Small Game Hunting (Solo)

[Jeremiah Maccabee]

The 1st Day of Summer 512 Northern Wildlands Rill stopped and held up his hand. Mac crouched in the tall grass behind him. He was tempted to look around to see what Rill had seen, but he knew better. He watched Rill instead. The man did not move for several chimes. Then he held up three fingers and pointed them to the right. Mac notched an arrow in his bow and slowly stood. Three good sized pheasants were poking around on the ground about twenty yards away. A male and two females. Mac drew the bow string back and sited on the male. It was a small target at the edge of Mac's accuracy range. He released. The arrow left the bow with a twang and whistled toward the target. It missed and hit the mud just beyond the pheasants with a “splunch”. The pheasants took flight and disappeared into the a copse of Alders. “Nice shot,” Rill said as Mac collected the errant arrow and cleaned the mud off the tip. “You're naught for three.” Mac resisted the urge to walk over and punch his friend in the face. “Let's see you try it,” he said. Rill grinned. The big Vanthan had only one arm, the other having been lost in an altercation with a bear some years back. And hour later they came upon a large light brown hare. Mac would not have noticed it but Rill had very sharp eyesight, which was why he always took point. It was sitting on his haunches sniffing the air. Fortunately Rill and Mac were downwind of it. Mac notched an arrow, pulled, sited and released in one fluid motion. The arrow embedded itself in the hare's side. It tumbled over and lay twitching for a while before it stopped moving. “Nice shot,” Rill said as he retrieved the dead rabbit and Mac's arrow. “It would have been really embarrassing to go back empty handed.” Two hours later they had bagged another hare and a pheasant and were headed back to the camp. Mac was feeling pretty good about his hunting prowess.

[Jeremiah Maccabee]

Leo was brushing one of the horses when they got back to the camp. The horse had that look horses get when they are thoroughly enjoying being brushed. Leo waved as they pushed through the underbrush into the clearing. Mac didn't see Seth or Maggie. He tossed the game beside the fire. Leo said, “That'll be a nice change after four days of that awful traveller's stock soup.” Mac grunted his agreement. Leonard Goethe, Seth Minski and Margaret Minski. Seth and Margaret were newly married. Leonard was Margaret's brother. They had hired Rill to get them from Ravok to Nyka, where Seth ran a blacksmith business. Rill had hired Mac to help out. Mac headed off to gather some wood for a fire. As he passed one of the two tents, he heard a distinctly feminine “oh … oh … oh … yes … oh … don't stop … oh ” coming from inside the tent. He looked back at Leo, who grinned and went back to brushing the horses. Mac put some distances between himself and the campsite, mainly to preserve his sanity. They had been on the trail for ten days and the newlyweds had been at it like rabbits every day. Mac figured there'd be a bun in the oven by the time they reached Nyka. The sun was low in the west by the time Mac got started on the fire. He scraped a circle down to clay and rimmed it with rocks. He broke dead branches and twigs off some nearby trees. They had run across a small stand of birch trees two days earlier and Mac had peeled off several hands full of paper-like bark to use for tinder. He cut some of it into tiny slivers to make a small bed of tinder in the center of the fire circle. He cut more slivers to make a pile in the center of the tinder bed, over which he carefully constructed a cone-shaped pile of twigs. He placed larger branches around the fire structure to act as a wind break. Then he began the hard part – repeatedly striking flint to steel to throw sparks on to the tinder. After about twenty chimes and several tiny flames that died out immediately, he got a flame going that didn't blow out right away. He gently blew on the base of the flame and pushed more tinder into the greedy fire. He eventually coaxed it to feed on the kindling he had laid over it and soon had a small blaze going. He kept feeding kindling into it, gradually increasing the size until he had a solid self-sustaining fire. He laid larger branches in a criss-cross “log cabin” formation over the fire and hung an iron pot of water over it. “Nice job,” Rill said.

[Jeremiah Maccabee]

Rill couldn't skin and butcher animals very well with only one hand, so he was teaching Mac how to do it. Mac first cut off the rabbit's feet and head. Then he held the rabbit upside down by its back legs and peeled the skin down off the leg. He repeated this on the other leg. Continuing from the rabbit's hips, he worked his way down to the severed neck, being careful to pull the skin evenly as he went. In the end he held a naked rabbit in one hand and an intact rabbit skin in the other. Mac made a cut along the rabbit's belly through the rib cage and pelvis. He pulled the sides apart, reached in, grabbed hold of its windpipe and yanked it out, bringing with it nearly all the rabbit's guts. He cut under the shoulder blades to free the front legs, and through the hip socket for the back legs. Next he cut the belly flaps away on both sides for the tenderloins. Mac repeated the skinning and butchering process with the other hare. In the end he had eight rabbit legs and a number of chunks of rabbit meat, which he washed off and dumped into the pot of boiling water. Mac cut up two potatoes and a few carrots and added them to the pot, along with some dried beans, dried tomatoes, salt and garlic. He lit up a pipe and sat by the fire smoking and occasionally stirring the stew. The odor eventually drew the entire party together around the fire and they enjoyed a fine rabbit stew for their dinner. “Nice job,” Rill said.

[Jeremiah Maccabee]

Later that night, by the light of an oil lantern, Mac worked on the map he was making of the route between Ravok and Nyka. He did this each evening to capture the day's journey while it was fresh in his mind. Rill, who had made the trip several times, said it would take about thirty days. That put them a third of the way there. He replayed the day's journey in his mind and carefully drew it on the map. He decided to call their campsite “Big Rock Bog” because it was on the edge of a heavily forested bog and featured a rocky promontory overlooking a wide plain far below, which is where they would spend the next few days. Mac's map of the first third of the journey to Nyka OOC : Continued in Looking for Leo

[Paragon]

Adventurer's Loot Jeremiah's Loot : Jeremiah Skill XP Reward Shortbow +1 Hunting +1 Rhetoric +1 Wilderness Survival +2 Skinning +1 Cooking +1 Cartography +1 Lore: Deflecting Jibes, Lore of small game hunting, Lore of small game skinning, Lore of small game butchering, Lore of campfires: building a fire, Lore of campfires: sources of tinder, Lore of campfires: cooking, Lore of horse riding, Lore of route between Ravok and Nyka (partial), Lore of mapping wilderness routes Items or Consequences: + Map of First Third of Journey to Nyka Interesting solo, with a good mixture of skills. Remember, more detail in your writing nets you more XP. I'll happily accept this as a job thread, the map making alone is worth as much. Great solo - if you have ANY questions or concerns about this grading, don't hesitate to PM me.