Chapter 38: The Single-Minded "Yellow Bold One

Without the constraint of the taut string, Huang Dadan's hunting ability improved slightly once again.

Although he hadn't yet performed high-end, spectacular maneuvers like the "Sparrowhawk Flip," he had mastered all the essential wilderness hunting skills of a goshawk: chasing, striking, head-grabbing, and the "hooking" technique.

What surprised the two brothers most was that while passing through a shrubby transition zone, a large wild pheasant flushed up at their feet.

At that moment, the hawk was being held tightly in Xiaowu's hand. When the bird rose at his feet, Xiaowu instinctively released Huang Dadan.

Logically speaking, a common goshawk's wild diet wouldn't include large wild pheasants; at most, a typical goshawk would catch a pheasant chick weighing about a jin.

But Huang Dadan lived up to his name. Fueled by pure adrenaline, the moment Xiaowu released him, Huang Dadan charged straight after the large pheasant.

It was at this moment that the gap in hunting intelligence between different raptors became apparent.

When the Eurasian Sparrowhawk had caught pheasants before, it would directly grab the head with both talons to briefly control the prey, relying on its "hawk-style" strength to quickly subdue the bird and end the fight.

This Eurasian Sparrowhawk, while bold enough to chase a pheasant, was clumsy once he caught up.

One talon gripped the thick feathers on the pheasant's neck, while the other gripped its back, making him look as if he were riding the large pheasant like a horse.

A male wild pheasant from the Changbai Mountains can weigh well over two or three jin. With a hawk weighing over half a jin hanging off it, short-distance flight wasn't much of an issue. And so, one chicken and one hawk flew off toward the opposite slope.

"Shit! That's a big male pheasant! Why did you let the hawk go?!"

The older brother, Xiaowen, was bewildered. Pheasants weren't rare in the mountains; they had encountered them yesterday while circling the hills, but Xiaowen hadn't released the hawk. He hadn't expected his younger brother to be so reckless as to release the hawk, especially while it was still in a "string-bound" state.

"I didn't react in time! A bird popped up at my feet and I just released him on instinct! Once the hawk was out, I realized it was a pheasant! What do we do, Brother?!"

"What else can we do? Chase them! The hawks in our hands depend on this Huang Dadan to do the work. If we lose him, how are we going to explain it when we get back? Even if Brother Feng doesn't blame us, we won't catch many birds with the remaining hawks!"

After saying this, Xiaowen bolted after the direction the hawk had flown.

On the other side, the large pheasant carried Huang Dadan nearly a li away. After landing from exhaustion, Huang Dadan still gripped the feathers on the back and neck tightly, refusing to let go.

The fear of hawks is an instinct etched into a pheasant's bones. The male pheasant tumbled and jumped across the ground with Huang Dadan on its back, but it was futile.

After struggling on the ground for about thirty seconds, Huang Dadan lowered his head and pecked the pheasant's comb. In pain, the male pheasant took flight again, carrying Huang Dadan toward the next mountain ridge.

Before the Xiaowen and Xiaowu brothers could even climb the slope, they saw the large pheasant take flight for a second time from a distance, quickly disappearing from their sight.

"Damn it, that male pheasant can really carry Huang Dadan! *Huff... puff... huff...*" Xiaowen cursed while gasping for breath.

The younger brother, Xiaowu, wasn't doing much better, but knowing he had made a mistake, he remained silent and continued to chase with a grim face.

The brothers crossed two mountain ridges before they finally saw the male pheasant, its wings exhausted from flying, struggling frantically on the ground.

As for Huang Dadan, he was somewhat single-minded; he gripped the pheasant's back with a death grip, refusing to release his talons.

The more the chicken struggled, the faster it exhausted its strength. By the time Xiaowen and Xiaowu reached them, the large pheasant had completely given up resistance. Its head was buried in a shrub, motionless.

In contrast, Huang Dadan occasionally flapped his wings to maintain balance, his large beak open as he panted, while his talons remained clamped firmly onto his prey.

After crossing two ridges, the brothers were completely spent. Seeing the hawk and the pheasant on the ground, they forced themselves to catch up.

"I'll kill it!"

"Don't! We finally caught it alive! Brother Feng said live ones fetch a higher price!" Xiaowu pulled out a small knife, wanting to slaughter the pheasant immediately, but his brother stopped him.

Instead, Xiaowen walked up to the pheasant and, with quick hands, grabbed the chicken's legs and pulled them out from the shrub.

At this point, the dim-witted Huang Dadan still refused to let go. Xiaowen held the pheasant down; the hawk, while panting heavily, struggled to pluck feathers downward from the pheasant's neck.

Physiologically speaking, a goshawk's strong beak has difficulty breaking through the defenses of a large male pheasant. Even if the neck were wrung and given to the hawk, the small raptor would have to work hard to tear the skin and reach the meat.

However, Huang Dadan seemed to lack wits, possessing a stubborn, single-minded temperament. Even after Xiaowu took a partridge from his backpack to replace the food on the glove, Huang Dadan refused to let go. After a standoff lasting over a minute, he finally released his grip and began frantically devouring the meat atop the partridge.

The brothers' experience in falconry was still lacking. In a situation like this, having caught a pheasant, they shouldn't have focused on the value of a live bird, but rather on training the hawk's gripping techniques.

One could say that Huang Dadan's success in catching the pheasant relied entirely on brute strength and a stubborn temperament; there was no skill involved whatsoever.

If Yue Feng had been there, his first reaction wouldn't have been to swap the prey, but to find a way to guide the hawk, teaching it where the pheasant's vital points were so that next time it could grab a more controllable spot.

As Yue Feng had told the younger brothers before, having the courage to strike is a talent, but courage alone is not enough. To grow into an excellent hunting hawk, one needs proper guidance in "hawk-style" techniques.

Due to the brothers' lack of experience, Huang Dadan lost this opportunity for advanced learning.

However, it didn't matter much; though the catch was clumsy, the end result was good.

Completing such a heavy task exhausted the hawk's energy significantly. Although the brothers were eager to hunt more, they knew the hawk's condition was more important, fearing the bird might collapse from exhaustion. Thus, even though it wasn't noon yet, they had already fed Huang Dadan to eighty percent capacity and handed him over to Xiaowu to carry.

For the rest of the afternoon, the brothers focused their attention on the other backup hawk. Although this "bad hawk," which they both rated poorly, had a lower success rate in bringing down prey, the coordination between man and bird had improved. They kept the hawk flying through the woods until evening before heading down the mountain.

Around four in the afternoon, Yue Feng was the first to return home with his hawk. He had wandered through the red pine forest all day, catching a total of eight squirrels—some by hand and some smoked out with fire—plus three flying dragons and two partridges on the way down.

Half an hour later, the Li father and son also returned. Today, Uncle Li and Xiao Tao's harvest was significantly larger than yesterday's.