American Hunting: Starting with Solitary Life in the Wilderness

Chapter 223 New Prey!
Inside the shelter, December, having eaten and drunk her fill, was fast asleep on her warm wolf-skin bed.

Her small chest rose and fell with her deep breaths, like a little white angel who knew nothing of worries.

The remaining rabbit soup in the iron pot was still simmering on the stove, emitting a rich and warm aroma, while the flames in the fireplace made a reassuring crackling sound.

Lin Yu'an had just finished a hearty lunch; the energy from the rabbit meat and hot soup had revitalized his tired body.

He picked up the electronic recorder, but instead of immediately getting to work, he set an alarm for three hours later.

"The cold fumigation room is now operating very stably," he explained to the camera, his voice calm and steady.

"The charcoal in the furnace can continue to smolder for a long time in an oxygen-deficient environment, and the temperature of the flue and the smokehouse has reached a dynamic equilibrium."

"So now I don't need to check every hour anymore. I can extend the intervals between checks, which gives me more complete and free time."

"And during this time, I need to think about a more serious issue."

He began by conducting a comprehensive strategic assessment of the current situation. "First, food reserves, particularly protein, are very sufficient."

"The dried fish fillets, the frozen fish from the snow well, plus the more than twenty smoked fish being processed in the smokehouse, if it were just me alone, and I were frugal, it would be enough to last until the end of the challenge."

“But,” he changed the subject, his tone becoming unusually serious.

“A huge hidden danger has emerged, and it is more serious than I expected.”

"I have lost about 5 kilograms. This is my 33rd day here, and I have lost more than 10 kilograms in total."

"Although I eat every day, and you could even say I overeat protein, my weight is still dropping, which only means one thing—I am severely lacking in fat."

He stood up and paced around the small shelter, as if organizing his thoughts and reaffirming his determination to take the next step.

"In polar environments, fat is life, and that's no exaggeration. It provides more than twice the energy of an equivalent amount of protein or carbohydrates."

"It is the most essential fuel for the human body to fight against the cold and maintain body temperature. More importantly, our brain and nervous system need fat to maintain normal function."

"Without sufficient fat intake, a person's thinking becomes sluggish, their emotions become unstable, and eventually their bodily functions will completely collapse."

"Many people have a misconception that as long as they have meat to eat, they won't starve to death. But the truth is, long-term consumption of only lean meat can lead to a fatal condition called protein poisoning."

"Or, to put it more vividly, it's a rabbit famine. This is because the body needs to expend a lot of energy to break down and metabolize protein, and if there is a lack of fat to replenish these expenditures."

"Your body will enter a negative energy balance. The more you eat, the more you consume, and eventually you will starve to death while eating meat."

"The small amount of wolf oil and fish oil I had stored up was almost completely used up in December and the cooking these past few days. Now, my body is sending out clear warning signs."

"Obtaining high-purity fat has become my highest strategic priority, even more important than obtaining any other food."

He stopped, his gaze passing through the small ventilation opening to the silent snowfield illuminated by the sun.

"After a blizzard, with such good weather, all the hungry animals will come out to forage for food buried under the snow. This is an excellent hunting window."

"I must take the initiative again, venture deep into the forest and try my luck in finding prey that can provide me with plenty of fat."

Once the decision was made, Lin Yu'an immediately began to act without any hesitation.

This time, the exploration cannot be limited to a radius of one or two kilometers around the shelter, as it was before.

He was very familiar with those areas. There might be small prey, but large animals that could provide fat were extremely wary and would never easily approach unfamiliar areas with active scents.

He needed to venture deeper into the more pristine, less undisturbed heart of the forest. But he also faced the relentless constraint of time.

"It's one o'clock in the afternoon." He stepped out of the shelter, looked up at the position of the sun in the sky, and accurately estimated the time.

“In Labrador in December, the daylight hours are very short, only about 8 hours. This means that it starts to get dark very quickly around 4:30 p.m..”

“It is extremely dangerous to move around in an unfamiliar forest once the light is out. So I must strictly control my time.”

“I set myself a four-hour window of opportunity, two hours to venture inland, and then, regardless of whether I found anything, I had to turn back immediately.”

He placed a large bowl of clean water beside the wolf-skin bed where it slept soundly in December, in case it got thirsty after waking up.

He carefully inspected the bolt's construction and added plenty of heat-resistant hardwood to the fireplace to ensure the shelter remained warm while he was away.

Then, he began to be armed with the most professional gear.

"Today's mission is to actively track and hunt, not to passively wait," he explained to the camera while adjusting his equipment.

"Therefore, the choice of clothing is crucial. I cannot wear that parka, which is the best in terms of warmth but also the bulkiest."

He rubbed the fabric with his hands, making a clear "rustling" sound.

"Then, the stiff, windproof fabric of this jacket will make a noise with every slight friction against the branches, enough to startle any wary prey dozens of meters away."

Therefore, he chose a multi-layered clothing system optimized for stealthy hunting, with the innermost layer being a close-fitting wool underwear that could quickly wick away moisture, and the middle layer being a thick fleece jacket.

For his outermost layer, he chose a fleece softshell jacket, which is one of only two jackets he owns.

"The fabric of this coat has undergone a special brushing treatment," he said, showing the surface of the garment to the camera.

"Its fibers are very fine and soft, so the sound it makes is absorbed and weakened to the greatest extent, rather than making a crisp 'rustling' sound like a hard-shell jacket."

"When tracking wary prey, these subtle differences are the dividing line between success and failure."

He carried a hiking backpack, one containing tinder and a flint, a piece of smoked dried fish, and a first-aid kit. In his left hand he held a birch spear, and on his back he carried a recurve bow and a quiver of eight hunting arrows.

After doing all this, they took out a nylon rope at least thirty meters long from the pile of supplies.

"This thing may not be used, but it will be crucial when needed."

He hung the heavy rope on the outside of his backpack, "If I'm lucky enough to hunt a large prey, I can butcher it on the spot and then use this rope to drag it back to the shelter."

Finally, I secured the snowshoes firmly to my boots, moved my ankles around, and felt the sense of connection to the earth.

"set off!"

He turned, opened the door, and took one last, deep look at December, who was fast asleep on the wolfskin bed, a hint of tenderness flashing in his eyes. That tenderness was replaced by the focused concentration of a predator.

Lin Yu'an slowly walked into the white forest. Stepping into snowshoes, he immediately felt a difference. Before, every step he took would sink deep into the snow up to his calves, but now it only reached his ankles.

This not only saves energy, but also means that he moves faster, greatly improving his ability to track and ambush in the snow.

He moved forward steadily and efficiently, almost as if "floating" on the snow, each step silent.

In the forest, the traces of the blizzard were even more obvious, with countless branches bent over by the weight of the snow, forming white arches.

In his eyes, these were no longer beautiful landscapes, but natural "visual obstacles" and "shelters".

He had to bend down from time to time to pass through, and each time he bent down, his vision was briefly obstructed, which made him more vigilant.

Occasionally, a gentle breeze would blow, and the snow piled up on the treetops would fall with a soft rustling sound. He would immediately stop in his tracks and listen intently.

This sound could be a moment when other animals are startled and their location is revealed.

This is a truly silent place; all sounds seem to be absorbed by the thick snow, creating a peculiar, echoing stillness. In this environment, any unnatural sound is amplified infinitely.

Apart from the rhythmic crunching of his snowshoes on the snow, there was no other sound in the world.

Lin Yu'an's senses were heightened to their peak at this moment. His body was completely relaxed, but his spirit was like a fully drawn bow, ready to be released at any moment.

His eyes, like those of a hawk, were no longer admiring the scenery, but were rapidly "filtering" information from any indentation in the snow that did not belong to a natural shape.

Any spot on a tree trunk where snow has been rubbed off, any color that clashes with the white background, will be instantly captured and analyzed by his brain.

His ears, like a sophisticated radar, were working tirelessly to capture signals of "information value."

A distant bird cry may indicate the approach of a ground predator.

The crisp, brief "crack" sound of a dead branch breaking underfoot in the distance is one of the most valuable signals.

He can roughly judge the distance and deduce the weight class of the "perpetrator" based on the loudness of the sound.

If it's a crisp "click," it's likely a light rabbit or ptarmigan.

But if it's a dull "creaking" sound, then it must be a large creature of considerable weight that broke a thicker branch.

Even the scent carried by the wind was not from the plants of this place.

It could be the slightly pungent odor of Arctic fox urine, or the rancid smell emanating from large herbivores similar to that of livestock.

His brain, in this continuous journey, constantly receives, analyzes, judges, and filters these fragmented pieces of information from hearing and smell.

They are attempting to piece together a dynamic and unknown "map of life activities" from this seemingly lifeless white forest.

He walked for almost an hour, during which time he felt as if he had traversed the entire world.

Looking back, based on his pace, he knew he had probably only made it less than three kilometers into the depths of the forest.

When traveling through deep snow and dense forests, speed is always a luxury.

Along the way, he saw countless traces of small animals, including snowshoe hares' footprints and lemmings' winding ridges on the snow as they dug tunnels beneath it.

They even clearly saw a ferret, but in the end, all they could see was the S-shaped leaping trail it left on the snow. There was absolutely no possibility of hunting it.

All of this proves that the forest is full of life, but none of it is the answer he wants today.

He was not discouraged; patience is the most important quality for a hunter. Larger animals have wider ranges and are more elusive, requiring more exploration to find clues.

Time ticked by, and Lin Yu'an looked up at the position of the sun. The white disc emitting a cold light had slid a considerable distance westward in the sky.

A strong sense of time is an essential skill for hunters. He estimated that he had already used up half of the journey time, and more than an hour had passed within the two-hour time limit.

A barely perceptible sense of anxiety flickered through his mind. If he didn't find anything soon, he would have to return empty-handed today.

Returning home empty-handed means he has expended a day's worth of energy without replenishing any fat, further widening his energy deficit.

Just as he took a deep breath, preparing to climb over the small, shrub-covered ridge in front of him for one last futile exploration.

A tiny detail, like a bolt of lightning, struck his optic nerve instantly, causing him to abruptly stop in his tracks.

He slowly took half a step back, returning to his previous position. His body froze, but his eyes remained fixed on a tree on the side of the ridge.

It was a short willow tree, taller than a person, whose branches were bent and buried by the thick snow under the ravages of the blizzard, making it inconspicuous.

But on the exposed section of its trunk facing the sun, there is a patch of color that is strikingly different from the dark brown bark of the surrounding trees, which is covered in ice and snow.

It was a fresh, milky white color, belonging to the newly formed wood tissue!

This tiny "color difference," in a world dominated by monotonous white and dark brown, acted like an unmissable signal, instantly capturing Lin Yu'an's full attention!
He immediately squatted down, gently resting the longbow against his leg, lowering his center of gravity.

At that moment, he was like a criminal investigation expert who had just arrived at the "crime scene," beginning a meticulous examination of this tiny clue.

He didn't approach immediately, but instead stayed where he was, squinting as he observed the overall shape of the white mark.

“Gnawing marks…” he whispered, his voice barely suppressed with excitement.

"But the gnaw marks are quite high, at least a meter off the ground."

"This wasn't done by a rabbit," he concluded.

"Snowshoe hares are the most common tree-eaters in this woodland, but they don't live this far. And..."

He reached out his gloved hand and brushed away a thin layer of snow from the marks, revealing clearly visible teeth marks underneath.

“Look at this bite mark.” He lowered his voice even further, as if afraid of disturbing something.

"The rabbit's gnaw marks are fine and fragmented, like they were made with a small plane."

"And this one, broad and deep, with neat and powerful edges, looks as if it was chiseled out stroke by stroke with a sharp, flat-headed chisel."

"This was definitely left by a large rodent with extremely well-developed incisors that liked to gnaw on tree bark."

He stood up, his eyes sharp and focused, no longer confined to that one mark, but beginning to rapidly scan and analyze all the surrounding environmental information, using the tree as the center.

The brain is like a high-speed computer, piecing together all the fragmented clues.

“Footprints…there are no footprints around…” He frowned at first, then immediately relaxed.

"No, it's not that there wasn't one; it was covered by fresh snow. The blizzard stopped last night, but there was a light snowfall afterwards. This means the gnaw marks were left before that light snowfall."

He squatted down again, picked up a shaving from the edge of the gnaw mark with his fingers, and sniffed it. A fresh, slightly sweet and astringent scent of tree sap wafted up.

"The color of the woody fracture is still very fresh. It has not oxidized and changed color due to prolonged exposure to air, and the smell of sap has not completely dissipated."

He mentally processed all the clues, eventually arriving at a conclusion that made his heart race.

He began to face the camera, like a seasoned criminal profiler, analyzing the "suspect" portrait in his mind:
"First, it is quite large and very strong, and can easily gnaw on the hard bark of trees."

"Secondly, it is a rodent, which can be seen from its chisel-like incisor marks."

"Third, and most importantly, it must be an animal that moves extremely slowly and is not good at long-distance running."

He pointed to the surrounding environment and explained, "Because any fast-moving animal would never spend so much time eating in such an open, unprotected place."

He pieced these features together, and a vague but extremely alluring image began to emerge in his mind.

He suppressed his excitement, "A rodent that's not small, likes to gnaw on tree bark, and moves slowly..."

"This creature's range becomes extremely small in winter, usually only venturing around its nest. So its lair is nearby! It definitely hasn't gone far!"

Lin Yu'an's adrenaline surged! A hunter's focused excitement instantly spread throughout his body, dispelling all his previous anxiety and fatigue!
He knew he had caught a big fish by the tail! Looking around, he quickly found even more direct evidence to confirm his guess, under another tree not far away!
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(Guess what it is, guys?)

(End of this chapter)