American Hunting: Starting with Solitary Life in the Wilderness

Chapter 182 An Unexpected Big Gain! (Vote for a monthly pass and win a phone!)

On the southern coastline, there are more rocks, and the ice pressure ridges are higher due to the obstruction of the terrain.

Here, he found the ruins of an old wooden dock, completely destroyed by the storm. The wooden piles, overgrown with seaweed, lay askew, and broken planks and beams were frozen between ice floes and gravel.

This place is like a graveyard of timber, but Lin Yu'an's eyes are searching for something more precious—metal!
His gaze swept quickly across the rotten wood, and soon, on a huge broken beam, he saw what he was looking for.

It was a long metal rod protruding from the wood, with a rusty bolt and a square washer at one end, firmly fixed to the crossbeam.

“It’s a structural connector, a tie rod bolt used at the dock.” He immediately determined the purpose and value of this thing.

He stepped forward and tried to shake the metal lever with his hand, but it didn't budge, firmly locked into the wood by huge bolts.

He carefully examined the hexagonal nut, which was larger than his palm and had rusted together with the washer; he couldn't turn it even an inch by hand.

"It's impossible to take it apart completely. Without a wrench, it's simply impossible to loosen this giant nut that's been rusted shut by salt water."

Instead of wasting time trying the impossible, he immediately opted for a more direct and destructive approach.

He steadied himself and chopped hard at the beam that held the bolt in place with the axe blade!
"boom!"

A dull, loud crash! The seawater-eroded wood split open, splintering wood everywhere! He wasn't trying to cut the entire beam, but rather to completely destroy the wooden structure around the bolt.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

He used the bolt as the center and continuously and violently chopped at it from different angles.

Each swing of the axe was filled with precise power, cleanly and efficiently peeling away the pieces of wood around the bolt.

This process is simple and crude, but extremely efficient.

Just a few minutes later, the metal lever that had been firmly locked, and the surrounding wood, had been completely chopped up by him.

He threw down the axe, gripped the lever with both hands, and with a forceful shake, the entire lever, along with the bolts and wood fragments still attached to it, was pulled out of the broken beam with a "creak".

He held the heavy trophy, which smelled of seawater and rust, up to the camera.

It was a solid steel pole about one meter long and more than three centimeters in diameter.

He stroked the cold but smooth shaft, his eyes gleaming with excitement: "A perfectly straight metal rod. If I can use it to forge ice diamonds, I won't even need to go through the steps of straightening and flattening it."

“Once I get back to the shelter, I’ll have plenty of time and resources to clean it up and then make it into a structure that can be connected to the wooden handle.”

He carefully placed the heavy bolt into his backpack and continued his exploration of the south.

-

"The storm is indiscriminate. Since there are so many good things in the north, the south will certainly not disappoint me either."

"Furthermore, based on my previous observations, the southern coastline has more rocks and deeper bays, where there may be different types of discoveries."

"There's still about an hour until the lowest tide, which is when the ice is most stable. I need to hurry."

He strode forward and continued southward. Unlike the relatively flat gravel beach to the north, the "ice pressure ridge" to the south appeared much taller and more chaotic.

The massive ice floes were pushed and shoved, forming obstacles like hills, which increased the difficulty of exploration.

He no longer wandered aimlessly, but began to consciously seek out areas piled up with large amounts of black seaweed, shell fragments, and debris.

He knew that these places were sedimentation zones where storm energy had weakened, making them the most likely places to leave behind the "cargo" it brought.

After walking about half a kilometer, he came to a natural bay formed by a huge, hill-like stranded ice floe and land rocks.

The bay's topography perfectly intercepts large amounts of material that is churned up from the seabed by storms.

What he noticed first were the black, mine-like spherical objects scattered across the bottom of the bay.

They were mixed in with seaweed and crushed ice, most of them crushed, but their shapes were still clearly recognizable.

His eyes lit up instantly. "Green sea urchins! And there are so many of them!"

He stepped forward, squatted down, and carefully dug out a relatively intact sea urchin with a deep olive-green shell from under a pile of slippery seaweed.

He struck the spiky shell hard with his hunting knife, and with a "crack," the sea urchin split open.

He widened the gap with the tip of his knife, revealing a paste-like substance inside, arranged like flower petals, with five golden-yellow petals tinged with orange-red.

He dipped his finger in the mixture and put it in his mouth. The salty aroma of the sea and the sweetness of cream instantly dispelled the chill in his mouth.

He simply remarked, "These are green sea urchins, a gift from the cold waters of the North Atlantic, which storms have ripped in large quantities from the rocks in the deep water. The presence of sea urchins here means there must be something else down below."

This discovery gave him tremendous motivation. Instead of rushing to collect large quantities of these fragile sea urchins, he continued to explore this natural bay.

His gaze no longer lingered on the surface, but rather, like a prospector, he explored the thick seaweed thickets.

"Bang, bang..." The axe handle struck the frozen seaweed, making a dull sound.

Suddenly, with a "thud," a hard, completely different feedback came from the end of the wooden stick.

He immediately perked up and began to use his hands and the axe blade, like using a hoe, to pry open the frozen hard shell on the surface of the seaweed pile.

He dug only a dozen centimeters deep before he saw what he was looking for.

Beneath the slippery seaweed, mixed with countless fragments of seashells, a silvery-white object with clearly defined scales reflected the sunlight. It was a fish's tail!
He continued digging, and soon, a whole Atlantic cod, frozen solid like a rock, appeared before his eyes.

This fish was enormous, estimated to be over 70 centimeters long, and its body was frozen into a stiff arc, perfectly preserving the posture it had just taken before being washed ashore by the giant wave.

"Look at this! The perfect fish popsicle!" He excitedly held the heavy fish up to the camera.

“In a storm, any creature that leaves the water will turn into this within ten minutes, its freshness perfectly locked in.”

This discovery proved that his judgment to change the direction of the search was entirely correct.

He immediately began a more detailed, thorough search, using this location as the center.

Instead of simply digging with his hands, he adopted a more efficient strategy: he first used an axe to cut a large pile of frozen seaweed into several sections.

Then, like turning over the soil, use an axe as a lever to pry and turn over the entire frozen seaweed along with the debris underneath.

This method worked! After turning over the second huge block of seaweed, he saw even more surprises.

Below were not only two smaller cod, but also several other strangely shaped deep-sea fish that he had never seen before.

One of them, with an extremely flat, diamond-shaped body, was an Atlantic halibut he recognized. Although it was not yet an adult, it was already nearly half a meter long.

The other one has a unique orange-red color throughout its body, huge eyes, and is a typical deep-sea rockfish, often referred to as a deep-sea redfish.
"What a great find!" he couldn't help but exclaim.

"Hawk and redfish are fish that live in deeper, colder waters and are usually impossible to see on the shore."

"This storm is like a deep-sea clearance sale, bringing everything to the surface."

He continued turning over the fish and found seven or eight huge deep-sea scallops, frozen solid like rocks, their shells bigger than his palm.

These deep-sea creatures are not neatly piled together, but scattered randomly beneath a thick layer of seaweed and ice fragments.

Every discovery is like the surprise of opening a blind box.

"What a bountiful harvest!"

He gathered all the fish popsicles, scallops, and dozens of the most intact sea urchins together.

He looked at the abundant food in front of him, his face filled with barely suppressed joy.

Now, a new problem arises: how to transport these heavy spoils of war, which may weigh more than thirty kilograms in total and are of various shapes, back to the shelter in one go?

He glanced at his enormous hiking backpack and figured it could probably hold everything.

He said to the camera, “I can’t leave them here. They might attract all the scavengers in this area soon, from the smallest Arctic fox to the largest polar bear. I have to take them all away at once.”

He immediately got to work, first emptying his backpack completely, and then beginning a professional packing operation.

"The core principle of packing is to place the heaviest and hardest objects closest to the back, between the shoulder blades."

"This ensures a stable center of gravity, keeping it close to the body and preventing swaying while walking, thus conserving energy to the maximum extent."

He first picked up the largest one, an Atlantic cod weighing over ten kilograms, which was so long and hard that it couldn't be stuffed directly into the popsicle.

He placed it vertically, close to the carrying system frame inside the backpack.

Its length is just right, and its sturdy body acts like an extra support rod, which actually enhances the stability of the backpack.

Next, he picked up the equally firm but flat halibut and placed it like a board next to the other side of the cod.

The two largest fish are located in the center of the backpack, forming a stable and solid core.

"Then, use smaller, irregularly shaped objects to fill the gaps around the core."

He squeezed the smaller red fish and the last small cod into the gap next to the two larger fish.

Now, the main compartment of the backpack is completely stuffed with four frozen fish.

Next, he strung the huge scallops and sea urchins together with a short piece of spare string and then secured them firmly to the compression strap at the top of his backpack.

He then stuffed another portion of the shellfish into the elastic side pockets on both sides of his backpack and tightened them securely with the compression straps on the sides to ensure they wouldn't fall out while walking.

When he finished all this, his originally empty hiking backpack had become a bulging seafood backpack.

He first took a deep breath, then used a standard lifting motion to lift the backpack onto his thigh, and then turned around and casually slung it over his back.

The enormous weight pressed down on his shoulders and hips instantly, but for his current physique, this weight was nothing.

He quickly adjusted his breathing and pace, and stepping steadily in his snowshoes, he began his return journey towards the shelter.

Around noon, as the sun's rays began to soften, Lin Yu'an finally returned to his shelter, where smoke was rising from the chimney.

Then he carefully unloaded the enormous thing from his back and placed it heavily on the snow with a loud "thump".

Lin Yu looked at the pile of top-quality ingredients in front of him with great satisfaction, enough to allow him to live a luxurious life for a long time.

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(End of this chapter)