin Heng said, "We will continue to dig herbs and collect Ganoderma lucidum during the day, and look for ginseng. Morning and evening are the prime times for hunting."
Lin Yue thought for a moment and said, "I suggest that we go up along the mountain stream tomorrow and look for prey and ginseng on the mountains on both sides. When we find the end, we can come back and then look down."
"Can."
Lin Heng felt that this method was quite reasonable. There would be more prey and medicinal herbs if one was close to a water source.
After returning to the shelter, the three of them ate two wax gourds and some schisandra chinensis while looking at the starry sky outside, and then returned to the rattan bed to rest.
There was no conversation that night, and I was woken up again at dawn the next morning. You can't sleep in in the mountains, these birds won't allow it.
The three of them got up early in the morning. They fried simple chicken offal in one pot and put noodles in another pot. Finally, they added them together and mixed them, added some chili sauce and it became a delicious breakfast.
The two dogs ate a lot of meat yesterday, but today they can only eat noodles because there is no other meat for them to eat.
After eating, the three of them dried the herbs and continued to go up the mountain. They hunted until seven o'clock but got nothing, and the traps set yesterday did not catch any prey.
So they changed from hunters to herbalists and started collecting herbs.
This direction is not very good today. There are few Ganoderma lucidum on the road, but there are more Paris polyphylla, and no trace of ginseng is seen yet.
They didn't feel hungry on the road because they could see wax gourd and schisandra chinensis from time to time. They ate the wax gourd and took the schisandra chinensis back to dry. They got a lot of schisandra chinensis yesterday.
Going up the stream, they were surprised that the water flow did not seem to decrease much as they went higher.
At noon they stopped by a large pond, caught some stream grouper and roasted them, roasted three yams, and roasted nine green lake snappers. The three of them ate a little meat and fed the rest to the dog.
Although there was no pot, this lunch was still pretty good. The roasted wild yam was the most delicious, even better than meat.
"It will be five days in two days. Our hope of finding ginseng is slim." Lin Yue sighed.
"Forget it if you can't find it. The Ganoderma lucidum this time can be sold for two or three hundred yuan. It will be good for other herbs at home." Father Lin said with a smile.
"Let's go, maybe the ginseng is just ahead." Lin Heng said with a smile.
After walking a few steps, several thick horsetail pines appeared nearby, and the three of them suddenly smelled a fragrance.
"Could it be Matsutake?" Lin Yue said in shock.
"It should be. Look, Xiongba and Fengshou have both found a place."
Lin Heng said, pointing to the hillside above.
"The parachutes have been opened. They have been out for a while." Lin Yue smiled as he came closer and took a look.
"Let's look for it." Lin Heng had already started digging with a wooden stick. This thing is delicious if you eat it yourself instead of selling it.
After a while, the three of them dug out all the matsutake mushrooms. Lin Heng and his father dug four each, and the eldest brother Lin Yue dug five.
Then the three of them searched the surrounding woods carefully again and found eight more. This was the place where Lin Heng had ever found the most matsutake mushrooms. He guessed that it was because no one came to this deep mountain.
"It's a pity that this is all I have. I can only go back and eat it myself." Lin Yue said with a smile.
"That's not bad." Lin Heng smiled, and they continued to explore forward.
After walking for more than an hour, Father Lin in front suddenly exclaimed: "Come and see, my God!"
(End of this chapter)
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