NOVEL NEXT Chapter 21
The Great Hunt was an event organized by the Spirit Moon Tribe every meeting, it was a competition of might, speed, stamina, and hunting prowess.
Animals that could not fly or were not small enough to hide in burrows were captured uninjured, painted in colored dyes, and kept in cages for this hunting event.
Participants would be separated into different batches and take turns hunting the painted animals that had a headstart on them, each different animal that they manage to bring back had a certain amount of points associated with them, and the one in the batch who racks up the most points wins.
This is just the preliminary hunt, which will at minimum takes two to three days depending on the number of participants. Once the preliminary hunt is done, there will be a day of rest before the final hunt begins.
The same rules apply to all the preliminary winners as they hunt for first place.
The time limit for each hunting batch is determined by what they called a time stick. It is a stick from a particularly dense type of tree that when lit and let to smolder, takes a considerably long time to burn out.
If the hunter does not bring the prey back, even if he is carrying it when the time stick burns out, the prey is not counted.
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Grud was excited because this was his first time taking part in the Great Hunt, the only other hunt he had participated in during the previous meeting was to entertain the younger children, where they chased around rabbits and some small flightless birds.
Grud was lucky that he managed to turn up earlier than most and made it in time to be put into the third batch, he will still need to wait, but it was not that bad. So after the person officiating the event tied a colored string around his arm and told him to come back when the second horn sounds, he was let off to do his own thing while waiting.
While waiting, Grud decided to visit a few of the tribes that had set up to barter their area’s specialty. Now that he was considered a man and did his own hunting, he had his own pelts, fangs, and tusks to barter.
So unlike last time, he decided to take a serious look. While looking around he saw pelts, fruits, meats, and root vegetables he had never seen before. There were also some that were selling bone and wood accessories that seemed to attract a lot of women from all over.
After looking around, he came upon something he had never seen before, an honest to spirit honeycomb…. well he did see it before but covered in bees and he was not crazy enough to approach a bee hive.
The only reason he knew what a honeycomb was and looked like was seeing the remains of one and tasting the remains after being attracted by the sweet smell. It was a few years ago while he was exploring the nearby forest, he noticed a hive of bees hanging from a low branch and avoided it because he knew what it felt like to be stung by a bee.
A few days later when he returned to the same spot, he noticed the majority of the hive was destroyed, there were dead bees everywhere and there were claw marks on the tree and around the destroyed hive.
Taking advantage of the absents of the bees and whatever destroyed the hive, young Grud went over to the hive and broke off a piece of honeycomb for himself to eat. It was as all the stories he was he heard about honey said, it was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.
Remembering this sweet memory, he went up to the elderly man who was bartering the honeycombs “Elder, is that really honeycombs? How did you get so much? Do the bees not attack you for it?”
The elder looked at Grud with a smile “Ho ho, young man, never seen you around before. Yes, they are really honeycombs, the bees like to make large hanging hives under the cliffs near my tribe that we have to climb to collect, and yes they do attack us when we collect the honey, but some years ago, most likely before you were born, my tribe found out that smoke calms the bees down. Don't get me wrong, some of them will still sting you but those of my tribe that collects the honey are used to the stinks already.”
“How much for that comb there.” Grud said as he pointed to a sizable comb, the elderly man looked at the comb and back at Grud “That depends, what you got?” Grud listed the pelts, horns, fangs and claws that he had back at his tent.
The elderly man rubbed his bearded chin for a while then said “Three whole pelts, one set of Tusk Pig’s tusk, and one set of moose antlers.” Grud sucked in thru his teeth at the sound of the price “That is expensive.”
The elderly man chuckled “As are all things that are hard to get. It is a dangerous process to climb to collect the honey and we can only collect it once, maybe twice a year, so we will never have much in stock. The only good thing is that honey never goes bad.”
Grud raised an eyebrow “Never goes bad? Never heard of a food that can do that.” The old man chuckled again “This is what old people like me are around for, it's to teach young people like you. If you keep honey for too long, it will get hard. All you have to do is warm it up and it will flow like…. Well… Honey.”
Grud thought about it ‘It is expensive but I do want to get something for Nita and Ida.’ making up his mind, he told the elderly man to hold the honeycomb for him and went back to his tent to get the items to barter.
After getting the honey and going back to his tent to hide it and surprise his wives later, he continued browsing around and seeing what he could only dream of getting for himself two years ago when he was not doing his own hunting.
As the hours went by, Grud chatted with the other tribes about their local specialty. Soon he heard the second horn sound and made his way to the Great Hunt’s event site, his special spear given to him by Dhuk in hand.
When Grud arrived at the event site, the participants from the previous batch were starting to stream back in from the hunt. After everyone was accounted for and Grud’s batch of participants was gathered up, the prey for Grud’s batch was released into the forest.
Of the variety of painted animals that were released, there were two species that had a particularly high amount of points for hunting them, the first was the Tusk Pigs, since this was not a group hunt, most hunters would just ignore or run away from this target due to its aggressive nature.
The Tusk Pig was mainly put in the Great Hunt to make hunters wary of what they were hunting, and because sometimes the Tusk Pig acted as an obstacle to the hunter’s target prey.
The other species which had a particularly high amount of points for hunting them was the Tuk Tuk. Named after the sound they make when snapping their beaks together to communicate danger to their flock, the Tuk Tuk is a fast running flightless bird that is slightly taller than a grown man and travels in flocks of twenty to forty. Though they usually run away from danger, they are dangerous to confront due to their powerful peck and talons on their powerful long legs that can easily disembowel anyone who are not careful.
A few of these Tuk Tuks were released as a wild card, Tuk Tuks are fast enough to outrun any hunter, but if one manages to ambush a Tuk Tuk, they will potentially get a lot of points for it, but the other problem was the hunter had to bring the unwieldy carcass back to starting line for it to count, and that would eat a lot into the hunter’s time.
Seeing this, Grud decided to go for the high point targets, he was confident of bringing down Tusk Pigs, but he had never hunted a Tuk Tuk before, but from the speed at which he saw the Tuk Tuks run into the forest, he was confident he could catch them. As for the tracking, he just had to leave that to his nose.
Waiting for the painted animals’ head start to finish, the participants got to the starting line. After a very short time stick brunt out, the officiator of the event shouted “Begin the Hunt!” and Grud sprinted off into the tree line.
Following the scent of his prey, Grud ducked and weaved between trees while closing in on his first prey, within just over five minutes of running at full speed, Grud came upon his first target. The good old Tusk Pig, over the few months after his coming of age hunt, Grud had solo hunted over a dozen of them.
As he closed in, Grud slowed down and crept around in the nearby vegetation to get to a flanking position. When he was in position, he charged out of the bush and ran his spear into the place where the Tusk Pig’s heart and lungs would be, this took advantage of Grud’s speed and the Tusk Pig’s inability to turn its body fast enough.
After running his spear into the Tusk Pig’s side, Grud used his strength, weight and momentum to tackle the Tusk Pig on its side. To end the Tusk Pig’s struggling faster, Grud drew his axe and gave it a chop to the skull.
After the Tusk Pig twitched for a few seconds, it went limp. Grud, not wanting to waste any more time, firemen carry the Tusk Pig on his shoulders and sprinted back in the direction he came from.
When Grud broke out of the tree line at a sprint, the point counter thought that the Tusk Pig was charging them and grabbed their spears, it took them a few seconds to notice the man who was carrying the Tusk Pig.
When he put the Tusk Pig down, the point counters were astonished. There were hunters that hunters Tusk Pigs during the Great Hunt before, but not this fast, it has not even been fifteen minutes yet and also the fact that Grud was lugging around the Tusk Pig so easily surprised them.
After confirming he had been awarded the points, Grud sprinted back into the forest. And soon he caught the scent of his next target, the Tuk Tuk. As he followed the scent, he noticed that there were multiple similar scents, this could mean that the Tuk Tuks had most likely banded together.
As he closed in the scent got stronger, Grud slowed down and honed in on the Tuk Tuks. soon he was peaking out of a bush at four Tuk Tuks scratching around the dirt. Grud remembered only two Tuk Tuks being released for his batch, this must mean the other two must be from a previous batch.
‘Well, More for me then.’ Grud thought to himself as he prepared to attack. Grud prepared to throw his spear and had his axe in his other hand. When he felt he was ready, he popped out of the bush and launched his spear at a Tuk Tuk and immediately lobbed his axe at another.
The spear struck a Tuk Tuk, sending it off its feet and onto the ground, killing it instantly. The axe however struck center mass of another Tuk Tuk, making it stumble a few steps but it did not bring the bird down.
The two unscathed birds sprinted off deeper into the forest while making their signature beak snapping sounds, the Tuk Tuk injured by the axe followed along shortly after, tho at a much slower speed.
Grud sprinted after the injured bird and after a few seconds of sprinting, caught up with the bird, tackled it to the ground and snapped its neck.
Grud gathered the two dead birds and while trying to carry them, ran into a problem. Even tho the weight was not an issue for him, their head, wings and legs were flopping all over the place when he tried to carry them.
To remedy this problem, he cut some nearby vines, positioned the birds in their resting position and tied them up.
The point counter was surprised again to see Grud sprinting out the treeline, this time with a Tuk Tuk over each shoulder.
The news that Grud had solo hunted a Tusk Pig during the Great Hunt had already spread soon after dropping off the Tusk Pig, now at the sidelines was a group of young women looking at Grud as he now handed in two Tuk Tuks at the same time.
Grud took a look at the time stick for the amount of time he had left and noted that more than half the stick had burnt off already and decided to get back to hunting.
When the time had run out for his batch, Grud had turned in another Tusk Pig and Tuk Tuk, causing Grud to be the top point holder by a landslide.
Grud was awarded a token and asked to bring it for the finals that would happen in three days. When Grud exited the event site, he was greeted by his wives that were waiting for him, Nita had a proud, happy smile on her face while Ida had a complicated look on hers.
After giving both his wives a kiss, Ida started by saying “We need to talk.” Now, even with Grud’s relative inexperience with relationships, Grud knew that that sentence was never a good thing to hear.