Wilderness Redemption Tour

Hosea took Arthur and Lin Yan to the place where he saw the bear yesterday and said, "Let's split up and look for traces of the bear around here. Footprints, feces, leftover food, or even hair will do."

After Lin Yan got off his horse, he immediately saw a large paw print on the soft soil by the lake. He pointed at the paw print and asked, "Mr. Matthews, is that the footprint you are talking about?"

Hosea looked in the direction of Lin Yan's finger. "Oh, young people have good eyesight. Yes, this is the bear's footprint, and it's the one I saw yesterday. Um... Looking at the direction of the footprint, it should go over there." Hosea pointed to a forest by the lake and said, "Arthur, Jamie, let's go get our weapons."

After that, he walked to his horse, took out his sniper rifle with a scope from the gun bag on the saddle and put it on his back, then took out the bear bait he bought at the grocery store from the saddle bag. Arthur also walked back to his horse, took out a shotgun with a shortened barrel and put it on his belt, and put another bolt-action rifle on his back. Lin Yan looked at them enviously from the side, after all, he only had the revolver on his waist.

Hosea, Arthur and Lin Yan followed the bear's footprints from the lake into the nearby forest. After walking for a while, Hosea stopped and said, "The footprints stop here. Let's split up and look for the things I just mentioned. Be careful and alert. That big guy may appear at any time. It's spring now and it needs a lot of food. It must be very ferocious." After that, Hosea was responsible for searching the front, Arthur was responsible for the left, and Lin Yan was responsible for the right. The three of them carefully searched for the bear's traces in the forest by the lake.

After a while, Arthur, who was in charge of searching the left side, shouted, "Guys, I found something here!"

Hosea and Lin Yan heard Arthur's cry and quickly came to where Arthur was standing. Arthur held something in his hand and said, "Look, this should be a fish that was eaten to the point where only the tail is left. It was probably vomited out by the bear."

"Very good, Arthur. Look, there are footprints here again. Now let's continue tracking them." Hosea said, pointing to the footprints that appeared again not far away.

The three continued to follow the footprints. After walking a distance, Hosea stopped and stopped the two people behind him. Then he squatted down and said, "There is a pile of feces here. Be careful not to step on it. Hmm... It looks fresh. The bear should be nearby."

They walked around the bear dung and continued forward. The three followed the footprints to the foot of the rocky mountain. The terrain here was a bit low, and it was a valley between two mountains. "The footprints disappeared here. We should be very close to the bear. We should speak softly now and pay attention to the surrounding movements. That guy may appear at any time."

"Should we place bait here?" Lin Yan asked softly.

"That's exactly what I meant, kid. You may not be able to imagine how big the bear is just by looking at the footprints, but I bet that when it suddenly appears and pounces on you, you will be too scared to shoot. Moreover, the bear's skin is thick and tough, and even a gun may not cause enough damage to it. When it is staring at you, even if you shoot it in the head, it may not be scared away. Once it pounces on you, any resistance on your part will be in vain. So bait is undoubtedly the best choice at this time."

Hosea finished speaking and took out the bear bait he bought at the grocery store. It was two tin boxes, one with a fish pattern printed on it, and the other, Lin Yan guessed from the pattern, should be some kind of berry.

Hosea first looked at the surrounding terrain and mountain structure, then chose a relatively flat open space, walked over there and opened the two boxes. He first poured the box of fish onto the ground, then took out the dagger he carried with him and cut the fish into several pieces. Then he poured the berries from the other box on each of the pieces of fish meat and stirred them a little with the dagger. "Okay, we're ready. Now we just need to wait there for the bear to come and eat."

Hosea was referring to a sunken space on the side of the mountain wall. It wasn't big, but it was big enough for the three of them. And the slope wasn't too steep, so they could climb up with their bare hands.

Then it was a matter of patiently waiting until a low growl of a bear was heard in the valley.

Here it comes! Lin Yan immediately perked up and focused on observing the valley below.

A large brown bear came over with heavy steps. There was an obvious scar on the right eye of the bear, which must have been injured by some animal. Lin Yan guessed that its right eye was blind. The bear followed the smell to the bait placed by Hosea, but did not eat it immediately. Instead, it stood up alertly, looked around, and then raised its nose to smell the surrounding smells.

"Oh no, I forgot to use the odor masking agent!" Hosea suddenly realized this when he saw the brown bear's actions and said in annoyance.

When Hosea gave the reminder, Lin Yan clearly saw that the bear was becoming alert, and he seemed to think that the bear would turn around and run away in the next moment.

Hosea also noticed something unusual in his sniper rifle. He spoke quickly, "Oh no! It has smelled us and is getting alert. We can't wait any longer. We must shoot immediately. Everyone, aim at its head and follow my orders."

Lin Yan immediately took out his revolver and aimed at the brown bear's head.

"shooting!"

The moment the gun went off, the brown bear seemed to realize the danger and immediately lay down and ran back the way it came.

"Damn it, we just injured him. Arthur, Jamie, you should hurry and chase him now. He has another head injury, so he won't be able to run far."

"Ok!"

"I'm going right now!"

Arthur and Lin Yan answered almost at the same time.

After that, the two of them chased after the brown bear. Hosea shouted behind them, "You two should be careful! Arthur, take care of Jamie..."

Lin Yan followed Arthur all the way to the center of the valley. Arthur, who was running in front, stopped. "Hey, Jamie, no need to chase. Look, there it is."

Lin Yan ran to where Arthur was standing and saw the brown bear lying on a large rock in front of him, panting heavily.

Lin Yan observed for a while and asked, "Why does it look like it's not seriously injured?"

"Maybe we both missed the target and didn't hit its vital parts. Jamie, replace the bullets in your pistol with these, and we'll give it a full set of bullets." Arthur said as he took out a box of special bullets from his small bag and handed it to Lin Yan.

"What kind of bullet is this?" Lin Yan took the bullet and asked curiously.

"It's a hollow point bullet. This will cause the most damage to it."

After the two of them exchanged ammunition, Arthur said, "Let's move forward a little bit. You stand behind me for a while, away from me."

Lin Yan knew that Arthur was intentionally protecting him, and he said "hmm" with some emotion.

The two carefully moved forward for a distance. Arthur first turned back to signal Lin Yan to stay here, then he took a few steps forward, and then he took the lead in pouring all the bullets in the gun towards the brown bear's head. Without choosing to change the bullets, he threw away the revolver in his hand, and then skillfully took out the rifle on his back and continued to aim at its head and shoot. After the brown bear used its head to resist the bullets in Arthur's revolver, it found that the person who injured it was not far away, so it dragged its huge body and rushed towards Arthur like a steamroller.

Lin Yan didn't realize that Arthur had suddenly shot. By the time he reacted, the bear had already roared and rushed towards Arthur. Without further hesitation, Lin Yan activated the "Death Eye" skill, aimed at the brown bear's intact eye, and pulled the trigger. He didn't check to see if he had hit the target. Instead, he quickly opened the magazine of the revolver, poured out the empty shell, loaded a new bullet, and raised the pistol to continue shooting.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang." Six revolver bullets plus one rifle bullet from Arthur hit the brown bear's head again. Three of them accurately hit the left eye of the brown bear running at high speed. The brown bear howled and slid forward a full distance of thirty meters by inertia, and stopped not far in front of Arthur. Its huge claws twitched twice and then became completely motionless.

Arthur and Lin Yan maintained their shooting posture and continued to aim at the brown bear's head. "Jamie, don't come over yet, stay alert."

Lin Yan felt that the two of them continued to wait for about five minutes before Arthur put down his gun and said, "It should be completely dead. Don't move. I'll go check it out." After that, he walked up to the brown bear with his rifle in his hand and poked its head with the barrel of the gun. The brown bear did not respond and lay motionless on the ground. Arthur went around and lay on the brown bear to listen, then smiled and announced, "Jamie, we succeeded, it's dead."

"Huh." Lin Yan breathed a sigh of relief. When the brown bear ran towards them just now, it was very oppressive. His palms holding the gun were still full of sweat. Putting the gun back into the holster on his waist, Lin Yan walked over to observe the huge beast up close. Reddish-brown fur, huge claws, huge body. He did not observe the bear's head. After being shot several times in a row, it must be a terrible sight.

"Da Da Da" suddenly heard the sound of horse hooves behind them. Lin Yan and Arthur looked back and saw that it was Hosea riding his horse named Silver Dollar. He was holding the reins of the other two horses. "It seems that you have successfully killed it. It's worth it that I brought the horse here."

Arthur stroked the brown bear's fur and said, "Yeah, we shot this guy in the head more than a dozen times, using hollow-point bullets."

"Do we need to take this big guy back?" Lin Yan asked curiously.

Hosea dismounted and walked around the brown bear's body. He said, "If it was in the past when supplies were scarce, we would definitely try to take it away, but given our current living conditions, let's forget it. Bear meat is much less tasty than beef or mutton. If there were other options, I guess no one would want to eat it. We can just peel off its skin and take it away."

He was actually going to skin the bear... When Lin Yan heard that Hosea was going to skin the brown bear, he was terrified and his body instinctively wanted to refuse to watch. But after a mental struggle, he decided to watch from a distance, not for anything else, just to practice his courage. Last night, Sadie was covered in blood, and her look like a killer was still imprinted in his mind. Thinking about it now, he still felt a little palpitated.

Arthur and Hosea were discussing how to skin the meat, where to cut and what to discard. After the discussion, Arthur touched his waist and found that his thin-skinned knife was still in Sadie's hand.

Arthur curled his right index finger and scratched his cheek and said, "Uh...Hosea, I lent my skinning knife to Sadie, and she hasn't returned it to me yet."

Hosea took out his skinning knife from his waist and handed it to Arthur. "Use mine. I sharpened it yesterday. It's very sharp."

Arthur took Hosea's skinning knife, and called Lin Yan, who was planning to watch from a distance, to help the three of them turn the bear's body sideways. Lin Yan went over to help move it, then moved away again, watching from a distance how Arthur skinned the giant.

Arthur first stabbed the bear's belly with a knife, then found the right position and cut open the bear's belly. Lin Yan originally thought that the bear's internal organs would pour out from the cut, but it didn't. Through the gap opened by Arthur, he only saw red muscles and white fat.

Arthur moved the knife from the bear's belly to its neck, then he pulled out the knife, held the bear's skin with his left hand, and inserted his right hand into the fat layer between the bear's skin and the bear's meat, separating the skin on the bear's belly from its meat bit by bit. Then he and Hosea worked together to knock the bear down again, and used the knife to separate the skin on the bear's head, limbs and tail separately, and then pulled the bear's skin and used the same method as before to separate the skin and meat on the bear's trunk.

After successfully peeling off the entire bear skin, Arthur turned the bear skin over, with the hairy side facing down, and then took out his dagger and carefully scraped the back of the bear skin. Then he took something handed to him by Hosea and smeared it evenly on the bear skin. Finally, he rolled up the entire bear skin and packed it up.

Lin Yan looked at the naked beast with only its head, limbs, tail and fur left, and suddenly felt it was a bit funny.

Grinning, Lin Yan thought: It doesn't seem that scary from a distance, probably because Arthur didn't gut it. Just looking at the meat and fat is not scary at all, not even as shocking as the wound on the head of the woman killed by Sadie that day.

"Jamie, don't just stand there, it's time for us to go back." After putting the bundled bear skin on his horse's back, Arthur said to Lin Yan in the distance.

"Oh, I see." Lin Yan responded, walked over and rode on his horse. Before leaving, he took a last look at the brown bear corpse not far away, and sighed silently: It's a pity for these four bear paws. If they were in my place, each one would cost thousands of dollars. It's a pity that people here don't like to eat them.

The three returned to the Horseshoe Lookout camp in the afterglow of the sunset.

Dinner was ready, but Lin Yan saw that Jilan did not choose to eat with the others in the camp. He was now alone brushing everyone's horses. Seeing the three people coming back, he greeted them briskly. Arthur ignored him, Hosea smiled at him politely, and only Lin Yan walked over to ask him how his day was.

"To be honest, it's pretty much what I expected, but don't worry, I won't lose heart. Dinner is ready, you guys should go eat quickly, I'm not very hungry, I'll go later."

As Hosea tied his horse to the hitching post, he said, "Arthur, Jamie, thank you for today. If it weren't for you, it would have been difficult for me to take this guy down by myself. Ha, I'm old now, and I'm not as energetic as I was when I was young. I can't afford to play big games anymore. I'd better focus on hunting small animals in the future. I'll try to contact the professionals I know and try to sell this skin for a good price."

"Well, small animals are better. At least they won't rush at you after you shoot them."

"By the way, Arthur, I have a map here. It was given to me by a guy I met in the bar before. Actually, he didn't give it to me, I found it from him, but that's another story. He told me that if I follow this map, I can find some really big guys. I don't have much hope, so if you're interested, take it. Of course, you can give it to Jamie."

Arthur took the parchment Hosea handed him. "Maybe this would be a good distraction when I'm not so busy."