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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 27

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Pheasant Hunting (2)

Having sized up the situation, Han San gave his orders fast.

"Both of you. Hyung, Taeyang. Come here and listen to me."

Im Baechil and Kim Tae-yang glanced at each other, then shuffled over with hesitant steps.

Han San went on.

"I'm going to set up over there, on top of the charcoal kiln ruins. Hyung, you've still got some stamina left, right? Head back down below one more time. And Taeyang, you go into that thicket. When you push through the brush, don't go swinging and beating at it—slow and careful, like unspooling thread. Got it?"

"Aw, come on. What am I, a kid... and then what?"

"Wait there, and when I give the signal, both of you yell and come toward me."

Kim Tae-yang's brow scrunched up.

"You want me to be a beater?"

"You even know what a beater is?"

"Sure I do. It's lackey work. I wanted to do something cooler..."

"Then you shoot the slingshot."

"Oh, for real? I get to shoot the slingshot?"

"Taeyang. Normally when I say something like that, you're supposed to think, 'Ah, he's being sarcastic. I can't hit anything with a slingshot the way San can. I should know my place and do an honest job as a beater'—right? How do you light up and ask back like a puppy that just dug up a sweet potato?"

Only then did Kim Tae-yang put on a sullen face.

Worn out, Han San picked up two birch branches lying nearby and handed one to each of them.

"When I give the signal, whack the brush or the trees with these. Make it crack loud. And yell too."

A pheasant is a timid creature, so when it hides it presses itself flat. There's a reason for that comic image of one foolishly burying just its head in the grass and going stock-still.

But even those birds can't hold out once the racket grows loud enough.

"Th-that, but San. Then won't the pheasants just fly off and escape...?"

"That's the whole point. Don't worry, I'll hit them."

"Hey. I get that you're amazing with that slingshot, but a bird in flight... can you really pull that off?"

Kim Tae-yang narrowed his eyes. He knew San had a remarkable father, and that lately he'd been pulling off things that were hard to believe—but a bird in flight?

Im Baechil, for his part, said nothing more and just hefted his birch cudgel. Come to think of it, they were already here, and no amount of jawing would change that. So they might as well try.

Han San clapped his hands.

"All right, all right. It's April now. Drag this out and the sun'll be down by the time we head back, so let's start. Counting on you!"

And so it was decided.

Watching the backs of their heads as they each headed for their positions, Han San smirked. Then, without a sound, he climbed up onto the charcoal kiln ruins.

The view opened up wide.

But Han San didn't rely on his eyes alone. He lightly licked a finger and held it up beside his cheek.

The April pheasant had thinned out from getting through winter, but its nerves were that much sharper. The moment it sensed a commotion, it would shoot straight up, spread its wings, and try to catch the wind.

'The wind's blowing like this, so—'

To the eyes of a seventy-four-year-old mountain man, the choices the birds would make were laid out plain as day.

Han San fitted a pebble to the slingshot.

"Now!"

The instant the signal dropped, the racket broke loose.

"Hraah! Come on out, you slabs of meat! Taeyang's starving!"

"Wooaah! Hyah! Waaaah...!"

Crack, crack, crack!

Kim Tae-yang's swaggering shouts and Im Baechil's screeching tore the silence apart. The birch sticks lashing the brush and beating the trees rang out in a wild clamor.

The next moment.

"Pheasant!"

Whirr!

A cock pheasant burst up from its spot as if showing off its plumage—a vertical takeoff, leaping straight up with no running start, and then, pap! It spread its wings and tried to catch the wind.

'One.'

Calmly, Han San drew the rubber band and the slingshot apart at once in opposite directions.

The tension of the tough bicycle tube hummed through his whole hand.

He held his breath.

The wind path he'd read earlier, the speed, gravity—all meeting to draw a trajectory.

Seventy-four years of instinct fixed on a single point in the vast empty air.

He let go.

Pap...!

A whip-crack of a snap, and the next instant the flying pebble caught the cock pheasant square in the head.

There was a thud.

"Phea..."

The collision swallowed even its death cry. The cock pheasant went tumbling head over heels and plummeted.

That was only the start.

"Pheasant!"

"Phea-sant!"

Two hen pheasants, startled a beat too late, sprang up one after another.

Han San's hand moved like lightning.

Grabbing a stone, drawing it out, fitting it, pulling back—all of it flowed together as one breath.

Pap...! Pap...!

Another shot, thud! It rammed into a hen's body before she'd even fully spread her wings. And one more, crash! It struck the wing of the one trying to ride the wind away, snapping it.

"Pheasant...!"

"Phea-ang..."

Thud-thud-thud.

The sound of pheasants dropping rang out loud.

"...Whoa, holy shit."

Kim Tae-yang pushed out of the undergrowth and froze, mouth hanging open.

This wasn't hunting—it was a stunt. Shooting a pheasant in flight, and in a forest where the branches spread out like this, no less?

"M-my god..."

Im Baechil couldn't close his gaping mouth either.

Normally pheasant hunting meant creeping up on one that lay buried head-down and hiding, getting only as close as you could before it bolted, then shooting. And you needed a gun to secure that distance.

Neither Kim Tae-yang nor Im Baechil had enough experience to grasp such fine points, but that didn't dampen their awe.

"San, you're really... really, really the real thing. This is just... whoa, damn, is this Baekdu Mountain school slingshot technique?"

"B-Baekdu Mountain school slingshot... technique? What's that, Taeyang?"

"Ah, you don't even know that? They say San's father was a Baekdu Mountain hunter. That insanely tall mountain!"

"M-Mister Man-seok... ah, no wonder. The blacksmith said Mister Man-seok was actually a tremendous marksman..."

At the sight of them banging their own drums and gongs to convince themselves, Han San just swallowed a dry laugh. It was easier this way. And it felt good to see his father respected by the young men of the village.

"One pheasant each—that works, right?"

When Han San asked it boldly, Kim Tae-yang gulped.

"Of course! I could take down three pheasants on my own!"

Im Baechil waved his hands.

"N-no, the three of us eating all of it... San, you'll need to take one home... a-and, no, no no! Forget that, let's pick up our pheasants first, Taeyang!"

"Huh? Ah, right. Yeah."

The two of them went and gathered the pheasants. The hen that had taken the hit to the body was still breathing, twitching in fitful spasms—flap, flap.

Han San pulled out his knife and whistled.

'More hands makes it easy.'

No matter how seasoned he was, he couldn't have done this alone. It was a 'design' made possible only by seizing position and route first, then driving the birds toward him and flushing them up.

He might catch one, but bagging three in a row like this was simply impossible without a gun.

And to top it off, the pheasants caught this way even got delivered straight to him. Of course, he'd have to split the spoils accordingly—but that was the whole idea of dividing labor.

Mulling it over, Han San deftly slit the pheasants' throats, opened their bellies, and pulled out the entrails. Then he jerked his chin lightly.

"They need to hang a while until the blood drains, see? Those vines over there—tie them up with those and string them up for me."

"You got it! Leave it to me."

"U-uh, yeah..."

Kim Tae-yang had, after all, spent three years in Sebeom Valley, and Im Baechil was Upper Hamlet born. That much they handled with ease.

Before long, three pheasants hung upside down beneath a suitable branch.

"Hey, what do we do? Like Baechil hyung said, three doesn't seem like enough."

"I-I didn't go so far as to say it wasn't enough... just, um, I thought it'd be nice to bring some to Mother too..."

"Ah, that's exactly what 'not enough' means. San, one more round?"

Kim Tae-yang spun his birch stick around and around. The fellow who'd griped about lackey work, about being a beater, was now having a grand old time.

The crew's surging will to work was a good thing, sure. But Han San smiled.

"That's for the pheasants to decide. If there are more here, we catch more; if there are none, we can't."

"Either way, it means we've gotta try! Hey, point out a spot. Where should we drive from? Huh? Huh?"

"Got it, you punk. Hmm. The way I figure, once in that direction—"

It was right as he was about to give the next order, in the middle of all that loud chatter.

Han San's movement stopped dead.

"That direction what? Why'd you stop talking—"

Han San raised a hand and clamped it over Kim Tae-yang's mouth as he opened it, puzzled.

"Mmph!?"

Kim Tae-yang panicked. Han San didn't let go; with a glance he signaled Im Baechil while covering his mouth too, letting out only a small "shh."

When the three of them fell silent, the forest went very still.

Only then did Han San release Kim Tae-yang's mouth, glaring with narrowed eyes at one corner of the forest where dusk was beginning to settle.

'This smell.'

The wind blew.

The three hanging pheasants swayed lightly, and as the faint reek of blood spread, a strange foul stench mixed in through the gap.

A rank animal stink that raised the hairs along his spine.

'This is—'

Not some badger. Not a wildcat either.

A little bigger, a little more cunning—the smell of a carnivore that could tear out a man's throat in a single bite.

'It came for the smell of blood.'

Han San spoke low.

"Everyone. Don't talk—just listen."

Kim Tae-yang and Im Baechil only blinked.

Han San went on.

"From here on, move exactly as I tell you."

The two men stiffened.

There was no resistance. Kim Tae-yang in particular shrank back completely, nodding over and over with his eyes.

He'd seen Han San's eyes—eyes with more pressure in them than when Han San had had a hand around his throat.

"Taeyang. Cudgel up, five steps to my right. Baechil hyung, five steps to my left, opposite Taeyang. Both of you, never block the space in front of me while you move."

Kim Tae-yang did just that. So did Im Baechil.

Yes—they'd caught the smell now too. Both their eyes locked onto the direction the pheasants hung, and beyond it. The source of that rank stink working its way through the reek of blood.

A moment later, the formation was complete—Han San in the center, the two men standing on the broad spread wings to either side, a pyramid-shaped formation.[1]

It covered each other's blind spots and let them respond no matter which side the attack came from. It was the fastest, most basic way to turn two men with no experience facing a beast from 'baggage' into 'fighting strength.'

'Use it?'

Han San took the cloth switch from inside the carrying sack with one hand. There wasn't much force in that grip.

Again, the gun was the last resort. Hoarding something until it turns to dung is to be avoided, sure—but flip that around and it means you have to keep saving it until it's about to.

'Not yet.'

He gripped the slingshot. And the pebble round.

At the same time he stretched out a foot and quietly dragged one birch stick toward himself.

'Come.'

It was then, with the taut tension running between the three of them.

Rustle.

Beyond the branch where the pheasants hung, behind that great old tree, the brush shook.

"Grrrrr..."

A sound low and savage, like the echo from a cave.

Two bluish points of light slid up into view.

Patchy gray fur with sparse bald spots, muscle as gaunt as a dead tree. Dragging its grotesquely twisted left hind leg, the beast that emerged bared its yellow teeth.

The one they'd run into in the scree field.

The old wolf.

"H-hii...! Holy shit, a wol... f..."

A scream leaked out of Kim Tae-yang's mouth, then hurriedly crawled back in. Im Baechil drew in a breath, but soon, with the face of a man steeling himself, he gripped the stick tight and breathed from his shoulders.

And Han San tugged the corner of his mouth into a slight grin.

"Looks like dinner's about to get a whole lot fancier."

[1] A "pyramid-shaped formation" is named for the Han character 品 (pum), whose three boxes stack in a triangle—one above, two below—so the three men stand with one ahead and two flanking to cover each other's blind spots.

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