Chapter 318 - 208: Only a Fool Would Trade for Meals (Part 2)

Chapter 318: Chapter 208: Only a Fool Would Trade for Meals (Part 2)

"Oh, right. Andre was that guy from earlier. As you saw, he’s a man of principle—a stubborn old fellow."

"I can tell," Bartel said with a solemn nod, reaching out to shake his hand.

"That guy gives off a powerful aura. It’s the kind of presence only a veteran hunter has. I’d bet he’s been in this business for about as long as I have."

"I remember hearing he has nearly thirty years of wilderness survival experience, right?"

"Thirty years?! Oh my God... How old is he?"

"Thirty-eight, I think?"

"Damn it. No wonder I heard at the start of the season that there were a lot of monsters this time. What’s the difference between that guy and a wild man?"

Seeing the two men chatting endlessly, Erica poked Lin Chen and pointed to the black-tailed deer on the ground.

"Aren’t you going to process it? The innards are going to spoil."

"Holy crap! I almost forgot!"

Lin Chen yelped and hurried over to pull his combat knife from the deer’s neck.

"How are we splitting the hide?"

Bartel scratched his head. "I honestly hadn’t thought about it. The hide has good insulation and waterproofing, which is great in a cold climate, but it’s hot and humid here, so it doesn’t seem very useful."

"I’ll take it then," Lin Chen said. He was already using his combat knife to make a cut starting from the gash in the deer’s neck, pulling the fur back with one hand as he scraped the sharp blade along the inside of the hide.

"In exchange, I can give you an extra leg, or I can cook a few meals for you."

"I suggest you take the meals," Erica chimed in, not missing the chance to promote Lin Chen’s skills. "He’s currently the most popular chef in the world of survival shows. If your own cooking isn’t up to snuff, it’s better to let him turn this precious venison into delicious dishes than to waste it."

’She didn’t know exactly how many deer the production team had released, but it surely wasn’t many. After all, she’d heard from audience chatter that the number of contestants was about to be halved. The crew wouldn’t be nice enough to provide one deer for every person remaining.’

’Black-tailed and white-tailed deer are naturally cautious, and they’re skilled at running, jumping, and swimming, making them extremely difficult to catch without firearms.’

’Conventional trapping methods wouldn’t work on these released deer, either. Traps had to be set on game trails—the paths that animals frequently travel.’

’In this unfamiliar environment, the deer would need time just to acclimate, and they’d also have to avoid the territories of local predators. They couldn’t possibly establish their own trails so quickly.’

’In other words, besides crafting some kind of projectile weapon, there was almost no other good way to hunt them.’

’Someone like Bartel, who relied purely on skill and endurance to wear a deer down, was probably the only freak capable of pulling it off.’

"Do you take me for an idiot? One deer leg is enough to help me survive for another week, and you want me to trade that for a few cooked meals? Hah. That’s ridiculous."

Bartel scoffed.

"What’s the point of a well-cooked meal if you don’t have food in the first place? Can that keep you alive for another day?"

"Suit yourself, then~"

Erica let out a visible sigh of relief. She pointed to the deer’s foreleg and said, "The hide isn’t very useful in the tropics, so its value isn’t that high. You can have one foreleg for it."

"Fine, no problem."

Since someone was volunteering to do the butchering, Bartel was happy to have the time off. He stood to the side with his arms crossed, watching with keen interest.

As a professional Deer Hunter, he was, of course, extremely familiar with the entire process of dressing a deer.

But he had never personally seen a professional chef do it, and he was curious to see if their method was any different.

Once the entire hide was removed, Lin Chen quickly sliced open the black-tailed deer’s belly. He pulled out all the innards at once, laying them on a large banana leaf before starting to separate them.

Then, he ran into a problem.

How was he going to split the deer in half?

If he had a cleaver or a bone saw, it would be a simple task.

But all he had on hand was his combat knife and a bamboo knife. Considering the hardness of the bones, the bamboo knife was useless, and the combat knife was too small to be effective.

He pondered for a moment, then his eyes lit up as if he had come up with a brilliant idea.

While he was thinking, Bartel and Erica had clearly noticed the problem as well.

Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be an issue at all. But now, with no tools capable of breaking bone, splitting the black-tailed deer down the middle had turned into a monumental challenge.

As the two of them watched, Lin Chen took his combat knife, grabbed one of the forelegs, and lifted it. He inserted the blade at the shoulder joint and cut all the way around it.

The sharp combat knife sliced through the deer’s tissue with ease, exposing the leg joint completely surrounded by muscle.

After severing all the connective tissue and muscle fibers around the joint, he grabbed the leg bone and twisted it hard in the opposite direction.

SNAP.

Without much effort, the entire leg came off cleanly. He laid it flat on the banana leaf.

He used the same method to remove the remaining three legs. The deer’s torso was still almost perfectly intact, with no unnecessary cuts or marks.

Just watching him remove the deer’s legs, Erica felt none of the usual gore and horror. Instead, she found the process strangely satisfying to watch.

’This was it!’

’Back when she was just a viewer, she had been stunned by the exquisite skill Lin Chen displayed while butchering his kill in Alaska.’

’She’d assumed she wouldn’t get to see it again in Panama, where hunting was banned, but to her surprise, the opportunity had arrived so quickly.’

Seeing how effortlessly and elegantly he removed the four legs, a flash of surprise appeared in Bartel’s eyes, gone in an instant.

"That’s a butcher’s technique. As far as I know, they don’t teach that in Western culinary schools, and most restaurant kitchens don’t do it that way, either. Did you work in a slaughterhouse?"

"Nope," Lin Chen said with a grin, his hands never ceasing their work. He flipped the black-tailed deer’s torso over, so its back was facing up.

"Western culinary schools usually only teach how to break down whole fish and chickens, since they’re the most common ingredients."

"In restaurants, suppliers deliver meat that’s mostly pre-butchered. You might have to break down some ocean fish yourself, but other than that, you’re right."

"But don’t forget, I’m from Great Xia. I know more than just Western cooking."

"There aren’t as many strict divisions in Asia. A chef has to be proficient in butchering all types of meat. For many dishes, the animal is killed to order. It’s normal to be both a chef and a butcher—you have to wear multiple hats."

"In truth, the techniques for breaking down animals are all similar; it’s just a matter of size. If you know how to break down a chicken, you can break down most animals."

As he spoke, his combat knife slid from the deer’s neck down to its tail, tracing the line of the spine. He made two long, parallel cuts, completely exposing the entire spinal column.

The blade scraped against the ribs as he methodically carved the venison away. He used the same technique on both sides and soon had a complete, boneless saddle of venison, as well as the entire skeleton with the head and tailbone still attached.

The deboning process left a long groove in the meat where the spine had been. All he had to do was cut along that groove to divide the saddle in two.

"Do you want the bones and the head?"

Lin Chen piled Bartel’s half of the venison—along with two forelegs and one hind leg—into a heap and pointed to the leftover skeleton.

Although it was a skeleton stripped of meat, he hadn’t been using a professional boning knife, and his technique wasn’t quite on par with a master butcher’s. As a result, a fair amount of meat scraps still clung to the bones.

"I’ll definitely take the bones, but not the head. You can keep it."

’Bartel is even more pragmatic than I thought,’ Lin Chen mused. ’He’s even taking the bones. He’s obviously after the fat in the marrow.’

Breaking down the skeleton was tough work; without the right tools, it was hard to do by hand.

The ribs were the hardest part; the spine, by contrast, was relatively simple.

Lin Chen decided against using brute force, which could have damaged the blade of his combat knife.

First, he severed the neck and head from the body. Then, he cut off the tail section. This reduced the skeleton’s length by about a third.