Chapter 919

Lu Yingming was the first to arrive at the Li family's. Or rather, he had actually been keeping an eye on the Li family's situation all day. After hearing the sound of the jeep, he couldn't help but come over after waiting for half an hour.

When he arrived, Li Long and the others hadn't finished eating yet. The room was already crowded, and now it was even more so. Li Jianguo asked Li Juan and Li Qiang to go to the east room to make space for Lu Yingming.

Li Qiang was a bit reluctant; he still wanted to hear how his father and uncle had hunted.

However, Li Juan was more sensible and knew that the adults had a lot to talk about at this time, so she dragged Li Qiang away, whispering that she would give him some candy.

Actually, Li Qiang didn't like candy as much as other children at this time. He had pocket money and the food at home was good. Like the fruit candy that ordinary children liked, he now felt it was just so-so.

When did he even stop caring about candy?

"How was it?" Lu Yingming asked after sitting down. "Did you hit anything? How many did you shoot?"

"Hey, when Brother Long goes hunting, how could he not hit anything?" Tao Daqiang's tone was exceptionally proud. "Yellow sheep, red deer, they shot quite a few!"

Lu Yingming was greatly surprised and asked again:

"You all hit something? Is that sand gun really that useful?"

"That's right, it's good if you shoot from close range," Liang Dacheng said while eating a steamed bun. "Thirty or forty meters, you aim and hit, right? One shot, and that yellow sheep is dead!"

Although everyone actually knew that if you really counted it, the sand gun was still not as good as the Type 56. First, it could only hold two bullets, and you had to reload to shoot again; second, it had no rifling, so it couldn't shoot far.

But for Liang Dacheng and the others, this sand gun was their own gun, so how could it not be good?

It was bound to be good.

"It's really amazing..." Lu Yingming didn't know the details of their hunt, but since they had hit prey, and it looked like quite a lot, then it was truly amazing.

Li Long had already finished eating. After putting down his chopsticks, he rubbed his face. His ears were slightly itchy—they were frostbitten, but it wasn't serious.

He looked at his watch and said:

"In a little while, Brother Xie Yun Dong and Jia Dong should be here."

Lu Yingming had originally intended to go back after asking. After all, they were eating, and it wasn't very good for him to stay too long.

But now that he heard Li Long say that Xie Yun Dong and Jia Dong were almost there, he decided to stay and see exactly how much they had shot.

Twenty minutes later, the sound of the tractor came. When it passed the reed ditch, some people came out to look. Seeing Xie Yun Dong sitting on the tied-up yellow sheep and red deer, everyone was shocked.

Last year, Xu Haijun and the others had also shot things, but that was almost New Year's. Everyone knew there was nothing to eat in the Gobi Desert at that time, which was why those wild animals were easy to gather.

Now that only two snowfalls had occurred, Li Long and the others could go out and bring things back. What did that mean?

It meant Li Long was truly amazing at hunting.

Of course, some people who heard this news would still sourly say, "The Li family kid is just lucky."

They believed in luck, not strength.

When the tractor arrived at the Li family's gate, Li Long and the others had already come out. They hurriedly greeted Jia Dong and Xie Yun Dong to come inside and warm up, while they started to unload the things from the tractor bed and redistribute them.

Lu Yingming didn't go up to help; he looked on with envy. If he had gone to buy a sand gun yesterday, would he have had a share of these prey today?

A yellow sheep hide alone sold for at least thirty, and if it was a full hide, it could sell for fifty. Ten hides were almost the price of a sand gun.

If he had bought a gun, could he have already bought the parts for a gun by now?

Of course, regret was useless. Lu Yingming thought for a moment and went home.

He intended to persuade Lu Lu Dasao to go to the county tomorrow to buy a sand gun.

Half an hour later, Jia Dong drove the tractor back again. However, he didn't go home first, but sent the things for Xie Yun Dong, Liang Dacheng, and Tao Daqiang's families back, and only returned to his own home at the end.

Although only one yellow sheep remained on the tractor in the end, Jia Dong was still happy. He had a harvest the first time he went out, so how could he not be happy?

But there was also regret. After hearing about Li Long and the others' hunt, he regretted choosing a single-barrel one. If it were a double-barrel sand gun, he could have shot two when they encountered a herd of yellow sheep later!

On the way back, the red deer and yellow sheep had already frozen. Li Long took two red deer and three yellow sheep back to the county. He had shot four yellow sheep and one red deer, gave one to Jia Dong, and originally intended to leave more for his older brother, but Li Jianguo didn't agree.

Li Jianguo's meaning was simple: Li Long was good at skinning. He was prone to ruining the skin, and if it was ruined, the hide wouldn't be worth anything. It was better for Li Long to take them back and skin them slowly.

These people had actually agreed that the next hunt would be at least a week later; they wouldn't hunt for a short time. After all, so many shots had been fired in the sand hollow, and the yellow sheep were probably scared away.

Li Long wanted to take them back, skin them, and then bring some meat back. He didn't have many people on his side and couldn't eat that much meat.

It was mainly because there was still plenty of meat at the big courtyard, and he planned to go into the mountains in a while, and when he shot wild boars or something, there would still be more to eat.

Another thing was that he felt game meat was okay to eat occasionally, but if you ate it in large quantities, it wasn't as good as the taste of domestic cattle and sheep, and it needed heavy seasoning to suppress the gamey taste.

That night, the Fourth Squad was extremely restless.

People came to the homes of Tao Daqiang, Xie Yun Dong, Liang Dacheng, and even Jia Dong to inquire about the hunting.

People also went to Xu Haijun's home; they were even urging Xu Haijun to come up with a measure as soon as possible, such as when to go hunting.

Now that the heavy snow had fallen, some people had already gone to the Red Willow Beach in the east to chase rabbits, and the harvest was not small.

But it was ultimately not as good as hunting yellow sheep. Chasing rabbits for two days was only equal to shooting one yellow sheep; anyone could calculate that account. And among those who went, except for Jia Dong, almost everyone had more than two. Just this one trip out was at least seventy or eighty in income.

If they could be like Li Long, that would be over a hundred!

The people looking for Tao Daqiang, Xie Yun Dong, and the others naturally hoped to join in, but these people couldn't make the decision and only said they didn't know when Li Long would lead the next hunt.

Lu Yingming went straight to Li Jianguo. He had persuaded Lu Lu Dasao and intended to go buy a hunting gun tomorrow and then join in.

Li Jianguo naturally had no objections. He felt a bit uncomfortable following a bunch of young people to hunt, so having Lu Yingming join in was actually better.

Lu Yingming was naturally happy and immediately went home to prepare the money, intending to ride his bicycle to the county tomorrow to buy a gun.

That night, Li Jianguo and the others warmed up the remaining prey and skinned them. Since they had brought them back, they should solve the problem early, scrape the grease off the hides, rub them with salt, and hang them on the wall. Once they were dry, they could take them to the purchasing station.

When Lu Yingming went to the county Zhang Xin Hua Bookstore to buy a gun the next day, he was surprised to find that several people from the squad were there.

They were a bit embarrassed, but then they all smiled. It seemed everyone had the same idea.

However, what surprised them was that the double-barrel sand guns in the county Zhang Xin Hua Bookstore were sold out!

Lu Yingming had already inquired and received Li Jianguo's advice last night that it was best to use a double-barrel sand gun; if you encountered a large herd of yellow sheep with a single-barrel one, you definitely wouldn't have time to change bullets.

So he wanted to buy a double-barrel one, but there weren't any.

Others thought if there were no double-barrel ones, they would buy single-barrel ones, but Lu Yingming didn't buy one and pushed his bicycle out.

He intended to go to Shicheng to buy a double-barrel one!

If you want to buy, buy a good one! If you really buy a single-barrel one, you'll regret it later for something that costs hundreds of yuan.

He really went to Shicheng, then went to the Shicheng Zhang Xin Hua Bookstore, and bought a brand-new double-barrel hunting gun and two boxes of bullets.

Carrying the gun back home, after Lu Yingming put down his bicycle, he went to the Li family's place for the first time to tell Li Jianguo that he had bought a gun.

Li Jianguo was in the room with Liang Wenyu cleaning the meat and internal organs of the yellow sheep and red deer, so he just gave a few perfunctory responses—buy a gun if you want to buy a gun, no need to be so solemn.

Lu Yingming didn't notice Li Jianguo's perfunctoriness. He was very excited, so excited that he didn't want to rest, and took the gun to the wasteland in the south to test it.

On this day, gunshots could be heard from time to time in different places in the east, south, and north of the Fourth Squad.

Not in the west; the west was adjacent to the Third Squad, so they couldn't shoot there.

Li Jianguo suggested that Lu Yingming go to the police station to get a gun permit after buying the gun. Because this double-barrel sand gun was bought at the Zhang Xin Hua Bookstore, the source was legal, so it was very convenient to get a gun permit.

It was just that the police station was also a bit surprised these past two days—why were there so many people in the Fourth Squad buying guns? Was something going on?

The station chief was worried and specifically sent police officers to the Fourth Squad to understand the situation.

Xu Chengjun naturally knew what was going on and explained the matter clearly after much persuasion. Anyway, the country now allowed the buying and selling of hunting guns, so this couldn't be called illegal.

But from then on, the Fourth Squad was on the key watch list of the township police station. After all, with guns for hunting, if there was really any trouble or conflict between people in the village, would they use the guns?

That was hard to say!

Li Long went back last night and didn't unload the red deer and yellow sheep from the jeep. He drained the water in the car and rested.

This hunt was far, and there were some twists and turns in the middle, so he was quite tired and simply slacked off.

The next day, after he was well-rested, he pulled the deer and yellow sheep into the kitchen. After they thawed, he started skinning and gutting them.

Mingming and Haohao weren't afraid either. Dressed thickly, they just watched Li Long operate.

That red deer had a pair of long antlers, so Li Long simply broke them off and gave one to each of the two children.

The two children were already at a combative age and couldn't really lift the two or three kilograms of red deer antlers, but they already had a tendency to swing them around to fight. Sister-in-law Yang hurriedly stopped them, put the antlers away, and rarely scolded Li Long a few times.

Li Long laughed sheepishly and continued skinning. He hadn't thought that much; he hadn't thought the sharp antlers would hurt the children.

There were quite a few yellow sheep and deer, so even though Li Long was proficient at skinning, he still had to remove the meat and gut them, which took a whole day.

Sister-in-law Yang was also washing the intestines and stomachs. This stuff could actually be discarded, but Li Long liked this taste; he felt the intestines and stomachs were better than the liver and heart, so he kept them all.

As for the hides, he didn't settle accounts clearly with his older brother; it had long been unclear, and there was no need for this hundred or so yuan.

Fortunately, it was winter, so the meat didn't need to be boiled; just hang it in the storage room to freeze.

After finishing all this, Li Long suddenly felt that hunting was also quite troublesome.

Just like the fighting in Hong Kong and Taiwan police movies, as Guo Tiebing would say, these were actually small things; the troublesome part was writing reports afterward, that was the troublesome part!

Hunting was the same; it was very enjoyable when hunting, but cleaning up afterward was the troublesome thing.

One or two were fine, but with more, cleaning up was also annoying.

Thinking back to when he first started shooting a lot of things, he didn't seem to have this mood; at that time, he thought the more he shot, the better.

Was it only in the last year or two that he had such thoughts?

Was it because living conditions had improved that he had such thoughts? (End of chapter)