American Hunting: Starting with Solitary Life in the Wilderness

Chapter 169 The Crisis of the Temporary Holding Pool and the Trap

He ate slowly, savoring the hard-won food.

However, his thoughts had already drifted outside the shelter, to the intertidal zone he depended on for survival and the temporary holding pool where he stored food.

He began to think about what he had seen during his morning patrol.

The natural pool he used to temporarily hold seafood, although deeper than the shallow pools on the shore, had already developed a large amount of broken ice.

The water temperature had clearly dropped to freezing point, and he knew that in a few days, the puddle would be completely sealed off from the surface by a thick layer of hard ice.

He put down the pot in his hand, faced the camera, and analyzed with a serious expression: "That temporary holding tank is about to fail. Once it freezes completely, all the food I have stored will be locked under the ice."

“Every time you want to get it, you have to use an ice axe to break through the thick ice layer. In temperatures tens of degrees below zero, this is not only a huge physical drain, but also a form of torture.”

He needs new containers, not for underwater storage, but to bring all the mussels back for centralized processing and management.

In an instant, a perfect material flashed into his mind: cattail!
After finishing lunch and cleaning the iron pot, he didn't rest for a moment.

The snow was still falling heavily outside, but he had two crucial things to accomplish today.

He put on his down jacket and gear, carefully checked his waterproof gloves, and stepped back into the snow-covered world.

He walked straight toward the cattail wetland that he knew by heart.

The wetlands are now covered in snow, with withered cattail stalks stubbornly emerging from the snow, each topped with a cluster of darker brown "candles".

He trudged through the mixture of snow and ice, making a "crunching" sound.

Lin Yu'an faced the camera, trudging through the snow while providing a professional explanation.

“Typsum leaves at this time of year have already been subjected to repeated frosts and become very fragile, making them unsuitable for weaving.”

"Their fibrous structure has been destroyed. But there are always exceptions."

Instead of lingering in the open areas of the wetlands, he circled around to the edge of the wetlands, to a sheltered corner where the terrain was slightly higher and the snow was thinner.

“In some special microclimates, such as this sheltered place, plants are less affected by frost. What I am looking for are those survivors.”

He began to examine the condition of the cattails with great patience, clump by clump, carefully observing the leaves at the base of the stalks. As he expected, most of the leaves crumbled at the slightest touch.

But he did not give up, and finally, in an area surrounded by several giant rocks, he found what he was looking for.

The cattails here, though their leaves have also turned yellow, are noticeably more "oily" than those in other places, without that dry, cracked look.

He carefully cut off a large leaf, repeatedly kneading and bending it with his fingers. The leaf made a "crunching" sound, but it did not break. Instead, it showed amazing resilience!
"Found it." A smile appeared on his face.
"These are the perfect materials we're looking for today. Their quality is certainly not as good as the leaves from late summer or early autumn, but after processing, they're good enough for us to complete our mission."

He carefully selected and immediately began working, collecting only the cattail leaves and stems that still retained their resilience.

He then carefully used the blade of his axe to draw a circle on the ice around the roots of the cattail, and then used the back of the axe to strike and crack the ice, revealing the moist frozen soil underneath.

He knelt on the snow, using a digging stick to reach into the mud and grope out those slender roots to supplement one of his staple foods for the next few days.

More than an hour later, he returned to the warm shelter with a full bundle of cattail roots and a large bundle of carefully selected "surviving" cattail leaves.

He placed his harvest in a corner, then sat down in front of the fireplace and began a new task.

“Now, I’m going to awaken these materials.” He filled a pot with water and placed it on the fireplace to heat it.

Meanwhile, carefully coil the selected cattail leaves into a roll and place it by the fireplace, allowing them to slowly warm up in the warm environment.

After heating the water, he immersed the cattail leaves in the warm water in batches for about ten minutes.

He pulled a leaf out of the warm water and showed it to the camera: "Warm water allows the dried plant fibers to reabsorb moisture and regain their elasticity and flexibility. Now they meet the minimum standard for weaving."

He set all the processed cattail leaves aside and then began to make the frame for the storage basket.

He selected eight of the thickest and straightest cattail stalks and arranged them on the ground in a cross shape resembling the Chinese character "米" (mǐ), forming a radial framework.

Then, he took out two of the longest and most flexible cattail leaves and, starting from the center, used a cross shape to firmly "lock" the eight skeletons together.

He moved up and down, crisscrossing, as if weaving a sacred totem, and soon, a stable, radiating basket base took shape.

“The foundation of the basket has been laid. Now, let’s set up the ‘warp’ and begin weaving the side walls.”

He bent the ends of all eight cattail stalks upwards to form a circular frame. Then, he picked up the cattail leaves that had been "awakened" and began the most skill-intensive part: weaving the side walls.

First, fold a large cattail leaf in half and clamp it against a pillar. Then, like braiding a pigtail, twist the two leaves one in front of the other and weave them back and forth between the pillars.

His fingers flew nimbly, and inside the shelter, the only sounds were the crackling of the burning firewood in the fireplace and the rustling of the cattail leaves he rubbed together.

It is a tranquil yet creative atmosphere.

Instead of using the more time-consuming method of twisting rope, he directly used single or double leaves for rapid weaving.

He didn't care about the perfect neatness of the appearance; he only pursued speed and tightness of the structure. He constantly pressed the woven parts down with his palms to ensure that each layer was tightly packed together.

An hour and a half later, a large cattail woven basket with a simple and rustic design, full of primitive beauty, and exceptionally sturdy appeared in front of him.

“Done. I need two of these baskets to store the mussels.” He held up the finished product and showed it to the camera.

Without stopping, he immediately began making the second one using the same method.

When both cattail baskets of similar size were finished, it was still some time before dusk.

Immediately afterwards, he grabbed his hiking backpack and headed to the holding pond to begin his most arduous task of the afternoon: to transport all the hundreds of kilograms of mussels in the pond back to the sanctuary.

The snow had stopped in the afternoon, and Lin Yu'an went to the temporary holding pool that was now filled with ice shards and began to scoop them out with a makeshift "strainer" made from a mixing line and tree branches.

He scooped up handfuls of wet, slippery mussels and stuffed them into the huge backpack he had brought, which was soon full.

Then, he slung the heavy backpack onto his back and began his arduous trek toward the shelter.

The road wasn't long, but carrying a heavy load through the snow made every step extremely strenuous. His feet sank deep into the snow, and his breathing became labored.

Back at the shelter, he dumped all the mussels from his backpack into a new cattail basket with a "whoosh".

Then, without even catching his breath, he immediately turned around and headed back to the temporary holding pool. He repeated this several times until both storage baskets were completely full.

He moved the two "granaries" outside the shelter, placing them against the wall by the entrance so he could keep an eye on them and guard against all sorts of small animals.

Having temporarily resolved his concerns about food storage, Lin Yu'an immediately shifted his attention to another critical problem he had discovered during his morning patrol: the failure of the land traps.

He returned to the shelter, changed his frozen spare gloves, and said seriously to the camera, "Relying solely on seafood reserves is not enough to safely get through the entire winter."

“I need a stable source of terrestrial protein, especially fat, and we’ve already seen the value of rabbit brains. So I can’t give up the traps; I have to make them effective again.”

He grabbed the roll of professional annealed steel wire tripwire and several pre-cut wooden triggers, and once again stepped into the dense forest.

This time, he did not head towards the previous open animal trails, which he called the "Rabbit Highways".

The ground was frozen solid, rendering the elastic traps unusable, so Lin Yu'an planned to set up another deadly technique: the fixed lasso.

"My mistake was setting the trap in too open a place. When there's no snow, it's a common route, and the scents and tracks on the ground can lead rabbits to it by habit."

"But after it snowed, everything changed. Everything was pure white, and my traps became as conspicuous as a lighthouse in the dark."

"Rabbits are very intelligent. Their survival instincts make them extremely wary of any incongruous objects that suddenly appear in a familiar environment."

"So now I'm going to do the opposite. I'm no longer relying on the rabbits' inertia, but rather utilizing their natural instincts!"

He began to carefully search the low, dense bushes along the edge of the woodland.

The branches of these shrubs intertwine, forming natural barriers.

After the heavy snowfall, these places became natural shelters and hidden passageways for animals.

He shuffled down, bent over, and peered at the ground, carefully examining the area beneath each clump of bushes. He was searching for traces, for secret passages that had been used repeatedly.

Soon, he found what he was looking for under a dense clump of juniper trees.

At the base of the thick bushes, near the ground, there is a distinct, repeatedly used, tunnel-like passage.

On the snow at the entrance to the passage, several sets of small, plum blossom-shaped footprints of rabbits were clearly visible.

“This is it.” Lin Yu’an’s eyes lit up.

"Look here, this passage is very low. Any rabbit that wants to pass through here must duck down and crawl almost close to the ground."

“In such places, its vision is greatly limited, and its attention is focused on the action of ‘squeezing through’ rather than observing the surrounding environment.”

"The success rate of a fixed lasso depends 90 percent on the location. And here, it is a perfect natural funnel that will precisely guide the prey to the killing point of the trap."

He immediately took action, kneeling on the snow and taking out the roll of annealed steel wire tripwire.

First, they cut a piece of steel wire about one meter long, and then began to make the most crucial part of the lasso—the sliding lock ring.

Then, bend one end of the wire into a U-shape, and with your other hand, use all your strength to tightly wrap the end of the wire around the main line, round and round.

He wound it very tightly, with each loop right next to the previous one, for a total of seven or eight loops, forming a coil about one centimeter long.

An unbreakable retaining ring was created at one end of the steel wire.

"This ring must be absolutely secure." He said to the camera, showing this small detail.

"Because all the power will eventually be concentrated here, if it comes loose, the whole trap will be worthless."

Then, he smoothly threaded the other end of the wire through the small loop he had just made. A deadly, freely sliding loop was thus formed.

Next, he dealt with the fixed end, securing the other end of the wire tightly to a tree branch about the thickness of a thumb beside the passage.

Instead of using a simple knot, he used a double figure-eight knot that could distribute the pressure across the entire root. He pulled hard until the root made a creaking sound as it was being pulled, then nodded in satisfaction to ensure the connection was secure.

He adjusted the loop of the wire rope to about the size of an adult's fist.

"The size of this circle has been calculated," he explained in a low voice as he adjusted it.

"The same precautions apply: don't make it too big, or the rabbit might just pass right through the middle, only touching its body and not being able to cover its head."

"It shouldn't be too small either, or it might become alert before you can even touch it by touching its whiskers or ears. The size of a fist is the optimal size for the snowshoe hare's body shape in this region."

He carefully suspended the adjusted lasso in the very center of the "tunnel".

He didn't use any extra sticks for support because any new object appearing there might arouse suspicion.

He made direct use of the juniper branches on both sides of the passage. He very gently placed the top of the lasso on a thin branch covered with snow, and then used another even thinner branch to gently support the lasso from the side to prevent it from swaying in the breeze.

And so, the lasso seemed to have grown there naturally, hanging steadily in mid-air.

Having done all that, he began the final step: disguise.

"In the snow, the core of camouflage is 'blending in'."

On either side of the lasso, he used several small, dry branches he had picked up from the ground to stick horizontally into the snow, creating a few small "obstacles." These branches looked as if they had fallen naturally and were inconspicuous.

"These small obstacles narrow the rabbit's path. It doesn't think about why there are obstacles; it just subconsciously chooses to pass through the middle, which looks the most unobstructed, and that's exactly where our lasso is located."

He stepped back a few paces, squatted down, and lowered his gaze to the same height as the rabbit, examining his work.

In his field of vision, the white noose was almost completely invisible in the dimly lit bush passage.

"Although this trap is simple, it requires extremely high attention to detail."

“Site selection, anchor point, size and height of the lasso, camouflage, guidance—any mistake in any of these steps will be detected by the wary prey.” After finishing the last trap, he stood up and patted the snow off his hands.

"Now, all we can do is wait and see if our new strategy can bring us any rewards in this white world."

It was like a deadly ghost, blending into the snow-covered branches around it, silently waiting for the chance to deliver a fatal blow!

(End of this chapter)