Forest Farm 1985: Raise a bear cub to climb the mountain

Chapter 236 Night Beast (Two in One)
Dai Song and his companions hurried up the hill, but Huagu was one step ahead of everyone else and jumped to the side of the black blind cat, biting its ear and pulling hard.

"Good boy! My brother!" Dai Bo looked at the black bear who was still steaming, his mouth almost stretched to his ears.

"How much would the gallbladder of such a big bear be worth? At least three or four hundred yuan!"

"It's hard to say. It depends on the quality of the bear bile, right?" Jiang Haohan wiped his mouth with his hand and barely suppressed his smile.

Dai Song did not answer directly, but smiled and looked at Li Qinghai who was carefully scratching Erhan's head.
Li Qinghai understood and cheerfully explained what was going on to the two of them.

In fact, it is nothing more than the difference between grass gall and copper gall, but the old man has been hunting for a lifetime and has many stories in his mind.

No matter what you ask him, he can tell you the corresponding story and talk to you about it.

Now he started talking about the time when he and his old friend went hunting together and ended up taking out bear gall and some human body parts from the stomach of a big bear.

In fact, this was not uncommon in that era.

People were poor at that time, and people's status was even lower than that of some large animals. Some hooligans didn't even have their own land and had to go into the mountains to make a living.

But the mountains are full of dangers and it is not any easier than the outside world. Not only is the land difficult to cultivate, but you will also encounter wild beasts and mountain animals every other day.

Therefore, when hunters went up the mountain to hunt, they would often find human remains in the stomachs of some wild beasts.

Most of the time, they would immediately press it down with a few stones and leave a mark on the nearest tree, which would be considered a monument.

The more particular ones, including the more sophisticated old bosses, will use the organs of wild animals for sacrifice, as a way to help the victims to be liberated. In this way, they will not be trapped here and harm others and find replacements, and can enter reincarnation early. In fact, it is also a disguised wish for safety.

While Li Qinghai was saying this, Dai Song cut open the belly of the black bear and took out the bear gallbladder inside.

Erhan immediately went forward and sniffed around.

The others also looked over and saw Dai Song holding a brass bear gall as big as a lightbulb in his hand.

Jiang Haohan and Dai Bo, uncle and nephew, burst into laughter. The old man also pouted and said "oh", then quickly walked over.

"Copper gall! Put it in a small cloth bag and weigh it for me!

Our hunters’ hands are like scales. We can tell exactly how much something weighs just by passing it over our hands! "

Dai Song wrapped up the bear gall with a smile and handed it to Li Qinghai, who weighed it in his palm and could no longer restrain his expression.
"Oh my! Sure, Songzi, this gallbladder is worth nearly 15 cents! If you dry it and sell it, it will fetch at least a thousand dollars!"

One liang and five qian is 75 grams, which is a rare large size considering that the average black bear gallbladder weighs about 50 grams.

"Okay, let's take it to town and sell it, and the money from the bear gall will be divided equally among the four of us." Dai Song waved his hand with great heroism.

"That won't do. This was all done by Erhan with great effort. I didn't contribute anything at all!"

Li Qinghai refused immediately, and Jiang Haohan and Dai Bai nodded repeatedly after hearing it.

Unexpectedly, Dai Song said,

"You can't say that. Recently, everyone has helped to take care of Erhan. If Erhan gets the goods, shouldn't we all get a share of the profits?"

Li Qinghai blinked his eyes. What Dai Song said was right. It was just like when they borrowed hunting dogs to go up the mountain and got the prey, they would give some meat to the dog owner. They had indeed put a lot of effort in taking care of Erhan recently. The only difference was that unlike raising hunting dogs, they liked this lively little fat bear from the bottom of their hearts.

Especially Li Qinghai, the more he looked at Erhan, the more he liked him, and he even had a tendency to compare Erhan with his own grandson.

Dai Bai and Jiang Haohan looked at each other, and after thinking about it, they realized that there was indeed no way to refute this statement, so they happily accepted it and went forward to help Dai Song deal with the black bear.

Deep in the snow-capped mountains in the north, Beshka and others stopped in front of a trail of footprints.

Bedlimov knelt on one knee, looking at the footprints in front of him in silence. Beside him, Mona held a big axe in her hand and squinted at Beshka, not wanting to miss any expression on his face. Xie Ning was alert to any movement around him, fearing that the owner of the footprints was lurking somewhere and would suddenly jump out and kill someone.

"Lieutenant Beshka, tell me, are these footprints left by the Siberian tiger you mentioned?" Bedlimov's eyes were as sharp as an ice pick.

"Hmm~" Beshka shrugged, his expression very conflicted. "It's hard to say. I first encountered it further south. It took me two days to walk day and night to get from there to the river. After such a long time, it's natural for the tiger to move here with its strength."

Upon hearing this, Mona looked at Bedlimov, and both of them showed a hint of recognition in their eyes.

But then Beshka said, "But Siberian tigers are creatures with a strong sense of territory.

Each tiger's territory is planned according to the distribution of local animals and has different shapes. Some are relatively regular, while others are completely irregular ribbon-like.

If this is the only tiger around, it is most likely this one, but if there are other tigers around, it may not be the one I encountered."

People frowned when listening to Beshka's words. It was the same as saying nothing. If this territory belonged to only one tiger, then there would be only one tiger around.

Xie Ning looked around and poked Beshka with the butt of his gun.
"You guys specialize in this, so you can't judge the size of the body based on the size and depth of the footprints?"

"I'm sorry." Beshka smiled, with a hint of cruelty in his narrowed eyes, "I really don't know how to do this job. This kind of task belongs to the special investigators in the team.

My squad's scout is very good at this and in many ways he's been incredibly useful and valuable."

"Then what can you do?" Mona raised her rough eyebrows. For some reason, she felt inexplicably disgusted when Beshka said this.

"Aim, shoot, plan your route, and develop your strategy." Beshka shrugged the gun on his shoulders, even though there were no bullets in it.

"Okay, then you plan how we should go now." Bedlimov slowly stood up, "Don't have any bad ideas, if we find something wrong, we will shoot your brains out without hesitation.

Don't forget where we are. We can blame those barbarians for anything we do to you."

"Of course." Beshka didn't care at all, pointing to the trail in the snow that originally went north but suddenly turned back to the south, "Let's follow the tiger. The direction it's heading is exactly the direction of our destination."

"You'd better not play any tricks!" Xie Ning emphasized.

Upon hearing this, Beshka shook off the gun on his shoulder and threw it to Xie Ning under the hostile gazes of the three people, "If you think you can accomplish anything with this fire stick, then let's go back.

I once came face to face with a Siberian tiger, and its speed and reaction far exceeded that of humans.

If the three of you are so uneasy facing me, then I find it hard to believe that the three of you can make effective decisions facing that Siberian tiger."

"Who are you looking down on?" Xie Ning raised his gun and prepared to hit him, but was stopped by Bedlimov.
"He's right, Xie Ning. The strength and speed of Siberian tigers are far beyond the reach of us humans. They are natural killers, and they kill everything they see with absolute violence.

But we have the advantage of numbers, Beshka, when we get close to the Siberian tiger, I will give you bullets.

You know what to do when the time comes.”

Beshka smiled and nodded, then took a step forward and headed towards the steep hill in the south.

After the sun made its last struggle on the mountain ridge, it sank unwillingly, with a few light green neon lights occasionally appearing on the dark blue night.

In the woods, several people sat around a campfire.

Li Qinghai was dipping bear bile into Jiang Haohan's small kettle.

Thanks to Jiang Haohan's complete equipment, otherwise the bear gall would have to be sold frozen in the snow. Although it would not go bad, the bear gall would shrink once frozen and the price would plummet.

The others pierced the bear meat with branches and roasted it over charcoal.

Although this bear is a walking beast, it still has a lot of fat on its body.

Dai Song skewered the meat together with alternating fat and lean meat, and roasted them over charcoal fire, and the skewers immediately made a sizzling sound.

Tiny bubbles of oil scrambled to squeeze out of the surface of the fat, condensed together, and flowed onto the bear meat. The heat from the charcoal fire raised the oil temperature and naturally formed a fried layer. The bear meat on the surface quickly changed color under the dual effects of heat and bear oil.

Dai Song cut the meat with a knife, and pink blood immediately flowed out of the meat.

In the future, this action might make many Michelin chefs exclaim that it is a waste of food, but at the moment, Dai Song knew that this was the only way to make the most delicious roasted bear meat.

Because the black bear mainly relies on wild fruits and pine cones to gain weight in the fall, meat only accounts for a very small part of the black bear's diet because it is laborious to catch.

Due to their quantity and variety, wild fruits naturally cannot be compared with the pine cones that fill the mountains.

Pine cones have a strong pine oil smell. Black bears eat pine cones in autumn and continue to look for them in spring. Over the years, the pine oil smell has marinated the black bears, which makes the bear meat taste evil.

When at home, Jiang Weiqun would blanch the bear meat repeatedly in water, four or five times in a row, until the pine oil smell in the bear meat was completely blanched out. Then she would stir-fry it with spices. No matter how she cooked it, it would be more fragrant. But the conditions for this were not available in the mountains, so Dai Song could only bleed the bear meat while grilling it.

Although the effect is not as good as blanching, it is better than eating it directly.

The bear meat prepared by Dai Song tasted just okay, and everyone hadn't eaten normal meat for several days, so when they had bear meat to eat, they all ate it with groans.

Erhan and Huagu couldn't wait any longer. As soon as the meat cooled down a little, the two little ones couldn't wait to finish it.

Erhan was injured because of the fierce battle with Hei Xia Zi.

The main problem is that the skin and flesh on the back of his neck were torn apart by the black bear, but fortunately the area is not very large. As long as you pay a little attention and don't let water accumulate inside, there will be no problem.

Li Qinghai suggested using a knife to make a cut so that if there was any water accumulation, the inside could be squeezed out immediately, but Jiang Haohan and Dai Song both opposed this.

The uncle and nephew had surprisingly consistent opinions. They both believed that with Erhan's self-healing ability, there was no need to worry about such a minor injury. If it really didn't work, just give Erhan some anti-inflammatory drugs. Jiang Haohan brought a lot of these things anyway, so it would be a waste if they were not used.

After taking care of Erhan, they all went into their shacks and prepared to sleep.

In the distance, Zheng Xiaojian poked half of his head out from behind a tree, trembling. After confirming that everyone had rested, he stuck close to the tree and stepped on the shallow snow to move forward with great effort. As he moved, he kept muttering, "Dai Song, I'm going to kill you! I'm going to fucking kill you..."

Although he said this, his body couldn't help but move to the downwind side of the camp.

Because he also wanted bear meat.

No, to be precise, he would die if he didn't eat something.

Dai Song and his gang rushed north like animals every day, running here and there for the entire day without stopping. As a cripple, you can imagine how hard it was for me to keep up with Dai Song but not fall too far behind.

In order to prevent the smell of bear meat from attracting wild beasts, the black bear was placed next to an old elm stump fifty meters away from the wind outlet of the camp.

Zheng Xiaojian carefully moved over and when he touched the frozen bear meat, he couldn't help but yelled:
"Dai Song! Wait until I'm full! Then I'll kill you!"

Without thinking, he dove into the meat, and not only did he almost lose his teeth, but his tongue also got stuck to the meat.

"Hey! Fuck... You won't let me eat the meat properly, right? Dai Song, just wait until I'm full!"

Zheng Xiaojian squatted on the ground, whimpering and moaning. It took him a long time to pull his tongue off the frozen bear meat. He held the icy cold tongue in his mouth, unable to move. Zheng Xiaojian burst into tears.

"Oh, I'm so wet!"

Now his tongue was frozen and Zheng Xiaojian couldn’t even speak properly.

But after a while of sadness, his stomach started to growl again. He quickly cheered himself up, wiped his tears, and tried to cut the bear meat with a knife.

As he was cutting the meat, his tears began to flow uncontrollably.

"Oh, I'm so wet! I'm so wet!"

His tongue was frozen, but he was still cursing. Zheng Xiaojian was not feeling sorry for himself, but the bear meat was so frozen that it was impossible to cut it with just a knife!

When stealing meat, he couldn't make a big fuss by hitting the back of the knife with a wooden lump to chop the meat. He just gritted his teeth and worked hard on the frozen meat.

It has to be said that what Dai Song and his gang did was really "extremely bad".

The easy-to-cut meat on the black bear was cut off while it was fresh and hot and put into Erhan's backpack. The only thing left was a set of sleds, which served as a simple "bear-pulled sled". Erhan put his food package in the sleds, put a rope through the sleds, and Erhan dragged it along, which saved the little fat bear a lot of energy.

This made Zheng Xiaojian very difficult. He sawed the meat for a long time in the dark, only to find that he was struggling with the femoral bone from beginning to end.

Not a bit of meat was cut off, but a very obvious knife mark was left on the bone.

Zheng Xiaojian felt guilty, so he quickly grabbed a handful of snow to fill the knife marks, and then melted the snow, praying that the gap would not be visible after the snow water froze.

Just as he was busy working alone, there was a very slight sound of trees trembling suddenly coming from the woods ahead.

Zheng Xiaojian's ears moved and he quickly looked up into the forest.

The forest was pitch black, but the noise just now was real.

He felt something was wrong. His years of hunting had made him more sensitive to danger than most people. He quickly retracted his knife and returned the way he had come.

Just when Zheng Xiaojian jumped back into the snow pit where he was hiding in the forest, he saw a majestic figure appear next to the black bear's bones.

In the darkness, the outline of its body is vague, but its powerful muscles, explosive facial whiskers, and long tail that stir in the darkness like a snake are visible.

Whenever it looks towards the campfire in the camp, it has a pair of round yellow eyes that look like small light bulbs.

There is no mistake. Zheng Xiaojian was sure that he could not have seen it wrong.

It’s the mountain god!

(End of this chapter)