Flashback Rabbiting On

[Dove Brown]

65 Spring 515

The rabbits were still being more of an overflowing pest than usual, and now that Dove had her sling, she wanted to do something about that, even if her shots were still flying wild at times. She hadn't caught anything since the pigeon a few days before, but she tried to fit in a practice session every day. Today was no exception and once she got home from the fields, she bolted a piece of bread and cheese, gathered up her sling and bullets and dashed out to her private practice spot behind the cottage.

She had a thick wooden post out there to aim at, and her cottage wall behind it to catch any bullets that went off in that direction. The post was beginning to look a little battered in spots, but Dove took up her usual position anyway. She eased the first bullet into her sling and swung it hastily up and around her head. Too hastily, as it turned out. When she tried to let one side go, she found that both straps had tangled around her fingers. The bullet wound its way around her arm and clouted her painfully. She swore under her breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and then careully unwound everything and tried again.

This time the bullet did fly, but went well wide of the target. Dove grimaced and went on trying until she managed to hit the post itself, but she wasn't nearly satisfied. If she wanted to have any luck at hunting, she needed to be able to hit the target on her first try, because that was the attempt that would send the rabbit vanishing into undergrowth or down its burrow.

[Dove Brown]

She picked up the bullets she'd used, poured them back into their pouch and returned to her starting point. There had to be a trick to doing this somewhere. She considered the movements of swinging the sling up to speed around her head and releasing it. The bullet would keep going in whichever direction it was going when she released, which logically meant that if she wanted the bullet to go forward, she would have to release it when it was going forward.

She set a bullet in the sling and whirled it, making mental notes of the feel when it was going forward, and tried to release at that moment. She soon realised that there was a very narrow window of release where it would go straight forward. A lot of her releases came too early and veered in one direction, or too late, which sent them veering in another. She frowned in concentration, and kept trying, firing bullet after bullet, until the moment of accurate release began to feel familiar.

The post was an easy target though, and she had the feeling that a real target would be harder to find and harder to hit. For one thing it would be smaller. For another, it would probably be moving, and while she had hit that pigeon, that had been luck as much as skill, and she never liked to rely on luck. Luck never stuck around long enough to be relied on.

Dove sighed, collected the slung bullets for the last time, and flexed her sore fingers. She knew where the rabbits often popped up, and there was nothing like trying to hit the real thing to improve her skills. She turned and trudged back out through the spring evening and made her way towards the edge of the fields.

[Dove Brown]

There was a tree at the edge of this set of fields, one of the outliers of the forest, with a thick branch that swooped down to waist level. Dove tucked the sling into her belt, placed both hands on the branch, and jumped. She landed awkwardly, belly down and half the breath knocked out of her, gasped for a moment and then crawled and clambered to her feet to carefully walk up the slope of the branch to the main trunk. From there, she steadied herself on the trunk and pulled herself up onto a higher branch that overlooked a pasture field. It was empty of livestock for the night, but the grass was short enough that she would be able to see movement even with the light dimming into dusk. She leaned back against the tree trunk, drew her sling out of her belt to rest loosely against her legs, and waited.

It probably wasn't that long before Dove saw movement down below but it felt like forever as she slouched on the uncomfortable branch and tried not to move or make a noise. At least with her being up in the tree she didn't have to worry too much about being seen or smelt. From that point of view it was a good position to hunt, although not so good from the point of view of retrieving any kills.

A single rabbit lolloped out of the trees into the grass of the pasture and sat up, sniffing the air. Dove all but held her breath until it dropped down to all fours and began to nibble the grass. A second, smaller, rabbit followed and began to eat nearby. Then a third, and a fourth, and more and more, until a whole array of rabbits moved and ate below Dove's perch while she watched them and tried to spot the best way to take some out.

[Dove Brown]

She hadn't used her sling at this much of an angle before, and so she tried quietly swinging the empty sling to find a method that would allow her to fire downwards without hitting any part of the tree she perched in. Swinging it around her head ran the risk of hitting the trunk behind her. Too many other angles of swing were likely to hit leaves or smaller branches, so she settled on swinging it in a circle beside her, parallel to the branch she sat on.

Below her, the rabbits drifted out in a gradually widening circle, and Dove saw that if all went well, there was one which would pass under her and out the other side, well away from the rest of the rabbits. That would be her best chance, and her best shot, though she could try for others. She moved slowly, trying to be quiet, and eased a bullet out of the pouch and into her sling. The rabbit lolloped a bit further, then sat up, making the perfect target of itself. Dove whipped the sling round, aimed at its head, and fired. As she fired, the rabbit dropped down to all fours and the bullet went over its now lower head.

Dove mouthed silent curses and reached for a second bullet as rabbit heads popped up all over the field. Ears twitched, noses twitched, a foot drummed as one of the younger ones startled a few yards and then subsided. Dove gritted her teeth and waited, as dusk filtered slowly in and the rabbits became harder to distinguish against the grass. Eventually the rabbits relaxed, and she felt safe enough to try for the outsider again. This time she aimed not for the small head, but for the bulk of the body. The bullet smacked into it, and bowled it over without a sound. It lay still in the grass, and she grinned to herself as she leaned forward to watch the reaction of the other rabbits.

[Dove Brown]

Rabbit heads shot up all over the field and ears twitched for any sound. Some bolted a few yards and then stopped. Up in the tree, Dove tried to quieten her hammering heart before it gave her away - it sounded as loud as the rabbit thumping legs below her. As the rabbits began to settle again, Dove's smile widened into a grin, and she reached once more for her sling. There would, at the very least, be rabbit meat for her to eat tonight or tomorrow, and maybe, just maybe, she could get enough to sell some meat as well.

She considered the problem, squinting through the gathering gloom at the rabbits below. Their brown fur actually blended into the land very well in this light, and made it harder to aim. They seemed to be drifting back into a cluster, and that also made it harder to pick out individual targets to hit, as if her aim wasn't poor enough already. Even aiming at a wooden post, her sling bullets tended to be more of a scattershot that covered an area, than a consistent single point that got hit repeatedly. If they would just line up and stay put - not that the rabbits would, they would probably scatter in all directions - her scattershot aim would hit them all just by not hitting the target...

That was a thought. There were so many rabbits - what if she just fired into the massed group as fast as she could, and hoped for luck to be on her side? Because, her mind reminded her sourly, luck was never on her side. Her hands though, scooped a pile of bullets out of the belt pouch and laid them in a dimple where a branch met the tree trunk. Her belly growled softly at the thought of a rabbit feast and she sighed and gave in to the impulse.

She flexed and rubbed all the cramps out of her fingers, then slipped the first of the bullets into the sling, wound up and let fly into the group. She didn't stop to see if she hit, just grabbed a second bullet and shoved it into the sling as fast as possible. Too fast, as it shot out the other side and fell to the ground. Dove swore under her breath and grabbed more bullets. This time she successfully got it launched, then a third time, as the rabbits bolted in all directions.

[Dove Brown]

Dove managed to send one more bullet into the cluster before it broke up completely, and a high pitched rabbit scream rang out. So she had hit something, at least. Well, good. Some of the rabbits bolted further out into the field, and she sent more wild bullets flying after them, not really expecting any success, but taking it as good practice to try for a moving target at least. Finally, she had neither bullets left in the dimple, nor any rabbits visible, though one was still screaming. Dove winced as that noise sliced painfully through her ears, and gritted her teeth to ignore it. She still had to get down, find out her results, and locate her bullets.

She stowed away her sling, took a good grip on the branch and half slithered, half scrambled down to the next level. From there it was only a short, grazing, slide down the rough trunk to the ground. Dove landed on bent knees to absorb the shock, and made first for the rabbit she was sure of, the first one. She reached it, and wrung its neck to be sure, then dug the bullets out of the dirt. Next she headed for the screams. The rabbit had two broken legs, but still tried to crawl away from Dove's approaching footsteps. Dove dropped the first rabbit to the ground, planted a knee on the badly injured one, and clumsily slashed its throat with her belt knife. The screaming stopped almost at once, but the blood continued to pulse out of the wound for another couple of chimes.

While Dove waited for the blood to stop, she combed through the grass of the field, picking up the bullets and dropping them back into their pouch. Then, with two dead rabbits slung over her shoulder, she quartered the field under the tricky light of Leth rising, and found a third that lay too stunned to flee her approach. She grabbed it and wrung its neck as being quicker and less messy, then added it to the other pair on her shoulder, and started the trudge home, making a mental note to drop the throat-cut rabbit off at the butchery on the way. Her fingers hurt, but her smile lingered. Three rabbits was a decent enough catch, even if it had taken almost 40 bullets to get them.

[Samuel Longwell]

Grading Complete Please edit your grade request thread so that it's obvious that it's been graded. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions/problems with your grade. Name: Dove XP Award: Weapon Sling: 5 Logic 1 Climbing 2 Stealth 2 Hunting 3 Planning 2 Lore: Hunting: The power of patience Using a high rate of fire to make up for low accuracy Hunting: Using a knife to finish an animal Notes: A solid solo thread, very pleasant to read and grade. I hope you enjoy your grades.