Chapter 57: Preparations Before Fighting the Great Eagle, Catching the Sparrows

If you want to catch a large hawk, a few cage nets under the small woods by the river won't cut it. You have to go to those most prominent, high-ground mountain peaks; you have to set up a proper, legitimate hawk hunting ground.

With good luck, you might encounter a hawk that catches your eye after a day or two on the mountain. With bad luck, you could stay on the mountain for ten days or half a month and catch a bunch of "poop hawks" without ever encountering a single decent one.

Catching a large hawk is difficult, and even after you catch one, the difficulty of training it starts at a minimum of five stars.

Any large hawk caught in a net that year would weigh between one to two jin and two jin four or five liang. A healthy hawk that has just been netted can go ten or eight days on nothing but water without any problem at all.

The "ten or eight days" mentioned here doesn't refer to the kind of ten or eight days where you hold the hawk during the day and sleep at night.

It refers to ten or eight days of almost no sleep. The better the hawk's constitution and the tougher its temperament, the longer this "endurance period" lasts.

In his past life, Yue Feng had encountered a hawk that took half a month before it would eat properly; from the moment that hawk was netted until it was trained enough to work on the ground, it took a full 21 days.

Yue Feng certainly couldn't handle such a long period alone. His father's leg injury hadn't fully healed yet, and Yue Feng didn't want him to overexert himself.

*Forget it, forget it. Since I promised them, I'll just grit my teeth and do it. At worst, I'll have Mom and Dad swap shifts to cover for me. Ten days or half a month—I'll get through it if I just push through.*

Having made up his mind, Yue Feng brought up the matter publicly during dinner with his companions when he returned home that evening.

"For the next period of time, there's going to be a small change in our hawk hunting squad's mission. I'm letting you all know in advance!"

"What's up, Brother Feng?" Xiao Tao was the first to ask.

"The Second Canteen wants live pheasants and hares, and I've agreed! So, for the next while, I'll be staying on the mountain for a few days—as short as three to five, as long as seven to ten! I'll come back whenever I catch a large hawk! While I'm up there, Xiao Tao, you'll be temporarily responsible for the daily deliveries. As for this large Green Sparrowhawk I've been training, you guys will take turns one day each. We can't let the hawk sit idle, or it'll develop bad habits!"

"Going up the mountain to catch big hawks? I'll go with you! Let my dad handle the deliveries!" Xiao Tao said, shamelessly stepping forward after hearing the plan.

"No need. The good days for catching chickens in early autumn are short; I can handle it myself. While birds are plentiful and easy to catch, you guys should catch as many as possible to earn more money! Once the temperature drops significantly, catching small birds will be much harder! I'm taking a temporary leave of absence to catch hawks, but the family's income still depends on everyone's daily harvest, so don't slack off!"

Yue Lei nodded at this: "Your mom, Uncle Li, and I are here at home, so don't worry! What do we need to prepare? I'll start getting things ready for you tomorrow!"

"Five-finger-wide netting for self-dropping nets, four sets of 16 pieces! One hand-pull net, six meters long and two and a half meters wide! Tomorrow I'll go catch one more Shibaluo (Shrike), and then I'll go to Brother Qian's house to buy a few Raindrop Pigeons. That should be about enough! I'll be back every day, so if we're short on anything, we'll supplement it then!" Yue Feng calculated, counting on his fingers.

"Alright. What size do you need for the self-dropping net pieces?"

"One and a half meters long and one and a second meter wide will do!"

"Got it!"

...

After the brief team meeting, Yue Feng's plan to go up the mountain to catch large hawks was set.

At the crack of dawn the next day, Yue Feng left the house carrying a shovel.

To catch a large hawk, before setting off for the mountain, one must catch a Shrike to serve as a "bird watcher." When a hawk passes through the hunting grounds, the Shrike will detect the raptor in the sky ahead of time and alert the hunter.

Shrikes are fond of eating mole crickets.

The reason Yue Feng left the house so early, without even bothering to eat breakfast, was to take advantage of the morning dew to catch mole crickets in the fields.

Yue Feng had done this many times in his past life; it could be described as second nature. Upon reaching the soil mounds where mole crickets were active, he used the large shovel to turn the earth and quickly caught six or seven live ones.

With the mole crickets in hand, Yue Feng went to the outskirts of the village, near the fields and the edges of the woods, and set six bird-catching snares in a row.

This method was taught to him by his grandfather: insert two slightly long branches into the ground, fix a rope to one end of one branch, tie a slipknot at the other end, and tie a live mole cricket by half its wing so it hangs in mid-air. Directly beneath the cricket is the snare, stabilized by a mechanism consisting of a horizontal perch and a thin stick.

A live mole cricket hanging in mid-air will struggle incessantly, easily attracting the attention of a Shrike. When the gluttonous bird flies over to eat the cricket, it will easily step onto the horizontal perch the hunter has intentionally placed for it to land on.

Once the bird steps on it, the balance of the horizontal perch is broken, triggering the taut snare mechanism, and the loop immediately snaps around the Shrike's leg.

As long as there is Shrike activity nearby, this method is almost a hundred percent successful.

Once Yue Feng had caught enough mole crickets, he designed the traps around areas outside the village where Shrikes might be, then went home to eat.

After breakfast, everyone else headed up the mountain with their hawks, while Yue Feng found some thick cotton thread and tied a set of neck loops for the Shrikes on the edge of his heated brick bed.

Yes, you read that right. When raising a Shrike as a bird watcher, you don't tie its legs; you tie its neck.

Unlike raptors, Shrikes do not have much strength in their talons; tying their legs makes it easy for them to lose their footing or slip out, but tying the neck avoids these issues.

Having finished the neck loops, Yue Feng grabbed a pair of protective work gloves and left the house to check the harvest from his traps.

The first two traps had not been triggered. When he patrolled to the third one, he heard the distinctive *ga-ga-ga-ga* call of a Brown-backed Shrike from a distance.

He had caught one. The unlucky fellow had its leg caught in the loop and was flying in circles around the stake driven into the ground.

Seeing this, Yue Feng did not dare to be careless. He put on his work gloves and walked quickly toward it.

Although the Shrike is not a raptor, its beak is sharper than that of an average small hawk. Not only is the tip of its beak hooked like a raptor's, but it also possesses a tooth-like notch similar to that of a falcon. If it pecks you without protection, you are bound to bleed.

Wearing his gloves, Yue Feng stepped forward and grabbed the adult male Shrike in one motion, gripping its body with his thumb and forefinger to expose its entire neck and forehead.

After removing the loop from its leg, Yue Feng pulled the neck loop he had made at home from his pocket and tied it directly onto the Shrike. He then collected the other traps and headed home with the Shrike.

The newly caught wild Shrike had an extremely fierce temperament; trying to get it to obediently land on a hand or a perch was as difficult as reaching the heavens.

However, Yue Feng had a secret trick.

After tying the neck loop string to the perch, Yue Feng took out a washbasin and filled it with clean water using a ladle.