The Entire Mountain Is My Hunting Ground

The "big fella" that Mountain Runners talk about is the Ma Lu. And the "big lone fella" they mention refers to a large, solitary boar.

For a wild boar to be called large, it has to be a male weighing upwards of three hundred and fifty jin.

And "lone" refers to a boar that has left its sounder to live by itself.

Wild boars are social animals. A boar living alone out in the wild either has a story behind it, or it’s had a mishap.

Usually, it’s the latter.

According to Wei Lai, this large, solitary boar first injured someone on the twenty-eighth of the twelfth lunar month. That day, it gored an old man who was setting up a root cellar in the mountains.

The old man’s surname was Feng, and he spent his years in the mountains setting traps for yellow foxes.

He was just heading down the mountain to reunite with his family for the New Year.

But unexpectedly, as he was passing the foot of Little Gu Mountain, he saw a large wild boar charging straight down the slope.

Elder Feng turned and ran, but how could two legs outrun four? The boar caught up, goring and tossing him repeatedly, until his left ribcage was punctured and bleeding uncontrollably.

Once it had had its fill of goring him, the boar sauntered off.

Fortunately, Elder Feng was experienced. He clutched his wound with his hand and slowly, inch by inch, crawled his way down.

Luckily, a fellow villager was passing by and managed to save the old man.

The incident was reported to Village Chief Qi Shengli. Qi Shengli thought it was just an isolated event, but the very next day, the boar injured someone else.

Then came New Year’s Eve. With no one traveling up or down the mountain, the boar found no other opportunity to attack.

The villagers of Yongsheng Village were thinking, ’Now that the New Year festivities are over, the boar must have left.’

But on the eighth and then the tenth day of the first lunar month, two more people in the village were injured by the boar.

Qi Shengli questioned each of the injured. After learning the boar’s approximate size and weight, he confirmed that the injuries to all four people were indeed the work of the same boar.

As Village Chief, Qi Shengli immediately issued a task: whoever could kill the boar would be rewarded with fifty yuan and fifty jin of food tickets.

A handsome reward is sure to attract a brave soul.

On the eleventh day of the first lunar month, a Hunter with the surname Jiang took his five dogs up Little Gu Mountain.

But when he came back down, three of his dogs had been left on the mountain forever, and the other two were both severely injured.

On the twelfth, two Hunters teamed up and went into the mountains with eight dogs. In the end, half of the eight dogs were killed, and the other half were all grievously wounded.

What was even more terrifying was that in both hunting parties, none of the three Hunters ever even saw the boar.

In other words, the battle between the boar and the hounds was already decided before the Hunters even arrived on the scene.

Originally, Wei Lai and Li Dong had planned to team up and take on the boar after the Lantern Festival.

But as soon as they heard that the eight dogs from the Song and Qi families couldn’t even corner the boar, the two immediately gave up the idea.

But man proposes, God disposes. On the sixteenth day of the first lunar month, Li Dong had to go to Lingnan to buy wood ear fungus spawn, so he set out from the village by sled.

Perhaps because he’d had too much cornmeal porridge that morning, Li Dong stopped the sled as he was passing through the woods to relieve himself.

Unexpectedly, at that very moment, the boar attacked from behind. When Li Dong heard the sound and turned to look, he was horrified.

At that moment, Li Dong tried to climb a tree, but he hadn’t had time to tie his pants. His padded trousers slipped down, binding his legs together so he couldn’t spread them.

’How am I supposed to climb a tree if I can’t even spread my legs?’

The boar charged, goring him and sending him flying more than two meters. When he landed, the impact snapped his left leg.

Fortunately, another villager was passing by. Seeing the boar attack, they quickly picked up a stick and started banging it against a tree, shouting at the top of their lungs, which finally scared the boar away.

The person helped Li Dong up, pulled up his pants for him, settled him onto the sled, and then drove the sled back to the village for him.

Poor Li Dong. Less than an hour after leaving home, he returned lying down.

At this point, the boar had injured a total of five people.

When Village Chief Qi Shengli heard that Li Dong had also been injured, he’d had enough. He immediately raised the bounty to one hundred yuan.

One hundred yuan and fifty jin of food tickets—it was a very generous reward.

A Hunter from Yongsheng Village with the surname Dai teamed up with Wei Lai. They gathered ten hounds and found three young men willing to help. A party of five men and ten dogs went into the mountains that very same day Li Dong was injured.

Of the ten hounds, three belonged to Wei Lai, two to Li Dong, and the remaining five all belonged to that Dai Changshan.

The ten dogs went into the mountains, and as soon as they caught the boar’s trail, they all took off. Dai and Wei could only hear the constant barking, but after a short while, there was silence.

The five men ran as fast as they could, only to find dogs lying injured one after another along the path.

In the end, the five men still didn’t even get a glimpse of the great solitary boar, but of the ten hounds, nine were injured and one was dead.

One of Wei Lai’s dogs, a black one, had died. This enraged Wei Lai, and after thinking it over, he decided to come to the Zhou Family to borrow a gun—a semi-automatic rifle—to kill that solitary boar.

Without hounds, he’d have to do a stalking hunt.

Wei Lai glanced at Zhao Jun, suddenly remembering that incredible long-distance shot Zhao Jun had made. So, he said, "Brother, how about you give us a hand?"

"Help you with what?" Just then, a voice came from the outer room. Zhou Chunming was back.

Everyone started to get up to greet him, but Zhou Chunming waved his hand dismissively and just sat down on the stool opposite the kang. He asked Wei Lai, "Lai-zi, are you confident?"

Zhou Chunming had also been quite troubled by this matter for the past two days. The path at the foot of Little Gu Mountain was the only way to get from Yongsheng Village to their Forest Farm.

It wasn’t a big problem right now, but once the first lunar month was over and the Forest Farm employees officially returned to work, many people would be traveling back and forth on that road every day. What if the boar injured someone else then?

Just a moment ago, Zhou Chunming and Qi Shengli had run into each other in the village and were discussing how to deal with this boar.

Wei Lai glanced at Zhou Chunming, then at Zhao Jun, before saying, "I’m afraid I can’t handle it alone. But if brother Zhao Jun can lend me a hand, there shouldn’t be a problem."

Hearing this, Zhou Chunming looked at Zhao Jun in surprise. He didn’t know anything about hunting. He had only heard from Zhou Jianjun that Zhao Jun was making a name for himself lately, but Zhou Chunming had never taken it to heart. After all, it was a man praising his wife’s younger brother; who could say if there wasn’t some exaggeration involved?

But Zhou Chunming knew what Wei Lai was capable of. Hearing Wei Lai say this now, he turned his gaze to Zhao Jun.

Zhou Chunming thought for a moment, then said to Zhao Jun, "Jun, if you’re not busy, why don’t you stay the night at your uncle’s place here?"

As soon as Zhou Chunming said this, Zhao Chun looked nervously at her younger brother. That boar had already injured five people; she was terrified something would happen to Zhao Jun.

But she understood that since her father-in-law had spoken, the matter was difficult to refuse.

Upon hearing this, Zhao Jun smiled and said, "Uncle, I’ll do as you say."

"Alright then," Zhou Chunming said to Zhou Jianjun. "In a bit, go find your Uncle Qi and use the phone at the Village Office to call Yong’an. You need to let your father-in-law know that Zhao Jun isn’t going back today and is staying the night with us."

"You got it, Dad. I’ll go in a bit," Zhou Jianjun immediately agreed.

But just then, Zhao Jun suddenly spoke up, telling Zhou Jianjun, "Brother-in-law, when you call Yong’an, have someone go notify Li Baoyu. Tell him to bring his dogs."