Hunting 81: Gathering Goods in the Mountains, I Spoil My Ex-Wife to the Extreme

After closing the cave entrance with a wooden fence, everyone sat together and chatted.

However, since they had entered the mountains early in the morning and hadn't eaten and drunk their fill until dark, they hadn't been able to hide in the caves to spend the night. They hadn't chatted for long when Li Yunshan glanced at his watch. It was around seven o'clock when everyone wrapped themselves tightly in their cotton coats or covered themselves with animal skin blankets and squeezed together to spend the night.

"Huff huff..."

As time went by, the mountain wind outside the cave grew stronger and stronger, howling like ghosts wailing and wolves howling.

If a timid person heard this, they would probably be terrified, but Li Yunshan and his men were all hunters who went into the mountains, so they weren't afraid at all when they heard the mountain wind howling outside the cave.

As the night deepened, the temperature in the deep mountains and forests began to drop steadily.

Fortunately, Li Yunshan and his group found this cave. Without it, they would have had to find a sheltered spot, dig a snow nest, and spend the night in the freezing cold.

"Huff... Huff... Huff... Huff..."

The snoring of the sleeping people gradually filled the cave. Uncle Zhou, Li Baotian, Cai Er, Zhang Sange... a total of six or seven people were snoring, and the snoring rose and fell.

While everyone else was fast asleep, Li Yunshan was still awake. He wrapped his cotton-padded coat tighter around himself and stared blankly at the dim candlelight.

"Awooo..."

Just then, another wolf howl came from outside the cave.

However, judging from the sound, the howling wolf was still far from the cave where they were spending the night, so Li Yunshan didn't get up to go out and check.

"Yunshan, are you still awake?"

At this moment, Uncle Zhou, who had been asleep, suddenly woke up. When he saw that Li Yunshan was still awake with his eyes open, he stretched and sat up.

"I still have plenty of energy, and I won't be able to fall asleep anytime soon."

"Yunshan, this is your first time spending the night in the mountains while hunting. You must be nervous, right?"

Uncle Zhou said with a smile.

In Uncle Zhou's memory, Li Yunshan had never gone into the mountains with his father or his older brother before, let alone spent the night in the mountains.

Going into the mountains to hunt, spending the night there for the first time, with the north wind howling and eerie wolf howls echoing outside, it would be a lie to say I wasn't nervous.

But what Uncle Zhou didn't know was that Li Yunshan had accumulated a wealth of wilderness survival experience in his previous life. He had not only hunted in China, but also, after the promulgation of relevant laws and regulations on wildlife protection and the explicit prohibition of hunting, Li Yunshan had even gone as far as abroad to hunt.

The African savanna, the Caucasus Mountains, the Far East... Li Yunshan has left his footprints in all of these places.

Li Yunshan's hunting prey included large carnivores such as African lions, Caucasian brown bears, and Siberian tigers, as well as red deer, moose, wild boars, and wolves.

The wolf howls outside the cave were still far away from them, so Li Yunshan wasn't nervous or afraid at all. He was simply too energetic to sleep.

"I am a little nervous."

However, in response to Uncle Zhou's question, Li Yunshan nodded in agreement.

"Hehe, Yunshan, you don't need to worry too much about going into the mountains to hunt and spending the night there. As long as we take proper precautions, there's nothing to fear."

As Uncle Zhou spoke, he took out a pack of Daqianmen cigarettes, handed one to Li Yunshan, lit one for himself, and said slowly, "Although hunting in the mountains in winter is quite a hardship, the mountains are already bare at this time of year, making it easier to hunt."

"If the weather is warm and the vegetation is lush, with thorns and weeds providing cover, it is actually not easy to hunt."

Uncle Zhou, while smoking a cigarette, casually shared his hunting experience with Li Yunshan.

Li Yunshan listened and nodded.

Indeed, Uncle Zhou was right. Hunting in the mountains in winter is quite a hardship, even though it's freezing cold. The vegetation in the mountains has long since withered and died, leaving the forests bare, with not a single weed in sight.

At this point, as long as prey is found in the mountains, even if the prey temporarily discovers the hunter or is frightened and runs away, it's not a big problem.

Without the cover of thorns and weeds, it is easy to pinpoint the location of the prey.

But when spring arrives and the weather warms up, the mountains become lush with foliage and overgrown with weeds. Once prey disappears into the thickets and undergrowth, it becomes difficult to track it down.

Although he possesses thermal imaging and night vision capabilities, Li Yunshan couldn't guarantee that he could maintain an extremely high hit rate while hunting in such an environment.

Although he already knew these hunting experiences from his previous life, Li Yunshan was still very grateful that Uncle Zhou was willing to pass them on to him.

Uncle Zhou was pleased to see that Li Yunshan was willing to listen to him, so he taught him everything he knew.

The two chatted until after nine o'clock at night before finally falling asleep when sleepiness began to creep in.

Silent all night.

The next morning, Li Yunshan woke up early and vaguely heard a low roar of a wild beast coming from outside the cave.

"Uncle Zhou, Uncle Baotian, something's up."

Li Yunshan patted Uncle Zhou and Li Baotian, who were sleeping not far from him, and then, using the dim light in the cave, he found his own hunting rifle.

"Huh? What's going on?"

Uncle Zhou and Li Baotian were fast asleep, especially Uncle Zhou. He had been chatting with Li Yunshan until after nine o'clock last night and was having a sweet dream. He was sleeping soundly when Li Yunshan patted him a few times. When he opened his eyes, he still seemed a little confused.

"There are roars of wild beasts outside the cave, listen..."

After Li Yunshan finished speaking, he stopped talking.

Uncle Zhou and Li Baotian listened carefully, and it was indeed true.

"Get up, everyone! There's something happening outside the cave!"

Immediately afterwards, Uncle Zhou and Li Baotian got up one after another and woke up Cai Er and the others one by one.

Li Yunshan struck a match and lit a candle.

"Uncle Zhou, Uncle Baotian, what's going on?"

When Cai Er and the others were woken up, they looked like they hadn't woken up yet, their eyes still sleepy.

"Outside the cave, there are roars of wild beasts from the mountains. Maybe the traps we set last night really caught some prey."

Uncle Zhou said on Friday.

They didn't set up any traps or mechanisms outside the cave, but instead laid out a dozen or so animal traps, arranged in a circle outside the cave.

In addition, Cai Er took three animal traps and set them where the roe deer's entrails were thrown.

Upon hearing that the trap might have caught prey, Cai Er and the others immediately perked up, picked up their hunting rifles, and followed Uncle Zhou towards the cave entrance.

Uncle Zhou walked in front and, after arriving at the cave entrance, glanced out through the gaps in the wooden fence. He didn't see any animal traps set at the entrance that had caught prey.

"It looks like the animal traps at the place where you threw the roe deer's entrails caught the prey."

Uncle Zhou turned around and said something to Cai Er, then opened the wooden fence.

As the wooden fence opened, a blast of cool air rushed out.

After Cai Er and Zhao Shuanzhu removed the triggers from the animal traps set at the cave entrance, Li Yunshan and the others gradually emerged from the cave.

At this moment, outside the cave, the bonfire that had been lit the night before had long since turned into ashes in the icy snow. After burning all night, not even a spark remained.

Hearing the low roar coming from not far away, Li Yunshan and Cai Er exchanged a glance and then ran towards the place where they had discarded the roe deer's entrails the night before.

Seeing this, Uncle Zhou and the others quickly grabbed their hunting rifles and followed.

Soon, the group ran to the place where Cai Er had set the animal traps the night before and found that a wild boar had stepped on one of the traps and was making low growling noises.

"See? I told you there would be an unexpected bonus."

Upon seeing the wild boar, Cai Er couldn't help but burst out laughing.

"They really hit the jackpot, managing to catch such a big wild boar even with an animal trap."

Generally speaking, when setting animal traps, you need to find the prey's tracks beforehand and set the traps along its likely route to achieve twice the result with half the effort. If you set animal traps randomly, you can only rely on luck.

However, they disposed of the roe deer's entrails here last night, and wild boars are omnivorous.

Although this animal has poor eyesight, it has a keen sense of smell and hearing, and can smell food from several kilometers away.

The roe deer's internal organs have a strong bloody and pungent smell. Last night, the north wind howled, carrying that bloody and pungent smell even further. This wild boar must have smelled the odor and ran over from some unknown corner.

Furthermore, Li Yunshan and his team discovered many other wild boar footprints nearby, indicating that there should be a wild boar population in the vicinity, numbering no less than ten.

Based on the size of the footprints in the snow, they determined that the wild boars were all large adult or sub-adults, with almost no piglets.

"Uncle Zhou, how about we go look for those wild boars?"

Zhao Shuanzhu asked.

"Okay, sure." Uncle Zhou nodded in agreement.

After all, one wild boar had already been caught in a trap, and the others had left a trail of footprints as they escaped. All they needed to do was follow the tracks to find the herd, and then…

Uncle Zhou glanced at the hunting gear in everyone's hands. There were nine hunting rifles in total, and all of them were double-barreled, capable of firing two shots in quick succession. Dealing with a few wild boars would be a piece of cake.

However, before setting off, Cai Er shot the wild boar that had stepped into the trap, and then he and Wang Laojiu dragged the wild boar into the cave. After covering the wooden fence, they used a large rock to prop it up from the outside before running back to rejoin the main group.

"Let's go chase the wild boar herd. Whether we can have a prosperous Spring Festival with meat at every meal might depend on how we perform today."

Uncle Zhou said with a smile, holding his hunting rifle, and took the lead.

Li Yunshan and the others, carrying hunting rifles, followed behind Uncle Zhou, tracing the tracks left by the wild boar in the snow.