Wandering America: My kill threshold is far ahead

Chapter 239 Hand-made sundial, bow hunting water birds

Besides the hunting bow itself, the accessories are also very simple, mainly to avoid adding extra weight.

The backpack-style bow bag is used to carry the hunting bow, the side-slung quiver is used to store arrows, the double-layered cowhide finger guards are used to protect the fingers, and the soft arm guards do not interfere with flexibility while preventing the bowstring from rebounding and hitting the arm.

There is no release mechanism, no eccentric wheel, no shock absorber, no aiming pin, no advanced technology or rudimentary techniques; it focuses solely on the shooter's experience and feel.

As for arrows, they are quite particular. Currently, the mainstream arrow shafts are made of carbon fiber, which is characterized by being lightweight, highly accurate, having a stable flight trajectory, and being resistant to deformation.

In addition to these, there are aluminum arrows, bamboo arrows, and fiberglass arrows, but fewer people choose them.

Arrow fletching is basically made of real feathers, which can be divided into straight feathers, oblique feathers, and spiral feathers according to the way they are attached.

Among these, the straight-feathered arrow has the fastest speed, but its stability is relatively poor, making it very suitable for beginners.

The oblique feather is somewhere in between, making it suitable for hunters with some hunting experience.

The advantage of the spiral feather lies in its long range, allowing the arrow to spin at high speed during flight, resulting in the greatest stability.

According to the program's rules, each person can carry a maximum of 10 arrows.

After careful consideration, Ma Jieke chose 8 oblique feather arrows and 2 spiral feather arrows. After all, in real hunting scenarios, the hunter and the prey are at most ten or twenty meters apart. If you are further away, even if you can hit the target, the prey can react before being hit. For example, a white-tailed deer can complete the entire dodging action of "crouching - exerting force - jumping" in 0.2 seconds, which is equivalent to the Fire Cloud Evil God catching a bullet with his bare hands.

Spiral feathered arrows are only used to ambush large, bulky prey such as black bears, moose, and bison from a distance, so carrying two is sufficient.

Finally, there's the choice of hunting arrowheads. Hunting arrowheads are not part of the shaft and can be replaced at any time. Ranked by lethality, they are blunt arrowheads, fixed-blade arrowheads, and mechanical-blade arrowheads.

As the name suggests, blunt arrowheads have no pointed tip, only a slightly concave piece of metal. They are used to hunt small animals, such as squirrels and rabbits. When they hit their prey, the powerful impact shatters the bones or internal organs, causing "stun" damage. This ensures the integrity of the flesh and skin, and the arrow is not lost because it pierces the animal's body.

In "Living Alone in the Wilderness", arrows are a precious resource. If you shoot one arrow and lose another, you will run out of ammunition and food in just a few days.

The fixed-blade arrowhead is easy to understand; it's the kind you see in movies and TV shows where the head consists of two or three sharp steel blades that cause massive cutting damage when they pierce an animal's body, quickly leading to blood loss and death.

As for mechanical bladed arrowheads, this is where the strength comes in. The arrowhead retracts into the shaft during flight to maintain better aerodynamic characteristics.

When it hits a target, the blade expands instantly, creating a huge cutting diameter that causes irreversible, continuous bleeding damage, generally only effective against large prey.

Given the current competition rules, which require collecting as much food as possible within a specified time, MaJack decisively abandoned the mechanical blade arrow.

The reason is simple: within 5 hours, let alone hunting, it's questionable whether you can even find large prey, so bringing it along would be a waste of resources.

After comprehensive consideration, Ma Jieke's equipment configuration is as follows.

One 60-pound American hunting bow—this weight is neither too strenuous nor too easy for him; it's the perfect weight for him.

Five blunt-edged carbon arrows and five fixed-blade carbon arrows provide a balanced configuration, ensuring that neither is compromised.

Multi-functional survival knife x1, food storage bag x1, satellite phone for distress x1.

In addition, I also took a set of lure fishing gear. Anyway, this thing is very lightweight, and if I find a good fishing spot, I can swing it around.

Once all the athletes were fully equipped, head coach Rayman Stein stared intently at his watch: "It's 11:58 AM Alaskan time. Everyone get ready. You have five hours to collect food. I'll repeat that: five hours. I'll be here waiting for you to return. If you encounter danger or lose your way in the wild, please call for rescue immediately. I will send a helicopter to pick you up, but that also means you will miss the rest of the race."

"Take your positions."

As the second hand struck twelve, Lehman shouted, "Let's go! GOGOGO!"

Before the words were even finished, the crowd scattered, each running in different directions, everyone planning their strategy in their minds, racing against time.

After everyone had run far away, Lehman suddenly saw a strange figure that, instead of hurrying to move into the wild, stopped in front of a cedar tree.

Curiosity drove him to investigate, only to discover that Ma Jieke was actually using a knife to scrape tree bark.

Huh? Is this kid planning to collect tree bark to eat? That's fucking beetroot!

In times of famine, tree bark was indeed a kind of "emergency food," and in previous competitions, more than one contestant relied on eating tree bark to fill their stomachs.

However, the bark referred to here is not the outer bark, but the soft bark between the outer bark and the wood after the outer bark is peeled off.

This soft part acts like the tree's blood vessels, responsible for transporting nutrients within the tree and containing starch, sugar, vitamins, and minerals that the human body can absorb.

So from a wilderness survival perspective, this definitely counts as food. But even if you collected 100 kilograms of tree bark, I wouldn't give you a high score. Do you think I'm an idiot?

Just as Lehman was mentally complaining, Majek had already removed a flat piece of pine bark.

"Sir, please move aside, don't disturb me."

Completely ignoring Lehman's onlookers, Majek cut off another extremely straight, thin branch.

Carrying the bark and branch, I arrived at a flat, unobstructed open space. First, I used a knife to drill a small hole in the center of the bark, then laid it flat on the ground. Next, I inserted the branch diagonally into the hole, maintaining a 60-degree angle with the bark. This was the coordinate of the city where Anchorage was located; I had looked it up and memorized it last night.

However, Ma Jie used a dirty trick: he used a protractor beforehand and drew a line on his palm with a watercolor pen to ensure that the angle would not be off.

When the sunlight shines, the tree shadow is cast directly onto the bark. Immediately, use a knife to carve a line on the opposite side of the shadow to mark it as the noon line.

Then, slowly draw a circle along the top of the scratch. It's not exactly perfect, but it is a circle nonetheless.

Just as Lehman was completely bewildered, Majad continued to add marks to the circle. He first drew a right angle, then divided the right angle into 6 equal parts, ensuring that each square was 15 degrees apart.

"My God, are you making clocks?"

When Lehman saw this step, he finally realized that the Earth rotates 360 degrees every day, which, divided by 24 hours, equals 15.

Therefore, every time the projection moves 15 degrees on the "dial", it means that an hour has passed.

"To correct you, this isn't a clock, it's a sundial." After confirming that it was due north, Ma Jieke casually said, "It's a timekeeping tool from ancient China, consisting of a dial and a needle. Back then, scholars of high status would carry a miniature sundial when they went out. You can think of it as the prototype of a modern watch."

After listening to his explanation, Lehman crossed his arms, his tone clearly skeptical: "The idea is good, but you overlooked something."

""

"Is the time zone conversion correct?" Ma Jie put the completed sundial into a storage bag: "Noon in Alaska is not 12 o'clock, but 1 pm. I had already thought of this. As long as I push it back by one hour, I can know the accurate time."

"But how can you accurately determine due north?" Lehman quickly found another bug: when placing a portable sundial, it must face due north; if the orientation is incorrect, the timing will be inaccurate.

"You don't need to worry about that. I have my own way of doing it. Goodbye, Instructor."

As Ma Jiek spoke, he quickened his pace and headed north into the forest, going against the direction of most of the competitors who flocked to the freshwater lake on the other side, hoping to win by fishing.

Upon reaching the edge of the forest and opening the large map, the Cartographer's tool illuminates a movement path starting from the camp on what was once a completely dark map.

【Cartographer (Passive)】: When exploring the wilderness, permanently display the explored areas on the map.

The amazing thing about this skill is that it completely ignores signals and can work even in no man's land. Moreover, the map comes with a compass and is no different from the map in the game.

That's why Ma Jieke thought of rubbing the sun's heat by hand to keep a precise time.

Behind this seemingly simple assessment lies another deeper meaning: a test of human nature. If you are too greedy, you may exceed the time limit; if you are not greedy, those who return at the last minute may have collected more food. The key is to find a balance between these two.

Upon entering the forest, Ma Jieke did not choose to take a chance, but instead decisively used his skills.

[Resource Exploration (Active)]: Explore the nearest natural resource points (edible fungi, best fishing spots, animal dens, etc.) and permanently mark them on the map. Cooldown: 3 days.

The cooldown period for this skill is 3 days, while the training and selection period is one week. If you use it now, you can theoretically use it twice more. As Lu Xun once said, the sooner you use it, the sooner it will cool down, and no one can find fault with that.

Looking at the map again, a golden dot (?) appeared deep in the northwest of the forest, indicating a distance of 5.

3 kilometers.

Ma Jie didn't think too much and ran quickly toward the resource point. As he ran, he could feel his stamina being replenished.

It seems that Donya also chose hunting; if she had chosen fishing, it wouldn't have been this intense.

She thought she was all alone in the forest, but she unexpectedly encountered another competitor on the way, a nimble Inuit huntress.

Even without a human-shaped power bank, she still runs incredibly fast, and her pose—holding a hunting bow and wearing a quiver at her waist—is reminiscent of the character prototype of an elven archer in a game.

The two didn't greet each other, but just looked at each other, gave each other friendly smiles, and then ran off in different directions.

25 minutes later, MaJack successfully reached the edge of the question mark point, and a small area was marked on the map.

It seems the food won't be fed directly; the final exploration phase will have to be completed by the child himself.

Unsure of what kind of resource it was, Ma Jie moved cautiously while crouching low, carefully observing his surroundings, even checking the trees.

After he passed through a low-lying woodland, he suddenly heard a splashing sound in the water, which meant there must be something alive nearby. Could it be the legendary hidden fishing spot?

Continuing forward with questions in mind, I couldn't help but widen my eyes in surprise. It turned out that a tranquil little pond was hidden in this primeval forest.

On the surface of this pond, several plump geese are swimming slowly, occasionally dipping their beaks into the water to pick up the roots and stems of aquatic plants to eat.

Judging from its appearance, the body is mainly grayish-brown, the head and neck are black, the cheeks have distinctive white patches, and the lower abdomen and buttocks are white.

This is a typical Canada goose, a large waterbird that is active throughout North America, from Alaska and Canada within the Arctic Circle to Southern California and even parts of Mexico, it can be seen almost everywhere.

Don't be fooled by its silly appearance. Adult geese are generally over one meter long, and with their wings spread, they can reach 1.27 to 1.85 meters in length.

Even if a human were to fight it one-on-one with their bare hands, they might not have the upper hand. Whether it pecks with its beak or flaps its wings, it can cause considerable physical damage, leaving bite marks and bruises. If it attacks children and pets, then it is not a waterbird, but a bird of prey, and the consequences will be extremely serious.

Ma Jie roughly observed that, including the geese resting on the shore, there were about seventeen or eighteen geese, half of them male and half of them female.

This is consistent with the gregarious nature of this species, which lives in family units. It appears that the female goose is laying eggs, while the male goose is on guard duty.

In Canada, these birds are protected under the Migratory Bird Protection Act, and it is strictly forbidden to disturb or harm them during their nesting and chick-rearing periods.

But this is the United States, where Canada geese have long been considered "urban pests" because after they migrate, they openly occupy parks and golf courses, destroying lawns and leaving behind large amounts of droppings that pollute the environment. If humans glance at them too much, they may be seen as provoking them, and the geese, being numerous and powerful, may attack the provocateurs.

Looking at these plump and large prey, Ma Jieke couldn't help but swallow hard. He found a very concealed angle and took his hunting bow out of the bow bag.

After careful selection, the fattest and largest one was chosen as the hunting target.

For the Hunter Arrow, a fixed blade tip is chosen to ensure a fatal blow.

With the bonus of [Archer Iv10], Ma Jie's archery skills have reached their peak. However, to ensure absolute accuracy, he still stacked 5 layers of the [Focus] passive, which increases the hit rate by 25%.

Whoosh! With a soft metallic sound, the bowstring vibrated slightly at a high frequency, and the arrow flew through the arrow stand toward the target.

Because real feathers are used, the feathers naturally retract and unfold upon contact with the arrow rest, without causing any interference.