There was no vomiting, no dizziness, only an unusual calmness.
He lowered the muzzle of his gun and pulled the bolt.
A hot, steaming bullet casing bounced out and landed on the snow at my feet with a soft "sizzle".
Su Wei bent down, picked up the spent cartridge case, stuffed it into his pocket, and strode towards Black.
"Well played."
Black didn't turn his head; he was searching the man's body.
He found a knife and two spare magazines in the poacher's arms.
If Su Wei had hesitated for even a second and allowed this guy to rush into the 20-meter kill zone, they might be the ones dead now.
"The muscle on the outside of his thigh was pierced, but the femoral artery wasn't damaged. Lucky bastard."
Black pulled a tourniquet from his tactical vest, roughly tightened it around the opponent's thigh, and then forcefully twisted the tourniquet.
The poacher was in so much pain he was almost fainting, his face covered in cold sweat, and he was still muttering curses incoherently.
"Save your energy."
Su Wei stood to the side, looking down at the man who had almost killed them.
When he saw the hunting knife pulled from the other man's waist, the lingering resentment he had about shooting his own kind vanished completely.
In the wilderness, there are no morals, only life and death.
The roar overhead became deafening.
A powerful airflow swept up the snow on the ground, creating a small blizzard.
The Fish and Game Department's helicopter lowered its altitude, and the beams of its searchlights illuminated the pile of rocks as bright as day.
The plane landed on an open riverbank fifty meters away.
The hatch opened, and two law enforcement officers dressed in the Alaska Fish and Game Department jumped out.
Fully armed and carrying automatic rifles, they crouched low and advanced rapidly in this direction.
Those were members of the law enforcement team.
The leader was a bearded man who looked somewhat familiar; he was Charlie, the law enforcement captain in charge of patrolling the Hunting Area No. 1 in Kodiak Town.
"Damn it, Black! How much more trouble are you going to cause us, you old bastard!"
Charlie assessed the situation, relaxed, tossed his rifle behind him, and strode over.
He glanced at the poacher on the ground, bound hand and foot, his thigh still bleeding, then at the rubble scattered beside him and the bleating deer.
"Didn't you hear Charlie's warning? Don't you know how dangerous this man is?"
Charlie kicked the.338 sniper rifle on the ground, his expression turning grim.
The appearance of weapons of this caliber in his jurisdiction was a slap in the face.
"We just seized the opportunity. This kind of scum should be dealt with promptly."
Black stood up and brushed the snow off his knees.
"If your people could just pin him down from the air, we wouldn't have to go through all this trouble."
Charlie choked for a moment.
Indeed, helicopters are not very effective at suppressing air traffic in complex terrain and inclement weather.
Especially when dealing with professional poachers who know how to use heat sources to distract them.
"Alright, it's good that the person has been caught."
Charlie waved, signaling the team members behind him to take over the suspect.
He took out his cigarette case, handed one to Black, and lit one for himself.
"That's ruthless marksmanship."
Charlie stared at the horrific gash on the poacher's thigh. "A moving target. One shot crippled him, but it didn't even hit an artery to bleed him to death. Black, your skills haven't gotten any worse."
At that distance, it wouldn't be difficult to hit the torso of a high-speed charging target.
But to accurately hit a rapidly swinging part like the thigh requires a level of control that only a master can achieve.
Black took the cigarette but didn't light it.
He pointed with his cigarette-smoking finger at Su Wei, who was inspecting firearms beside him.
"I didn't fire the gun."
Charlie was stunned.
The team member who had just lit the lighter also stopped what he was doing.
Their gazes simultaneously turned to Su Wei.
The young man stood quietly to the side, methodically wiping the moisture off the gun with a cloth, his movements steady and deliberate.
To these weathered wilderness enforcers, Su Wei looked as young as a student.
"This child?"
Charlie was somewhat incredulous, "That professional hunter who only registered with the guild a day ago... Su Wei?"
He remembered Su Wei, after all, he was the only apprentice Black had taken on in the past ten years.
But these are completely different things.
Being able to hunt and daring to shoot someone accurately in a life-or-death situation are two different things.
"Moving target, thirty meters, one shot to kill."
Black had a cigarette in his mouth, his voice revealing little emotion.
But his raised chin betrayed his current mood.
"I told you, he's a born hunter."
Charlie dropped his casual demeanor and re-examined Su Wei, treating him as a peer capable of establishing himself in the ruthless industry.
"Well done, kid."
Charlie exclaimed sincerely, "Even I might not be able to shoot like that under that kind of pressure."
Su Wei stopped cleaning his gun and looked up.
He has a knife.
Su Wei's answer was simple, "And he has no intention of stopping."
That's enough.
Charlie nodded. "This falls under self-defense, plus assisting law enforcement. Don't worry, I'll write a very good report."
Several people worked together to lift the still-groaning poacher toward the helicopter.
The man, pale from blood loss, was roughly thrown into the back seat of the plane.
What bad luck!
Another law enforcement officer, while filling out a site investigation form, complained, "This guy is a complete troublemaker. This is the Kodiak Official Hunting Area No. 1. If word gets out about this animal cruelty, our rating will drop again next year."
Su Wei keenly caught the word: "Official hunting zone rating."
He had read about it in the guild's database, and when he heard the law enforcement officers mention it, the information in his mind quickly surged up.
In Alaska, and indeed in the global hunting community, no hunting areas are arbitrarily designated.
To ensure ecological balance and hunting experience while controlling poaching, relevant departments have designated large areas of wilderness as hunting zones.
Hunting areas are divided into private hunting areas and official hunting areas.
Private hunting grounds are usually the private property of wealthy individuals or clubs, offering excellent service but at exorbitant prices. These hunting grounds also house a variety of rare and ferocious wild animals.
The official hunting grounds are the battlefields for wilderness hunters.
To differentiate the resources and difficulty of these hunting areas, the guild and the Fish and Game Department jointly launched a star rating system.
From one star to five stars.
The rating criteria are straightforward, mainly considering several aspects: prey population density, the number of top predators, the complexity of the terrain, and the rarity of signature prey.
The area where Su Wei is located, the Kodiak Official Hunting Area No. 1, is rated three and a half stars.
This is a very awkward rating.
In terms of danger, this place is home to the Kodiak brown bear, the largest predator on the North America continent.
In this respect alone, even the Five-Star Hunting Zone is nothing special.
In terms of terrain, with snow-capped mountains, jungles, rivers, and coastlines, the complexity is extremely high.
However, the shortcomings of this hunting area are also obvious: the species diversity is not rich enough.
Aside from brown bears, Roosevelt elk, and black-tailed deer, there is a lack of wolves, bighorn sheep, or other high-value fur-bearing animals.
This is why the actions of poachers anger law enforcement so much.
Roosevelt deer is one of the signature game here, and if this cruelty leads to the migration or a sharp decline in the deer population, Hunting Area No. 1's rating could very well drop to three stars, or even lower.