Live Streaming: Great Adventure in the Wilderness

Chapter 526: Chapter 523: Black Bear Disaster

The Sankebetsu bear incident cannot be said to be the spark that ignited the fire, but it was indeed a significant event, a classic symbol of conflict between bears and humans.

In the cold winter, without any food storage, the behemoth barged into the village, killing 7 people and injuring 3. No matter the country, such an event is horrifying and was fully recorded.

Due to its infamy, this tragedy was adapted into novels, comics, stage plays, and movies, repeatedly broadcasted and widely known among the Japanese people.

After the ferocious predator was eventually hunted down, people discovered that this behemoth stood at 2.7 meters tall and weighed 340 kilograms.

[Holy shit, 2.7 meters? Isn’t that a bit exaggerated?]

[That’s as tall as a building, just reaching over your fence with a boo!]

[Wasn’t the first one Master Fang encountered only 2.2 meters? This one is half a meter longer?]

The live broadcast audience had seen the black bear that Bi Fang first encountered live. Among black bears with an average height of 1.8 meters, it was already a colossal type.

Just from watching on the computer screen, one could already feel an immensely strong sense of oppression, let alone the fact that Bi Fang was alone at that time, in the deep mountains and forests, with only a stone spear in his palm.

If it were them, forget about fighting back, they would wet their pants on the spot, and then be gnawed to nothing— that would be their end.

In reality, the Sankebetsu bear incident was even more brutal.

The giant beast first appeared in November, near the village of Sankebetsu in the western part of Hokkaido. It quietly sneaked into a house, causing the horses to flee in terror.

The owner of the house was Ikeda Tomikura. He discovered that only some corn was lost, but the sight of footprints over 30 centimeters long in the mud was shocking.

Another month passed, and on the morning of December 9, the brown bear snuck into the Ota household, devouring Ota’s child and wife. After that, its man-eating spree was completely triggered, starting a frenzied streak of crimes.

On the night of December 10, the brown bear came to the village again. After the slaughter, five women and children were killed by the bear, and three people escaped with severe injuries.

On December 11, the villagers were incredibly angry after the tragedy. Women, children, and the elderly were all relocated, while the men voluntarily formed a bear-hunting team to go into the mountains seeking revenge on the bear.

On December 12, the malicious bear-attacking incident in the Sankebetsu village was reported to the Hokkaido Prefectural Government. The official bear-hunting team joined the villagers’ bear-hunting team in search of the bear in the mountains. But while no one was in the village, the brown bear sneaked into the settlement again, almost completely consuming several households’ winter reserves and destroyed eight huts.

Over the next three days, the Hokkaido Prefectural Government deployed a total of 600 people in the extermination team, with more than 10 Ainu dogs, and used 60 firearms. The village continued to receive reinforcements from the army, soldiers, and police from the Army Seventh Division, all ready for battle and searching everywhere. This was an unprecedented beast-hunting team.

However, even 600 people couldn’t find the bear. In the end, it was an old veteran from the Russo-Japanese War, Yamamoto Hyogo, who made the kill. Next to a white oak tree, he shot two bullets at the bear’s heart and head, killing the giant bear.

Late, to expunge the memory of the terror, the villagers burnt down the mountain huts and relocated downstream, leaving the place forever. The incident thus came to an end and vanished into history.

After hearing Bi Fang’s story, the audience was left speechless.

Is this really a bear?

This is more like a grizzly bear tank, right?

[If Bi Fang were in this situation, could he have defeated this bear?]

[I think it’s tough…]

[It’s clearly fake, so impressive if two shots could kill a brown bear, just scraping some skin at most, how could it die right away]

[I saw someone on a forum once, saying that seven hundred AKs couldn’t kill seven hundred tigers; that was you, right? Covering face, isn’t that embarrassing?]

[Really, the notion that seven hundred AKs can’t kill seven hundred tigers is bullshit. Humans are so powerful now that we can easily abuse the top of the food chain, tigers? Normally an AK fires seventy or eighty shots without a tiger getting hurt, it would bite off your gun barrel while being hit.]

[Tiger: Don’t drag me into your bullshit.]

[What, do you think you’re some kind of cosmic storm tiger?]

[Seventy or eighty shots, you’d have been killed by the Ground Tiger Hero already!]

Bi Fang broke through the brush in front of him and entered the jungle. “Although this is a brown bear, in this hunting season, there’s no strict requirement for it to be a black bear. Brown bears are generally larger, and if you can hunt one, the score will be even higher,” he said.

In the wilderness of Japan, there are two types of bears: the Asian Black Bear and the Brown Bear.

Among them, there are two subspecies of the Brown Bear in Japan: the Ussuri brown bear and the Japanese brown bear.

The Ussuri brown bear, also known as the Northeast brown bear, is mainly found in the northern regions of Japan. The Japanese brown bear, also known as the Hokkaido brown bear, is primarily found in northern Japan, around Hokkaido.

The black bear, however, is one of the seven subspecies of black bears, the Japanese black bear, with a wider distribution than the brown bear, found throughout Japan’s Shikoku, Honshu, and previously in Kyushu, though now extinct there.

“Because of its name, people might mistake the brown bear for having brown fur, but in fact, brown bears also have black fur, only with a shade of brown compared to the black fur of the Asian black bears,” he explained.

“Long ago, I mentioned that the black bear has a distinctive feature: a crescent-shaped patch of white fur on its chest. That is the fundamental way to distinguish the two species.”

The habitats of brown bears and black bears cover more than half of Japan’s land area, and Japan’s population totals 127 million people. Clearly, the bears hunted in Japan are a mixture of black bears and brown bears.

This hunting season is no different. However, in terms of the number of kills, black bears make up the larger proportion.

[Indeed, no reputation is unwarranted. This Huaxia broadcaster is really impressive.]@@novelbin@@

“[It seems the cameras in Japan are all focused on him]”

“[That’s normal. The other guys just keep their heads down and plough on without any interaction. No fun in watching that]”

Japanese netizens expressed their admiration.

The hunt had just started, and most people had only just entered the peripheries of the forest or jungle; they hadn’t truly begun searching for clues.

After a brief introduction, there wasn’t much to watch. Besides, many hunters were so focused, like mute gourds; even if you gave them the camera, they had nothing to say. Who would watch that?

Kogawa Kobayashi and Shizuka Minamoto’s attempts at comedy were futile.

On the contrary, Bi Fang, with his Asian looks, fit their aesthetic preferences better. Besides, he could keep talking while on the move and occasionally even communicate in Japanese, making the footage much more appealing.

Kogawa Kobayashi exclaimed, “Oh, there’s so much stuff even I as a commentator don’t know. I think Master Fang should have been the commentator. He would be more suitable than me.”

Shizuka Minamoto said, “I heard Master Fang has been a judge and commentator too. And he’s livestreamed more than once. Those who have seen his livestreams say he’s a scholar with extensive knowledge.”

“Oh, no wonder then.”

Even more crucially, no matter what language he spoke, it seemed Bi Fang’s livestream could translate it flawlessly.

Many stories the Japanese themselves were unclear about were as familiars to Bi Fang as the back of his hand. People grew so engrossed in listening that they found switching screens troublesome. In the end, some even turned off their TVs and searched for Bi Fang’s livestream on their phones.

Besides, the only other reasonably competent figure was Mugalen. As one of the only two present who had been on a similar show, he had some insights. Although he wasn’t as familiar with the local history and Japan’s man-bear conflicts like Bi Fang, he still had his own interesting take.

For instance, rather than hunting bears, right now Mugalen was trying to catch a wild rabbit.

“After the hunting season starts, I don’t plan on returning to town. Running back and forth is just too much hassle, a waste of time. So everything from eating and drinking to relieving oneself must be done in the forest. I think getting today’s lunch sorted out is better. Who knows, maybe like Bi Fang, I’ll catch a Black Bear that walks into my trap all because of a little rabbit?”

“[You wish]”

“[This Big Beard alien is kind of interesting]”

“[Only two contestants worth watching]”

“[Yōki Hunter is a bit of a letdown, still hasn’t caught any bear]”

Inside Bi Fang’s livestream, when the Japanese viewers kept flooding in, everyone rushed to express their pride.

Yōki Hunter completely defeated in the live broadcast!

Bi Fang squatted on the ground, examining the traces left by animals passing by, judging their size. While he wasn’t focused on hunting the Black Bear, he still had to avoid being too obvious, at least not to diverge too markedly from previous livestreams.

“The number of bears in Japan is indeed too high. Apart from the several hundred bear sightings a year in Fukui Prefecture, many other places are similarly affected. Since the millennium, Japan started to undertake bear hunting campaigns.”

“According to the statistics from Japan’s Ministry of Environment, starting from 2000, the number of bears hunted in Japan has been maintained at an average of more than 1000 per year. The year with the most bear hunts was 2019, reaching 5667, followed by 4679 in 2006.”

And yet this wasn’t enough, the conflict between humans and bears continued to escalate.

That’s why Japan established a hunting season this year and even encouraged traditional Yōki hunters to thrive once again.

“[Holy shit, thousands of bears? That seems way too exaggerated, right?]”

“[Just how many bears are there in Japan… They aren’t more than kangaroos in Australia, are they?]”

“[You know what? The population of the Vatican is only eight hundred, while Japan alone has thirty thousand Black Bears. If the Black Bears decided to invade the Vatican, every Vatican citizen would have to fight off thirty-seven Black Bears. You have no idea because you only care about yourself!]”

“[The Vatican: Thirty-seven Black Bears? Just kill me already]”

“[You can even make a meme out of this?]”

“[So why are there so many bears in Japan? I heard that the number of Black Bears alone is more than our collective total. Is that true?]”

Bi Fang nodded, “It’s true. The total number of Black Bears in Huaxia is less than twenty thousand, whereas Japan has more than thirty thousand. In fact, worldwide, only Polar Bear and Japan don’t consider the Black Bear a key species for protection.”

“Japan has always been a natural habitat for both Black Bears and Brown Bears, and they are a type of wildlife that has a very wide distribution.”

“Secondly, the proliferation of bears in Japan is related to the ‘Deer Calamity’ of the eighties and nineties of the last century.”

“As for the Deer Calamity, it’s related to the aging population and the young people moving into the cities for work.”

Aging population, young people moving into cities for work?

The audience slowly typed out question marks.

What’s the connection between all these things?

Is there a relation?