American Hunting: Starting with Solitary Life in the Wilderness

Chapter 77 The Eightieth Day
On the eightieth day.

On a crisp morning at Lake Chirko, a biting wind howled through the sturdy log shelter in Kree.

Inside the room, Clay's figure moved in the dim light, his movements practiced yet numb with a mechanical quality.

He first added a few pieces of chopped firewood to the nearly burnt-out stove, then put on his heavy coat and went out of the shelter.

Then he walked to the shoreline of the lake where he had spent a lot of energy setting up the gillnet, and skillfully used a retractable rope to retrieve the gillnet, which was covered with a thin layer of ice.

The net yielded nothing, and the riverbank was beginning to freeze over, rendering the net unusable soon, but Clay didn't seem to care.

He then slowly lifted the fishing hook he had set up from the icy lake water.

A pike weighing about three or four pounds was hanging on the hook, weakly wagging its tail.

This should have been a good harvest, enough to support his protein needs for the day.

But there was no joy on Clay's face.

He simply unhooked the fish expressionlessly, cleanly disposed of it with a dagger, then rearranged the hook before dragging the fish back to the shelter.

"It's the eightieth day, guys."

Clay placed the fish on a wooden board, facing the camera with a tone as calm as if he were reporting the weather.

"Hmm. Another fish. Enough calories. Enough fuel. Everything seems to be under control."

His words were concise and devoid of any emotion.

For this professional hunting guide, survival seems to have become a series of formulas that can be calculated and executed.

He cut the fish into pieces, skewered them with twigs, and slowly grilled them over a fire.

While waiting for the grilled fish, he took out a small object from his pocket.

He carefully opened it, and inside was a photograph with slightly curled edges.

The photo shows his wife and two smiling children, with the vast ranches and blue sky of their hometown, Montana, in the background.

He just stared quietly and greedily at the smiling faces of his family in the photos, his eyes, which had always been steadfast in the wilderness, now revealed a rare hint of bewilderment.

What am I doing here?

A question suddenly popped into his mind, and then, like a vine, quickly entangled his entire thought process.

He faced the camera, his voice low and deep, as if he were telling himself, "I'm here to prove that I can do it."

“I’ve hunted deer, I can fish consistently, and I’ve built this damn sturdy enough cabin. I’ve proven to everyone, and to myself, that I can survive on this land.”

He paused for a moment and put the half-eaten grilled fish aside.

“A million dollars? Yes, that’s a lot of money.”

"But after spending eighty days here, you'll find that loneliness can make many things lose their original color. Money, now it seems, is just a string of numbers printed on paper."

His gaze fell on the photograph again, his eyes filled with an overwhelming longing.

“I miss my wife, I miss my children. I want to hear them making noise in the house, I want to smell the apple pie my wife is baking, I want to be with my sons, chasing cattle and sheep on the ranch in Montana… instead of here, alone, eating this damn, always-only-salty-tasting grilled fish!”

“I don’t feel like I’m having a survival challenge anymore,”

His voice carried a hint of self-mockery and weariness.

“I’m serving my sentence in a beautiful prison, but there’s no one around. I do the same things every day, and I don’t see a single person to talk to. This…it’s going to drive you crazy.”

Over the next few days, Clay's modus operandi quietly changed.

He no longer actively explores new areas or tries to set more complex hunting traps as he used to.

All his actions were simplified to the bare minimum of maintenance.

Every morning, he would routinely check the gillnets on the shore.

If there's fish, he'll bring it back as his food for the day. If not, it doesn't matter, because there's some dried fish in the shelter, enough to fill his stomach.

Then he would inspect the traps set up in the distance, targeting small mammals. He spent most of his time collecting firewood, as if trying to numb his lonely heart through this pure, thoughtless physical labor.

"I don't know how much longer I can hold on."

He sat at the entrance of the shelter and calmly said to the camera, "Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Now, I leave everything to God and luck."

"If I can still pull big fish out of the lake in the next few days, like before, then maybe God thinks I should stay and continue the game."

“If… if we get zero results in a row… then maybe that’s him telling me it’s time to go home, Clay. Your battle is over.”

After he finished speaking, he fell into a long silence.

On the other side of Lake Chirko, Lin Yu-an's campsite presents a completely different scene.

Since the thrilling battle on the seventy-third day seven days ago, Lin Yu'an's aura has undergone a qualitative transformation.

If he was previously a skilled and theoretically proficient wilderness survival novice, then...

Now, he is more like an old hunter who is truly integrated with this land and exudes a strong confidence from the bottom of his heart!
The psychological elevation that comes from a life-or-death struggle with a top predator can only be truly understood through the baptism of blood!

The successful bear hunt completely washed away the last trace of fear he had for this wilderness!
Unlike Clay, he didn't feel numb; on the contrary, his handling and consumption of food became a ritualistic daily routine.

Today's breakfast is pan-fried venison steak with bear fat and roasted wild onions.

He first used his homemade chainsaw chain to saw a piece off a frozen piece of hard bear fat.

Instead of directly rendering all the bear oil, the cold weather meant that neither the fat nor the bear meat would spoil.

In a hot stainless steel pot, a small piece of milky bear oil melted rapidly.

He placed several evenly sliced ​​pieces of bear meat inside, and then placed a few wild onions next to them. The onions, fried in the bear oil, quickly became soft and translucent, emitting a caramelized aroma.

Lin Yu'an quietly enjoyed this high-calorie, high-protein breakfast.

Perhaps it's a lingering effect of his battle with the black bear, but even while chewing his food, his gaze habitually scans the treeline around the shelter like a radar.

This state is very similar to that of veterans who have experienced brutal wars. Even when resting in the safest environment, their senses and muscle memory remain in a "standby" state.

His relaxation was only on a mental level, while his body was like a wild beast ready to hunt at any moment!
After breakfast, Lin Yu'an began her daily work.

First, he had to inspect the lasso traps that had been rearranged on the "rabbit trail".

Wearing homemade snowshoes, he walked with remarkable stability and speed through knee-deep snow.

Today was a lucky day; one of the traps successfully caught a plump snowshoe hare.

Instead of taking it back immediately, he skillfully processed it and hung some of the fresh rabbit entrails near the sanctuary where the red fox cub often appeared.

After all, it's impossible to determine whether the little fox last time deliberately shifted the blame or gave a well-intentioned early warning.

Lin Yu'an prefers an early warning because the appearance of the little fox has indeed given him more time to prepare.

In stark contrast to Clay's "resignation to fate," Lin Yu'an is taking an extremely proactive approach to combating the harsh winter at Lake Chirko.

He not only stockpiled food and fuel, but even began to utilize the bear's resources for further creation.

He carefully boiled and filtered the large chunks of bear oil and stored them in earthenware jars.

"Guys, since I came to live alone in the wilderness, the most satisfying thing so far is not hunting a deer or a bear, but discovering pottery early on, so that I now have enough pottery to hold all sorts of things."

He carefully cleaned the blood off the huge bear skin with snow, put it in a willow basket along with the bear's head, and buried them together in the snow.

The weather right now is definitely not suitable for tanning bear skins.

The ultimate showdown between Clay and Lin Yu'an has evolved into a brutal psychological war of attrition, a test of willpower, where it's a battle of endurance in endless loneliness!

Clay's heart is being eroded by loneliness, and his survival has become a passive endeavor.

Lin Yu'an, on the other hand, underwent a psychological transformation after hunting the black bear. His survival strategy became a more proactive conquest of the wilderness.

(End of this chapter)