The following excerpt was originally published at James Rawles’ SurvivalBlog.com
Editor’s Note: You may have talked to family or friends about getting prepared. If so, chances are that at least a few of those people proudly exclaimed that they’d simply head to the hills and live off the land if the cities went up in flames. It’s a great idea, until you consider that thousands of other people are going to be thinking the same thing. Moreover, “the hills,” though not as densely populated as cities, are often inhabited by ex-urban and rural folk who will be entrenched, well armed, and not very willing to give up their land to hoards looking for food, water and supplies. Nonetheless, as Survival Blog contributor D.V. notes in the following article, if your plan is to hunt for your food without stockpiling anything in reserve, you may run into life-threatening shortages because those thousands of people heading out of major cities will inevitably put a strain on your resources.
The Fallacy of Hunting as a Survival Technique
by D.V., posted by Hugh James Latimer
Many people rely on wild game as a regular part of their diet. In Michigan, where I live, deer season is a holiday with schools and companies at minimal staff, as a healthy part of the population is out in the woods partaking in one of our oldest traditions. And like all great endeavors, some hunters are successful and some are not, depending upon skill, preparation, and just a little bit of luck. For those hunters who were able to kill a deer (if they are traditionalist), they are able to provide their families with meat. For some, this can be the majority of their meat throughout the year.
During our lifetimes, whether you’re a hunter or not, it is easy to recognize that the overall deer population has been steadily growing. In the news, there are occasional stories about the deer wandering into human dwellings or the suburbs who must have a culling (with the routine senseless protests) due to overpopulation. This deer population has been growing steady since the early 1900’s, starting from a count of under five million (including mule deer and blacktail) and growing to around a peak of over 40 million. Today it is estimated that there are approximately 35 million deer in the lower 48 states. The same population growth can be attributed to most wild game (aside from pheasants) due to good game laws and a civil populace that not only adheres to these laws but also actively promotes healthy game levels. Older hunters tell stories of not seeing deer for years. A generation ago, deer hunting was a greater challenge and as much about comradery and tradition as the hunt itself.
Again, we will use deer hunting as an example. The laws designed around deer hunting are designed to ensure a growing population. A larger amount of tags are given around bucks during the rut (mating season) with a very limited amount of doe tags. This allows the deer to breed and reproduce, and the population does not diminish and could potentially grow as a doe can have multiple fawns. If the buck population dwindles, a single buck can impregnate several does, and nature will remedy the situation. These laws have been enacted since the 1900’s and continue to get stronger. States have made an effort to restock animals, allowing wild game to return to areas where they were completely wiped out. These population have grown and expanded and moved into other regions. There are government agencies dedicated to managing this population and making sure hunters have every opportunity to bag game, and it is clear that today’s deer population is very healthy, not only because of these laws but hunters who follow them.
Many preppers, homesteaders, and just regular people are counting on this abundance of game to continue. However, if you are counting on this as one of your key survival methods, I would urge you to reconsider. There is an ancient proverb that is almost too relevant: “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Realize that having your own animals will be a much more consistent source of protein instead of hunting. During a TEOTWAWKI event, game animals will become sparse.
During TEOTWAWKI, it is expected that government agencies will either be non-existent or in an extreme state of panic and enforcement. Funding for all but the essentials disappear. Any funding for non-critical programs, such as game management and land development, will end. This would not impact the animal population immediately but will cause a reduction in the health of the herds and be detrimental overall. In addition, game wardens would be drafted into full-time law enforcement or be unemployed. There will be no one to determine the amount of deer tags allowed, much less population enhancement. The local DNR also does a fairly good job of minimizing disease in the herd. These issues would be unchecked in a TEOTWAWKI event.
Another key consideration for TEOTWAWKI would be the lack of food…
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Cannibalism as an option???????
Hey Dude, come on over we’re having Chinese, tonight.
No Thanks. We’re having Italian.
It may not be as bad of a strategy as you think. There really aren’t that many skilled hunters out there. While there are a few, they are spread out. As game gets scarce most people that arent experienced hunters will get frustrated as they are unable to do anything. They’ll give up and turn to other methods. While Somfa’s suggestion of “Long Pork” may seem far fetched, it probably isn’t for some.
But! survival requires thinking out of the box. Cody Lundin wrote a book “When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes.” In it is a section on eating small animals. Mice. Rats. Ground Squirrels. Moles. While it sounds distasteful, he says that its easy, nutritious and quite tasty. Getting over the psychological trauma involve in eating rodents is easier that cats and dogs. Think of the number of stray pets that will be wandering about.
Hehehe. I’m reminded of a scene in “The Book Of Ely” where Ely offers a mouse a piece of cat. (I highly recommend that movie, too.
Also, see article at link (click name) for eating and hunting in urban areas. I’m sure Cody Lundin would approve! (…and Ely too!)
As Ely said to the mouse, “Its Caaaaaat!”
-NR
I understand they expect 270,000,000 dead in first year so there won’t be millions hunting anything, except a place to be planted.At a liner rate that would be 22,500,000 a month
I would think the larger number would be gone in the first
quarter.
The Fallacy of: “The Fallacy of Hunting as a Survival Technique.
Hunting will still be a survival technique for some who live close to a large woods, wilderness area, or the mountains. The game will survive because the masses of people who remain will not be able to get to the game.
Proximity is key. Be there to get there. Those who are there will have meat. 🙂
6 months and it all gone.
The assumption by this author is that thousands will head to the hills. That may not be the case and thus the strategy may not be a bad idea for those who can carry it off and have the necessary skills. Survival retreats as in “Patriots” etc. can always be breached or run out of food or seeds.
Better pick up the “Book of Edible Plants.” Bunny food. When procuring meals that are on the go, try Trapping, its a good force multiplier. A few live traps and snares. I have plenty of doves out here, and a few for the pot at night would be good. Just place some seed under a tilt Box with a string to pull and release the lid catch.. Catch the birds alive. A few traps and snares for your Bug out bag will help keep you fed. Lots of good U-Tube Vids on that. Knowledge is power. Suck it up sponges. google “traps – Sportsmansguide”
~WWTI…
a fish trap, turtle hooks, snares, rabbit traps, steel traps, throw net, could make a mans life liveable, along with a little knowledge about food sources in the wild.
PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY
Consumer Guide to Mercury in Fish
The list below shows the amount of various types of fish that a woman who is pregnant or planning to become pregnant can safely eat, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA recommendation is based on body weight and is, therefore, dependent on a person’s size. The guidance below is based on a 6oz serving of cooked fish for a 130lb/60kg woman. People with small children who want to use the list as a guide should reduce portion sizes. Adult men, and women who are not planning to become pregnant, are less at risk from mercury exposure but may wish to refer to the list for low-mercury choices. For a more personalized recommendation, use NRDC’s mercury calculator.
Protecting yourself — and the fish: Certain fish, even some that are low in mercury, make poor choices for other reasons, most often because they have been fished so extensively that their numbers are perilously low. These fish are marked with an asterisk (read more below).
This list applies to fish caught and sold commercially. For information about fish you catch yourself, check for advisories in your state.
LEAST MERCURY
Enjoy these fish:
Anchovies
Butterfish
Catfish
Clam
Crab (Domestic)
Crawfish/Crayfish
Croaker (Atlantic)
Flounder*
Haddock (Atlantic)*
Hake
Herring
Mackerel (N. Atlantic, Chub)
Mullet
Oyster
Perch (Ocean)
Plaice
Pollock
Salmon (Canned)**
Salmon (Fresh)**
Sardine
Scallop*
Shad (American)
Shrimp*
Sole (Pacific)
Squid (Calamari)
Tilapia
Trout (Freshwater)
Whitefish
Whiting
MODERATE MERCURY
Eat six servings or less per month:
Bass (Striped, Black)
Carp
Cod (Alaskan)*
Croaker (White Pacific)
Halibut (Atlantic)*
Halibut (Pacific)
Jacksmelt
(Silverside)
Lobster
Mahi Mahi
Monkfish*
Perch (Freshwater)
Sablefish
Skate*
Snapper*
Tuna (Canned
chunk light)
Tuna (Skipjack)*
Weakfish (Sea Trout)
HIGH MERCURY
Eat three servings or less per month:
Bluefish
Grouper*
Mackerel (Spanish, Gulf)
Sea Bass (Chilean)*
Tuna (Canned Albacore)
Tuna (Yellowfin)*
HIGHEST MERCURY
Avoid eating:
Mackerel (King)
Marlin*
Orange Roughy*
Shark*
Swordfish*
Tilefish*
Tuna (Bigeye, Ahi)*
* Fish in Trouble!
** Farmed Salmon may contain PCB’s, chemicals with serious long-term health effects.
Sources for NRDC’s guide: ht tp://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/guide. asp
Remove the spaces.
~WWTI…
During the Great Depression, there were entire swaths of forest around the world that were almost denuded of game because so many people were starving and unable to afford food. While it can be argued that a far smaller percentage of the US population today hunts than did back then, we also now have nearly 3x the population that we did in the 1930’s, so there are likely far more hunters now than then. I would also postulate that we live in a far less moral society now than then, with people seeing only themselves as important and not coming from a common moral framework (Christianity) that existed back then and more people are on mind altering substances (legal and illegal) now than ever before. Thus, the people of today scare me more than the ones back then and hunting amongst them is certain to be extremely dangerous.
The other scary thing to think about would be anything that brought about the collapse of modern farming. As bad as GMO food is, in many ways it is the only thing that keeps modern society together. Without it, farming would be far less productive and far more people would starve. While I personally would not make growing GMO my first choice for my home garden, I am glad that it exists as I fear the loss of social order that comes from it’s absence. Plus, it makes it so that one can grow crops in less than ideal circumstances.
GMO’s actually do not produce more per acre than traditional crops. That is a myth perpetuated by the media and social platforms. They require the use of very expensive chemicals to grow and outperform native plants “weeds”. If you are thinking that GMO’s will save you in a grid down situation you will be sorely dissapointed. GMO plants generally cannot compete with native plants and are weaker with the seeds not filling out as well as normal. They are created with the assumption that you will be using herbicide, fertilizer, and insecticide. So unless you plan on useing valuable resources to carry out the extra chemical steps you will have a massive crop failure. If you do not believe me take a look at farmland in the desert. Things do not grow there unless you add all three plus lots of water and if you say what about the herbicide you need to remember that there are hardy plants in the desert that come out with water.
Non-GMO crops don’t do well in the desert, either. If we can’t farm on an industrial scale, 320 MM Americans cannot live in the USA and 7.3 B humans cannot live on planet Earth.
Hybrids vastly outproduce “Heirloom” crops. Cross-breeding by farmers has been going on for millinnia. There is probably no corn in it’s natural state left on Earth.
If we were to grow the corn found on the continent in 1492, millions would starve.
Even the pre-Columbian maize was a hybrid plant. Corn is a grass, originally appearing like wheat, thin stalk and tiny ears. Everything about modern corn has been genetically modified by man.
Ddn…
Agreed 100 percent. Anyone who thinks GMOs won’t produce like non GMOs haven’t gotten their fingers dirty. I have planted both, and would love to stick with the non GMO, but it is a fantasy to think we could feed over 7 B people any other way.
SCTV has been smokin GMO marijuana…
Hilldweller
Hill dweller and Winston,
I have to disagree with you on GMO seeds, and hybrid seeds are genetically modified in a couple ways that do not serve you. First, to make the new hybrid, scientists take the mother plant and insert cytoplasmic male sterility, which is passed down through the mother. It puts sterility in, so you will not be able to save seed. You are now married to Monsanto for food source.
Second problem, gene splicing to make the hybrids more insect resistant adds more lectins to the plant. Lectins are a natural pesticide that tears up our small intestine and can cause leaky gut syndrome, and lead to serious autoimmune disorders like Hashimotos thyroidism, Crohns, fibromyalgia, celiac, and others. My guess is that “wheat belly” is GMO belly due to ever increasing gene splicing of lectins. Natural it may be, but it still pesticide. Animals fed GMO sugar beet tops have damaged stomachs. Millions have leaky gut and millions more are undiagnosed… but diagnosed with the symptom which are autoimmune diseases after the lectins put holes into their intestines.
Just saying. There are better ways of gardening. Try plants that do better on dry land, like tepary beans or bolita beans. I am gardening on a mountain in New Mexico… I am glad to help you with varieties that do well.
Read your blogs and do what you like as somebody who has raised crops and cattle, I can tell you that The guys who do not use the GMO’s are better off. I do not speak of gardening but if you want to feed more than yourself you need to think in production of tonnes per acre. When you get 65 bushels per acre with regular/ tradional seeds and you get 75 bushels with GMO who is getting the better? I am talking about 1 pass tillage, 1 pass seeding, 1 pass harvesting, vs, 1 pass tillage, 1 pass weed control, 1 pass seeding/fertilizing, 1 pass mid season pest control, 1 pass preharvest die down, 1 pass harvest, 1 pass post harvest weed control. It is simple economics. The farmer who did not spend his money on all the approved systems makes more per acre than the one who does everything as is told he needs to do. What you have missed my point is that in a limited resource world you are going to be doing what you can to get the most bang for your buck. I know the steps I have done them. Why does everybody believe in big agriculture?
SCTV
I don’t believe in big ag. Makes no sense. Not possible that endless paying for inputs and machinery and chemical… and all the profits necessary for those people… can be carried by a farmer. Our entire society looks like that. In this case, one farmer and 2000 people making a living out of the farmer.
A similar example is housing. One person buys a home and another 2000 people make a living out of it. The cost is astronomical and takes 30 years of stable employment to pay for that purchase. Bizarre.
It now costs a fortune to have a baby… but another 2000 people make a living out of that too.
People complain about welfare, but laws get passed every day requiring you support 2000 people for each facet of your life. Then you have to do the same to others.
Reality under this is that it is not sustainable without laws and regulations forcing each person to support thousands of others.
Self-sufficiency is frowned on… read most how-to books published, and they are 3/4 about how it is dangerous to do anything without an expert. They sell experts.
It is a bizarre system. People did most of these things in 2 hours or less a day for millenia. Experts and corporations have pretty well destroyed our air water soil with toxins… giving rise to government employees to oversee the damage.
I want to opt out but it is pretty much illegal.
In my particular situation, certain GMO seeds have been far more effective than non GMO seeds, even given that I practice more organic gardening than you would think. The problem is that where I live we have very sandy soil and nothing but weeds like to grow here (coastal Florida). I tried multiple varieties, hoping the heirloom varieties would grow, but had no luck. This may not be the case everywhere, but it is where I am. To me, GMO is just another tool that could be used if needed, not one that I want to use. Maybe if I was a better gardener that wouldn’t be the case, but I gotta do what works for me rather than what I wish would work.
Winston – have you tried to amend the soil? We have nothing but red clay here in Appalachia. We’ve added rock dust and composted manure to the soil plus our own compost made from our yard and kitchen waste, even the dust from the vacuum cleaner bag. We’ve even added earthworms. Something that was not in the garden before. It has taken about 5 years but we now have several inches of rich soil. Still not deep enough for root vegetables but we’re working on that. We even have a few raised beds. Those might help with your soil problem, if you have the room.
The problem is not just the soil-it’s the insects. Certain varieties are not palatable to the insects here and those are the ones I use. I also have to deal with full sun on a 95F day all too often and that tends to wither the plants quite quickly. I actually abandoned my efforts after a few seasons until I can move the parts car I have (now missing all of it’s steering and front suspension) out of the part of my small yard that gets partial sun during the summer as I got tired of beating my head against the wall trying to grow simple crops like tomatoes. I also got irritated that the insects found ALL of my tomatoes a few days before harvest and I lost the crops coming from 20 plants.
I’m also thinking about moving from where I am to a neighborhood of large lots (I have about 1/8 acre now) with well water instead of city to try and move off grid as much as possible. My neighborhood is getting destroyed by the kind of trash that is moving here because the rents are cheap and I no longer feel safe under normal circumstances. The one I want to move to is affordable and not too far away with 1-5 acre lots, and is more in keeping with my needs going forward. It’s still close to town, but I would have the space to garden and set up a killer shop, as well as doing a grid connected solar setup with battery backup in the future. It’s also all on well and septic, so I can also avoid the high cost of the local water utility, plus it’s not in a flood zone so insurance is cheaper. For me, the future is uncertain and so I seek to limit my need for the goods and services offered by society in case of economic hard times. I figure that if I can garden, fix all of my own technology and generate my own water and electricity I can live off a very minimal income and still survive. I don’t know what’s coming, but I do know that I can’t rely on being able to sustain myself within the system over the long term.
Winston : If you can move, then you need to do it. That being said, I was born and lived in Miami until I was 12 or 13. We had one of those small lots and we grew a ton of food. We amended our soil with free horse manure. No rotor tiller, no fertilizer, no gmo, just hard work and perseverance. I hated it, because I was the laborer. We also had fruit trees. I went years without growing anything. Now I have 57 or 58 fruit and nut trees and vines, 5000 sf of garden and no fertilizer, no gmo. I do have a roto tiller.
It has taken years and a lot of hard work. By the way, I still live in Florida. I do not use poisons either. You have to figure out what grows in your yard.
First thing, your non growing season is the middle of summer, without shade cloth, but it is great for fruit trees, that give you more and more every year.
Second, you can grow things that people won’t believe you can grow here.
Third, Don’t worry about what the seed packets say. Keep trying different varieties until you figure out what grows where you are. If it says spring and you can not grow it, try it in the fall and vice versa. Buy a couple of plants to get you started, then start trying seeds. If you cannot grow them, put them in your freezer for trade. When you find something that works, obviously go with that variety. Good example. I could not grow broccoli, always had real small flowerets. Last year I planted 3 rows, half each a different variety. So I tried 6 varieties. 1 great, 1 pretty good, the other 4 suck. I have the room now to figure it out, but you can do the same thing on a smaller scale.
Fourth, no fertilizers. I hill up my rows, bag my lawn clippings, and pour them down between the rows. That gives me better water retention. I do have city water, water as little as possible. When you till your garden up after the season, you just amended the soil. Do that twice a year, as you have two growing seasons. It will take a couple of years, but every year your garden will get better.
I have had people ask me ” What kind of fertilizer do you use. We grow more than we can eat”? My first answer is the kind of fertilizer you are going to have when the SHTF. NONE. The other thing I say is do you really grow more than you can use? The true answer is no. Most people don’t can or blanch and freeze. They grow more than they can eat for a couple of sittings.
And last, look around at what the local farmers are growing. Go just out of town to the U pick fields. Some of the local farmers around here lease fields for just one or two years and grow crops without any water. Learn your area and what grows where you live. It can be done.
I forgot about the bugs. When you take that evening walk through your garden, pinch the bad bugs. No poison.
Good luck, and keep trying. You can do it.
FAM: that is excellent information! Everything you said.
Based on another poster here I would advise people to be careful about using horse manure these days. Why? Because of the strong wormers that are given to horses. Pretty toxic stuff. I don’t know any horse owners that don’t administer strong wormers to their horses. As someone that loves plants and has had both ornamental and vegetable gardens, chicken manure is my favorite fertilizer. Yes it runs hot, best applied in the fall, dug into beds or dug into a compost pile and let to rest over the winter.
Soil amendment is an ongoing process. Cover crops like clover or some type of legume are excellent, they provide for nitrogen fixation in the soil. You don’t eat those crops you plant them in the fall and dig them into the soil prior to planting.
Find those plants that thrive in your area and those that go wild and still produce. I was suprised to find out that in my area hazelnuts and grapevines do just fine untended. To the point where they become invasive.
WS – Amen about the uncertain future. One year ago, I had no idea that I had six months left to work before I would be forced to retire. By September, my health had deteriorated due to Rheumatoid Arthritis that I was no longer able to do my job. At the urging of my doctor, and the recommendation of my employer, I retired. Though I still walk with a cane outside, I am healthier than a year ago in spite of the RA. I’m even taking less medicine. At least now I am not using all my energy on a job that was becoming increasingly thankless each day.
Nubmaeme
Leaky gut can cause rheumatoid arthritis. You might be able to back it down. I hope all goes well with you.
Rebecca – RA runs in my family. It goes back at least 5 generations, maybe more. The tendency for it is hereditary and the more it occurs, the stronger the tendency. That said, I will look into your suggestion. Thanks.
Winston:
Lady bugs kill undesirable insects. Chickens kill tons of insects and make free fertilizer. If you have fruit and nut trees, you can plant under and around them.
BfCA and WS – Here’s a suggestion – Guinea fowl. Guineas are better than chickens in the garden. They don’t not eat the plants the way chickens do but pluck off the bugs. My neighbor used to let her chickens roam free some until they ate our garden to the ground – plants, bugs, and even dug up the earthworms. Her guinea fowl only ate the bugs. The one big drawback to guinea fowl is the noise. Some people don’t like it and some neighborhoods have rules against them. One advantage though – they make good alarms. They’ll raise a racket at anything they are not familiar with.
Winston,
Are you in an agricultural area? Corporate monoculture creates plagues by having one crop, the pests that feed on that crop multiply into a plague… why corporate monoculture uses so many toxins. Treating the symptom instead of the cause.
Good soil supports healthy plants, there isn’t much shortcut there. I got free compost material from people. Polyculture mixes plants rather than bunching the up for pests.
I know you have good sense, and you will figure it out. Good luck with your garden.
I do my hunting with a compound-bow, and when it hits the fan I’ll switch to night hunting only. We are so distanced from any major city I seriously doubt folks will dare venture this deep (or this high in elevation) to hunt. When a college was first built in my home town, the students were overheard talking about how they make “sound shots” (they don’t frigging make sure it’s something they WISH to kill …they hear a sound and shoot blindly at it). The last “sound shot” took out a veteran fishing in a woodland stream. So yes. It’s already dangerous and would become terrifying …like I said, I go out at night (that’s when the woods comes alive anyway). 🙂
Where is this college located?
Just want to know so I can stay far away from it…
No animal to hunt. Gather.
I live in northern MN and would bet that there would be a huge loss in population of the deer around here. I’d bet most city people would try to get to their cabins, which aren’t typically stocked, and clear out whatever they can shoot. And most of them would not make the best use of what they harvest. Hope I’m far enough north that they don’t make it here.
Good to be back.
I’m a western Wisconsin fella. My wife’s family is from the Grand Marais area. We often talk about the folks we call stupid 612’ers. You know, the ones from the TC area that wouldn’t know better than to get out of the car to watch the cute Bull Moose in the middle of the road at 3am kind of folks. Yeah,we actually witnessed this kind of stupidity and they were taking pictures with flash. We both want to retire asap as far north from this kind of possible fiasco. We believe that if[before]the so-called SHTF we want to move north and away from the “golden Hordes” looking for warmth. For survival,we believe in don’t do what everyone else is doing. We’re looking now for land and opportunities and yes we’re aware of the limitations there. Hope this makes sense. Peace
I am 5 1/2 hrs north of the Twin cities, and if TEOTWAWKI happens, I doubt they can all make it up to their seasonal cabins, being caught in the chaos of a large starving population. They don’t have gardens at their places either, and what I know of them they have no clue to wild foods. Once the deer population goes down, they will resort to looting like the rest of the population living up here that don’t prepare. I hope I am isolated enough that they don’t find me either.
Not to worry. I have whats seem to be about 8 trillion squirrels in my yard, double that with rabbits, and enough Canadian geese around to provide 50 to everybody in the world every day.
And raccoons? Too many to count (and what’s really scary is the raccoon roundworm in their feces, which are all over the place in my yard)
I should be the fattest man in my county come TEOTWAKI
That or the one everybody wants to barter with!
They would disappear quickly, the same as the “tame” deer. The deer in suburbia are tame until the first or second one gets shot.
Squirrels aren’t bad tasting. Ate them a lot when I was growing up in our small town. Oh,they don’t taste like rabbit and rabbit doesn’t taste like chicken unless it’s way overcooked. Maybe I cook them too long. Gray squirrels and Rabbits are all over the place here and we often think of trapping them for food. Peace
Whenever I read that folks will take to the woods to hunt for their food, I chuckle.
I am an avid hunter. I only kill what I can eat. I won’t waste an 85cent steel shot shell on a merganser or any diver duck.
I spend a lot of time in the woods between September and February. I use scent cover, the wind, elevated stands, ground blinds, jon boat, etc., and STILL it is not easy.
I take PLENTY squirrels with my Gamo pellet gun. About 1000 fps with the lighter tipped pellets that make WAY less noise.
My favorite way to cook squirrel is over a fire.
That being said… even though harvesting wild game is difficult, it won’t stop people from going out to find out the hard way, and the woods will not be safe.
In a SHTF/WROL scenario, many will become gear donors, killed over their kill.
It will be MUCH safer to raise chickens and/or rabbits at a semi-secure location than to compete with a bunch of itchy fingered kooks.
Hell,,,
I whitewash more than not now when theres not thousands of people crashing through the bush!
But then again hunting off my front porch with a bow and flashlight isnt really sport is it,
I think if people go to the woods during shtf it won’t be to hunt, it’ll be to hide, unless you’re far, far away from large populations. Think about the big picture folks, IMHO, an shtf scenario will be all out pandemonium. Homocides, suicides, drug addicts, people that need ssri’s (anti depression meds) roving gangs and outright psychopaths that just wanna kill, whatever is left of the gubmint who are as competent as nothing, and everything else that can be added to this list will be the order of the day. One thing is for sure, articles like this show how easily led people are. I really am glad for what I learned so long ago. I take my 51 year old ass to the gym everyday for this. I know skills are essential but so is good health and fitness. Good planning is necessary but the best laid plans go awry, have a contingency. I.E. I hear so many people chirpin bout the guns they got and what they’re gonna do to the bad guys, so what if there’s 7-8 bad guys and just you?What will you do? Have you ever considered/ planned for this situation. Do you know e&e (escape and evasion)? Do you know how to be stealthy? Noise and light discipline? Do you know how to not end up in such a situation to begin with? Something to think about: Have you ever shot anyone? It does something to you, even if it’s justified, or in the name of protecting freedom, have you ever been shot at? It’s probably the 2nd worst fear. Just some reality shit to think about
Thats my biggest fear for a SHTF thing,
Everything has unwound
Our neighborhood is managing ok, everyone pulled together
Some asshole shoots my ass while im minding my own business hoeing weeds in the garden!
Jackknife —> obviously you’ve “been there, done that” but for the greater number of posters here, I estimate 15% to be ex-combat trained and as you indicated, few here know the feelings that hit you when you take your first life. (Agreed, it “does something” to you …I was sick-as-a-dog). Game animals are no dummies, and while there will no doubt be a huge number of hunters, these animals will quite easily survive unless they are “entrapped” (and that’s what these people will do to ensure a meal). So, wildlife will definitely “take a hit”, but for the non-hunters they’ll soon find that without experience they’ll never see anything to shoot at (with no idea why when it’s all their screwing up that is causing their lousy-luck)! lol….
I believe the woods will be a place to go for hunting and collected guns, ammo, consumables, barter items and maybe save a few trying not to die.
Jacknife: Your comments bear serious consideration as do those posting before you. I am an older female, married, but prepping alone as much as I can. My spouse has difficulty dealing with the direction this country is going because “America always comes back.” You and I know the foolhardiness of that statement! That said, I believe there will come a day/moment when the “light will come on” and those things I have done will buy us some time – but not much! The scenarios I see (in dreams, and studies, etc.) do not paint a picture of many survivors (regardless of where one lives) and that survival will bring its own set of horrors (the movie, “The Road” comes to mind). Nuclear war or EMP would set off a set of circumstances the likes of which none of us would likely care to survive…one being a rapid onset of radiation poisoning, the other a slow agonizing death wherein you hope and pray that you are NOT the sole survivor. Other scenarios, such as civil war, present their own set of extreme horrors. I have done what I can and will rely on the Lord to wake up the spouse at lightening speed, to provide for our every need (including concealment) and direct our every step, audibly if necessary; and/or, take us Home in the first wave. I believe in the prepper efforts to the degree that they are done at God’s leading and direction. However, many of us do not fit the ideal scenario and are either alone in our efforts and older, unskilled from a military/practical perspective (aside from being book-read), do not have a hidey-hole to flee to nor the prospect of obtaining one, and struggle to find those of like-mind in our areas/churches that we would dare speak to of our efforts. I so appreciate all of your efforts and skill-sets. Many of you have been doing this for some time and have had a community/spouse/family to partner with in your endeavors. Kudos to you!! Keep those of us in dissimilar situations in your prayers as we are longing for the support and community but as of yet have been unable to find it!! God bless!!
garenwill : The hardest thing is to practice OPSEC and build a few willing dedicated souls. In the past, I have had conversations with people that I wished I did not talk to. They will be dealt with when the time comes. Now I only talk to a few about prepping. I try to convince past parties that I no longer prep, when it comes up. I don’t know about the community thing. The more personnel you have, the more room you need to feed them. I think three couples is the perfect number. NO man or woman is an island. You have to sleep sometime.
You would need around ten acres minimum per couple to support stationary life. Probably 300 – 500 acres per couple if you stay on the move, exhausting resources as you go. Good luck and keep on prepping.
You are not alone. I believe, there are many of us. Hubby thinks I’m just “acting crazy”. So I speak to no one about it. Read, practice. 4am is a good time to practice starting a fire, setting snares, etc. hang in there girl. We may be isolated but we are not alone.
BR: what kind of Gamo? I went to the Gamo website and there are a lot of choices, more than I realized. What type of ammo? I first heard about pellet guns as a viable option after reading “Locusts on the Horizon” (LOTH) by the Plan B Wrtiers Group. There is a lengthy chapter on hunting. There is also a chapter on air guns. Will re-read that chapter. LOTH recommends an air gun as a second choice after getting a shotgun.
The show, “Naked and Afraid” did a recent episode in Alabama and the guy caught a possum. They cooked it but it looked like they didn’t eat it because of the taste. It was hard to tell what they did wrong. I am guessing when they butchered it they contaminated the meat with either the intestines or the scent gland but I don’t know as I have never butchered a possum. Anyone with experience have comments about butchering and eating possum?
There are four critters I have seen in uban and suburban areas: racoons, possum, skunks, and pigeons. They don’t even try and hide although I saw the racoons and skunk at night and the possum early in the morning when there wasn’t much traffic and it was still quiet. There are also lots of deer, coyotes, crows, and squirrels in my area.
Pigeons would be a safe choice for food and you can get them with a good .177 pellet gun. The 177 has a higher velocity than the .22 for Most air rifles. 150$ or less will get you a decent one. Be careful of raccoons, and skunks as they have the highest rate of rabies and other diseases of small animals. Im not sure about possum.
DII: thanks. I reread that chapter in LOTH. The Plan B Writers Group (typo before) recommends a Spring Piston. The book also talks about the Girandoni air rifle that was used by Meriwether Lewis during the Lewis and Clark Expedtion of 1803-1806.
Quote from LOTH: “The Girandoni was used as a battlefield weapon and as a sniper rifle by the Austrian Army from 1790-1815. It saw action with the Austrians in the Napoleanic Wars of the era. Austrian snipers with the Girandoni air rifles were so effective and feared that the French gave the order to their troops to summarily execute anyone caught behind their lines with an air rifle.” Wow.
“A skilled shooter in a hurry could fire the entire 22 shot magazine in less than 30 seconds, which was an incredible rate of fire for a rifle of its day. At 100 yards the Girandoni air rifle could accurately punch a .46 caliber hole through a one inch thick pine board. Unlike the muzzleloading black powder weapons of its day, it did not suffer from powder fouling and the bore stayed clean and unobstructed, shot after shot. It also produced no smoke and was relatively quiet compared to a gunpowder powered rifle.”
LOTH recommends these air rifles:
Ruger Air Magnum: .22 caliber that can fire a lead pellet at 1000 fps (feet per second).
Hatsan 125: lightweight and capapable of firing lead pellets at 1000 fps with a Picatinny rail.
Hassan 1000: cost effective and a workhorse. Lightweight, .22 caliber at 800 fps. Shorter, lighter, and requires less force to cock and has a rail for a scope.
Crosman Phantom 1000: .177 caliber spring piston that can fire a lead pellet at 1000 fps. Can buy with or without a 4X32 scope. Lightweight. (Avoid steel BBs as those can harm the rifling in the barrel).
LOTH recommends the older style spring piston due to minimal maintenance.
They recommend the Crosman 1322 because it is a cheap way to develop handgun skills while using cheaper ammunition.
LOTH mentions that air guns are not considered a firearm by Federal law and are not federally regulated. Except for New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, Philadelphia, the entire state of New Jersey, and depending on the air gun, Illinois. In New Jersey You need a permit to buy and own an air gun. In NYC they are banned. In Illinois air guns are restricted. In Michigan they require a police permit and safety check for air guns that are less than 26 inches in length and have rifling. In Michigan residents cannot have air guns with silencers or baffles to reduce noise.
Virginia will classify an air gun as a firearm if they are used in a serious crime.
I am not experienced with modern air rifles. I grew up shooting an old fashioned BB gun and then .22 and then 30.06 and then M-16A1. The cost of ownership and ammo, along with less legal hassles make an airgun interesting to me. They are cheap, the ammo is cheap, there are less regulations, and they are quiet.
I plan on doing more research on pellet guns.
Philosopher.
Funny you bring up air rifles. Did some target practice today. Both .177 and .22 cal.
Tomorrow going to upgrade scopes. Not that they were bad but I need something better. So while the getting is good I should go and get it. Then I will not have to complain later. As you Know I hate complaining. ;0)
Those Crossman 600 FPS are good little Pellet guns if you take care of them.
To add.
I also shoot a BB Co2 and a Pellet Co2 Hand gun. Shot plenty of rats with the pellet pistol.
SS: good to know! It looks like they are sold mostly as varmint guns for farmers or landowners to get rid of, well, varmints. Looks like a handy weapon to own. Cheap. No paperwork required in my area.
I bagged a few squirrels with my crossman .177. I use the alloy pellets. Claims 1240 fps. Don’t know for sure but it’s a good little air gun
J: thanks for the feedback! Good to know what works and what doesn’t.
Philo —> it is good to hear you have an abundance of wildlife nearby. As for the possum, you would be better of just letting them live and keep things cleaned up for ya. There IS a certain way to prepare them or you COULD end up with a stinky mess, but without someone showing you, it’s hard (I could never write out decent “guides” on how-to-prep-a-possum and still have it edible). lol…
They don’t taste like chicken either …and they’d be my last choice for meat. Squirrel-stew, now there’s a “sustainable” food source (never hunt an area until it is devoid of all life …that’s just plain ignorant and you’ll be doing yourself an injustice, if not calling death to your doorstep).
E: I am guessing that is something you have to see and learn in person. Some skills are best learned by watching and then doing. I know in the south they used to eat possum. I have heard of soaking the meat in a brine (water mixed with salt and sugar and spices if you have them) or in buttermilk in advance of cooking. I always brine poultry (chicken, game hens, or turkeys) prior to roasting in the oven. Brine for 24 to 48 hours. Usually meat is soaked in buttermilk only overnight (6 to 12 hours).
Most people never get out of their house or their car and don’t even realize what is around them. I saw different critters because I was out and about and walking. I don’t think most people realize how many critters live around them. I was surprised to see raccoons and a possum in the city and a skunk in the suburbs. Racoons are really smart though. The last time I was camping the ranger warned me and said they knew how to break into cars, how to open a can of beer and a can of soda! (The raccoons.) Coyotes are a nuisance in my area. Once it warms up the frogs take over and make a big racket. No one I know in my area hunts frogs. I would probably not hunt frogs now due to the overuse of glyphosate in my area and the local ponds are contaminated with runoff. But if I was hungry? Well . . .
Philosopher,
I forget whic hGamo model, it has a skeleton polymer stock, but they are all similar. I saw it had good reviews, and was about 100 bucks at ChinaMart. The polymer tipped .177 pellets @ 1000fps make less noise.
The all lead pellets @ 1200fps have a slight report, but still quieter than .22lr subsonic out of bolt action .22 rifle.
I love all animals. Some are delicious. I thank every animal I harvest for their meat, fur/hide, and/or feathers.
I hate most humans. I don’t anticipate having as much remorse for dispatching some idiot that I feel is a threat to me.
When the neighborhood cats dogs squirrel coon possums are gone then it’s bad even though
They are easy to bait by just leavinf your trash can lid off hahaha
Do not rely on wild game to feed you and your families. Only think of it as a bonus. Because you and 5,000 others will be after that one deer, or that one cat-fish. Put back your food now while you can.
We have one game-warden for the entire county. He’s only made out this way one time (that we actually saw him) …and that was 15yrs ago. I remember him saying it was “too wild for him” up in these mountains. I’m hoping the city folk cop the same attitude …trouble is, below me is a gargantuan man-made lake (TVA water reserve for hydro-power) …fill it in the summer, drain it before winter. (When it’s drained the fish are trapped in small pools. Take your net and choose your supper).
Hey, I picked up a trick from a neighbor. He ‘half-freezes’ his newly-caught fish (about 45 mins), THEN guts them. No slime, less time, less mess and easier to fillet
Having lived in Africa in the 70’s, I had the opportunity to speak with a few mercenaries form time to time. One of them told me about a time he was in Biafra. He and his mates had to eat rats to survive. Many a time I saw African kids in Rhodesia pop a live grub in their mouths. A lot of nutrition in grubs I’m told. Africans live on mealy meal from day to day. Not much else. In my old neighborhood in Chicago back in the early 60’s I saw eastern European elderly eat out of garbage cans. Habits left over from the ravages of WW2. What will you eat? How bad do you want to survive?
You remind me of Robert Young Pelton. I had to ask, what is “mealy meal?” Never heard of it.
How bad do I want to survive? I have been wondering if you can eat tadpoles. The local lakes this time of year have giant tadpoles, the size of walnuts. Has anyone here eaten tadpoles?
Tadpoles can be boiled and seasoned to suit. Boiling gets rid of the ‘icky alien snot’ they are encased in too (which is protein and great for ya). I would NOT use it ‘solely’ in a soup, but as one of many ingredients. Enjoy!
E: hey it is protein so I figured they are edible. I am thinking I would rather use them as bait. Sounds like the same way to prepare slugs. It would be hard for me to eat slugs. I will have to think about it. Better than eating a person though.
Here are some prepared folks !
Bloody, visceral world of Montana’s off-grid butchers:
They are called “The Gleaners”
http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/27/world/cnnphotos-the-gleaners/index.html
Awh-if only I was 25 again. Being 61 now, couldn’t go the distance 🙁
Trapping is the way to protein production. Fur bearers beat the hell out of bugs.
Lay in a good supply of 110 Conibears and a few 220s, steel traps, box traps (make them yourself) for rabbits and snares.
Tan your own furs. Sulfuric acid is the easy way. Look up instructions on the ‘net.
Muskrat, coons, rabbits and squirrels are easy to trap. Lots of protein and your traps work 24/7. Hide them. For example, cover your box rabbit traps with brush.
I grew up during the Depression. There weren’t any deer. They were quickly depleted. Other big game will be gone.
Most city folks (especially city dwellers) would rather talk about eating bugs than about trapping. Don’t forget to keep the hides.
City folk won’t end up with much more than bug galore since few wild animals are found in cities shouldn’t I think? 🙂 The population of wild animals is “primo” right now …but at this time next year it won’t be.
I take bees and de-stinger them and fry them up in oil. They were very tasty. I have taken roll-up bugs, put them on a potato diet for a couple of days, and fry them in garlic butter. They are related to the shrimp family. I tried them because they are very high in protein and good in taste. Rather find easy food that takes little energy to catch, for one must weigh those factors if the energy used is worth the hunt.
I’m now 62 years old, and I have been hunting for 52 years with some of the best hunters in the area. I know that going into the wood and taking game is a plan of a lot of people. It is a lot of work and just going into the woods and getting supper is a joke. Here is why.
#1 Seeing the game is a 50/50 chance in the beginning. after a couple of weeks you might have a 20/80 chance of seeing game.
#2 You will be hunting who will be watch your BOL.
#3 There will be others hunting. Are they going to let you take the game when their family is starving? You had better be prepared to fight for it.
#4 During the summer you will loose a lot of the meat off of a large animal because you won’t be able to keep it cool. Unless you have a smoker or a cooler. A smoker will also give you away.
#5 During the winter (late fall to early spring)a large animal like deer or elk, bear, pig. you can keep cool or frozen. This would be the only time to take them. Remember when you get bear, and pig to cook it well done! (don’t get sick)!
#6 You are better off taking Rabbits, Squirrels, Ground hogs, Coons, and when you get really hungry Rats, chipmunks, easy to kill easy to clean, and most of all no waist.
#7 It would be better to have rabbits, and chickens, and other small games, and stay out of the woods. You might become someone supper. Remember there will be Zombies and Leach out there!
I know that there are much smarter and better Preppers here with other Great Ideas. PLEASE ADD TO THE LIST!!!!
A.S.M.S.—-T.T.
Sarge worse than Zombies and Leaches, even as we speak there are Greenies and Tree Huggers out there! I know that back East there are not a lot of large carnivores, so hunting keeps deer herds in balance but out here in the West the Wolves and Grizzlies are hurting our Elk and Moose populations and we’re not able to manage the wolf and bear numbers due to people that know nothing about these large carnivores. Just a few days ago, one small pack of wolves killed 19 elk, 17 calves and 2 cows. I believe in Conservation but as usual you have people that operate on emotion rather than fact calling the shots, usually from the city or DC rather then the people on the ground in the area where things need to be managed. Trekker Out. Wolves, Smoke A Pack A Day!
Hey Mt Trek. To find your Elk or Moose, You need to go higher up into the Mts, where the wolves drove them. But there is more great news, check this out, watch this Excellent video and pass it on.
How the Wolves Changes Rivers – http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/how-wolves-change-rivers/
~WWTI… Lone Wolf!! Let er’ Rip~
WWTI we talk much about how the MSM feeds us all the BS, well don’t think for a minute that the people that promote keeping the Wolves and Grizzlies on the endangered species list don’t do the same thing. I have seen this video and all the others that tell you how great the wolves are, but all you have to do is talk to the people that live among them. Do a google search on Bondurant Wy. Wolf Kill. they will even tell you how rare this is, but I have talked to the common workers in Yellowstone and they will tell you how the wolves will kill one elk and go right on to the next. And Grizzly attacks on people are quite common also, but they are kept quite by TPTB because they don’t want any bad press. I know of what I speak! There are many more Grizzlies than they try to claim, I have many pictures on trailcams. Trekker Out.
Mtn Trekker –
ABSOLUTE TRUTH!!
WR Mom
WRM- What Do You Do If You Encounter A Large Carnivore? At the Library.3-31-2016 at 6PM. Trekker Out.
Sargent Dale: Nice piece of writing there! At the moment I can think of ONE animal to add to the list of “don’t shoot unless you are really hard up’. Red fox or just a fox. The meat sux really badly (imho and thousands of others). This is odd for a carnivore (not to taste decent) …but they don’t.
It is also IMPERATIVE that you do your hunting ‘silently’. ONE “BANG!” would bring dozens of hunters more than willing to kill for whatever was ‘bagged’. Bow & Arrow and traps and trot-lines. (Automate your hunting to hopefully give you more time for other things that need doing EVERY day).
Rodents are mostly at the bottom of “what you want to eat” with bugs running a close second. Aardvarks would disagree with you vehemently when it comes to eating ‘bugs’ eh? lol…
I’ve had fried muskrat and it was delicious like fried rabbit, so I’d put that on the top of my list, and beaver is pretty good with a Worchester sauce marinade, but don’t tell them greenhorn hunters that! If you want a taste of wild animals like bear, snapper, porcupine, ect., go to the wild game feeds in your area and find out what they use to prepare it.
#7 It would be better to have rabbits, and chickens, and other small games, and stay out of the woods.
You got that right,
My diet is heavy on eggs from my own hens and veggies from my yard.
IMHO, keeping OTHERS out of my yard is going to be priority.
Another reason Canada is a good option. One of the largest countries in the world, with 35 mm people (and a massive amt of that in the narrow Toronto-Mtrl corridor, and Vancouver. Even if you exclude tundra, you still have a massive land mass with 35 mm people hunting, not 350 million. And trust me, all the zombies, golden hordes, etc. won’t even THINK of going north
Sarge:
Hunting, trapping, fishing; all have their place. I am more inclined to think that those who have skills will be at an advantage. Those who live in an area where zoning laws permit, might consider getting a goat(s). Goat milk is nutritious, and easier to digest than cow’s milk. Cows are a BIG commitment, better suited to a small or large farm or homestead. But, anyone with a large backyard and an appropriate shelter can deal with some little, quiet, harmless goats. Cheese makers are going to be in high demand when TSHTF so I bought several books on the subject and highly recommend that others do likewise. Hell, with the price of milk and cheese, I may become a goat-herder myself.
SGT. Dale
Good to have a few Meat Thermometers for wild game cooking. Check Internal Temps for hams and roasts.
The key will be how much access to woods and hunting ground you have. So ASAP cash in your over taxed, overpriced house in the city and buy a lot of land $100K can buy you 50 acres @ $2K per acre. Many with water access.. Or the closest land next to large nature preserves or State and National Forests, those deer wander off frequently. Here I have turkey, deer, pigs, gator, and lot of other small game like raccoon, rabbit or squirrel.. Most every bird is edible. I would not want to eat Buzzards though. Bottom feeders probably have worms and diseases with all the spoiled rotting carcuses they munch on..like roadkill.
Place lots of visible No Trespass No Hunting signs on your property perimeters. Then Mark Video Recording on the signs. Or “Enforced by Rule 12g”.
~WWTI…
If you think you’re going to bug out to the woods and survive on a hunter-gatherer existence, go right ahead. You’ll be dead within 30 days, either of starvation, exposure, or done in by the rural residents who will not appreciate armed and starving nomads raiding farms and homes for food.
naked and afraid
No rule of law?
That means jacklighting, shooting off of feeders and salt licks will be common. Even Bambi will become fair game. Bust er off at the knuckles and pop into the roaster.
Trapping close to home with legholds or live traps (also if you have a lowland crick for ‘rats) should provide some kind of meat overnight without having to go into the woods where anything that moves is in danger of dying.
Snapping turtles can be caught from a set and trot lines can be used at night to stay away from the crazies during the daylight. Gigging with a light at night can also be done when there is no competition around.
Best to get food when no one else is.
I can live off the land… wild plants… but only plan to do so in extremis. As for killing enough animals to survive, good luck. Too many folks to blow a rabbit to bloody bits with an AR15. Even hunters with orange vests get shot. I opt for small domestic animals and consider a homestead worth defending. I don’t have the facilities for large domestic animals, but more power to those of you who do.
That said, I feed the deer and bear and rabbits. One thing my old daddy taught me was the drawing power of rosehips. Plant them where you want your game to be.
Yes and no on the AR
I can hit a dime at 250yds with a couple of my .223 ARs so the last thing that goes through that little varmints mind will be a 69gSMK
Very good article. I grew up in the Northeast. Back in the 70’s there were more deer hunters and few bagged a buck. I used to eagerly listen to the old timers and their stories. My Grandfather never saw a deer until he was around 14 years old, during the early 1920’s. He lived in a very rural area on a farm. A couple others saw and shot their first bucks in the mid 1940’s during the first legal deer season. Back then the coyotes and other predators had been effectively wiped out. The deer population was very low just because of men.
6 months to a year after a SHTF event, I believe you would be more likely to get yourself shot while hunting instead of bagging some game.
Same deal goes for fishing holes, streams, lakes…
– No fish limit, no minimum size, nets used…
we wont have to worry about this, these animals will be gone and some too hard for the lazy to go after ,, there will be enough humans to eat …. think im joking?
second.
I like to talk to the neighbors about what they like to eat, vegetarians aren’t going to be very tasty I think.
and if you find someone who is a good cook, you’ve got a winner.
not so sure on the vegetarians ,, cows are good eatin, and so are a lot of other critters that arnt carnivores
just thinkin out loud
Good God; I can’t stand to be around most people let alone eat the mf’s. If it comes to that I’m out a here.
skeptic
Plenty of Chianti. Or is that Matuse . MD 20-20 in a pinch.
Check, Check, Check.
S: same here. No way in fricken hell I would eat a person. I would shoot myself first.
Philo – did you ever see the movie “Alive”? They never thought they would eat another person either until faced with extreme starvation. It is a true story. Did you ever hear about the Donner Party – the group that resorted to cannibalism while snowbound in the Rockies back in the 1800’s? Have you ever seen any of the old newsreels from Eastern Europe during WW2? People were not only scrapping crud from garbage cans or automotive grease from barrels for something to eat, they were also cutting the flesh from just about anything dead be it animal or human. We never know what we will do until faced with that situation. Extreme hunger does funny things to our brains and our morals.
N: yes I remember seeing the movie and I think I read the book, too. I saw a great documentary this winter on the Donner Party. Jeez one of the guys actually LIKED eating human flesh. When rescue showed up that guy had let some of the mule meat go to waste and was raving about how great human meat tasted. They just figured the guy had gone insane.
I hear you. I don’t know how I would act. But that is one really dark place to go and I would rather avoid it.
winner winner
longpig dinner!
Nope …ya ain’t joking. Cannibalism can be traced all the way back to ‘caveman’ days. Humans are animals. (However, DO be aware that we are VERY NASTY when it comes to eating ourselves). For those NOT “in the know”, there is already a growing population of “people eaters” inside (and outside) of The USA). Just as “baby parts” are for sale, so are “young girls and other folks.” You may purchase them for food, sexual ‘games’ or for virtually anything these sick minds dream up. It’s hard to prove a murder where the victim was totally consumed isn’t it …not that there is enough law on the streets to prevent these things TODAY …imagine a country with “no law on the streets”!
Equorial,
It wouldn’t have to be illegal if people weren’t doing it.
Consider wearing an HIV positive bracelet to discourage potential cannibals.
Hunting? I agree, normal in-the-field hunting for what we now call ‘game’ will be under a tremendous pressure. So, living up to my moniker, let me give some advice.
Quit being picky. Learn to eat most anything that is edible and won’t kill you. I will tell you all – dogs, cats, your pet guinea pig will all be eventually on the menu. Add in most any other non-traditional (as far as Americans are concerned – one of which I certainly am) living creatures we now ignore. Snakes, turtles, frogs, insects, grubs, some worms, opossum, racoon, armadillo, coyote…. When belly is meeting backbone – it would be a good thing to literally be able stomach other sources of protein. Just learn now which parts of which animals NOT to eat. Such as most bear liver or under-cooked armadillo (the only animal I know of that can carry Hansen’s bacillus – leprosy – besides man), toad skin….
Too, don’t forget that those ranches and other meat-production farms will be targets. Bugging out, the swarm of hungry people from the municipalities will take its toll on both residents/people/owners and the livestock. But, many will remain and turn feral. Both – the owners and the animals.
The bottom line is to not consider cannibalism. Through human history it has tempted and been done. Always to the destruction of those who partook. In more ways than one. You really don’t want to ask the question, “who are we having over FOR dinner” now do you?
Bon appetite.
From what I’ve read about cannibalism, the trick is to stick to muscle tissue. Do not eat the organs, especially brains as we carry something like Mad cow disease. Really nasty stuff in our blood also. You’d have to prepare the meat Kosher style.
I’ll reference you to the story of the Whaleship Essex, recently made into a movie. I read the Essex about 50 years ago in a history text, describing the 1820 tragedy in some detail. They drew straws to determine who would die and be eaten.
As for future SHTF events, “who are we having over FOR dinner”, concerns, I prefer the quote “I’m having an old friend for dinner”(Silence of the Lambs). Eating enemies has a rich human history.
As part of our survival plans my wife and I have been practicing cannibalism on each other for years. I highly recommend it. She has even spiced it up by slathering on marinades that taste great and the package says “improves her pleasure”. And I gotta say it even solved the clean drinking water problem because I’ve gotten so good I can make her squirt uncontrollably.
This also appears to be great cardio exercise, and passes the time in the old bunker better than any board game. Though some cards and a good game of Texas Hold em can help you properly dress or even undress your game before the feast begins.
Ahhh I love prepping. I’m getting ravenous just thinking about the elusive wild beaver.
In the early ’80s, spent a week at Eglin AFB in their survival school. Our group caught an armadillo, instructor showed how to gut & clean them. We cooked it well done over fire (instructors preached about how unclean these boogers were), and then smoked it in a smoker that one of the instructors brought. Lot of work for a little piece of armadillo jerky, but it tasted great!
Is that an AF survival school? There was also the 4th phase of ranger school on Elgin AFB. It was called camp rudder. Survival training was conducted during that phase. Chickens, rabbits and we did a goat too. All live. Killed em, gutted, shinned and cooked them in ammo can. Awesome training.
Heartless.
Tularemia.
Swine Brucellosis.
Trichinosis.
Hoof and Mouth.
Anthrax.
Worms.
Flukes.
Giving the city people more to worry about. First time a family member gets one of those bugs, would put a damper in hunting.
SS: you remind me of my highschool science teacher. He had jars and jars of worms. I remember learning about flukes and seeing all those jars of worms. You forgot Hanta Virus and bubonic plague and Lyme disease. I think the worst diseases come from insects. Ticks and mosquitos.
Consider the numbers of ‘city-dwellers’ who venture into the woodlands “all-but-unaware” of the silent dangers around them. Imagine just how many will return home with poison-ivy, poison-oak, chiggers, ticks and ticks with Rocky-Mountain-Spotted-Fever and various and sundry ‘fleas’. (And all this will happen in the first one-hundred yards of their trek INTO the woods). heheh…
Heartless:
In all seriousness, canabalism is something to consider when thinking about a real catastrophic food crisis. During the forced starvation of the Russian Christians in The Breadbasket of Russia, the Ukrain, starving crazed people stole children to kill and eat them. This is a well documented fact. Such barbarism is part of the problem to be confronted before not during such an event. So keep your children close when and if we Americans face such an event (God forbid).
On the other hand, dead people are fair game during a time when there is an absence of food. Trespassers may find themselves at the table of the host and his family. That is reality. There is no wrong in surviving thru canabalism unless it is preceded by murder. Desperation? Yes. Evil? No. imho
Locusts on the Horizon (LOTH) is where I first learned about the Holodomir. They wrote about other places where people starved. Another reason I can’t stand fricken commies.
Heartless;
I would question eating coyote just because when we shoot or snare one we drag them out in the woods. They will just lay there for weeks without any wild animals touching them. Finnaly they just break down and wither up. Any ideas why that is?
I ‘think’ that coyote is a cousin to the fox family (or vice-versa), and fox meat is terrible. I assume coyote is just as bad, or worse. (You have to consider what they eat …although Maine Lobster only eats ‘dead ocean stuff’ look how good they taste)! But, would you eat a buzzard? NO! (And don’t even think about it if you like life). You MIGHT live after consuming one, you may not.
As for cannibalism, I’ve been eating my wife for years with no ill effects nor complaints thus-far. 🙂
Imagine that! One less government agency (with their camo-clad badge-toting thugs) telling people what to do? Bring on TEOTWAWKI! Get rid of the pork!
A lot of local yahoos (no offense to anyone) who are avid hunters and sportsman don’t look at the need to prep. They think they can live off the land. They don’t realize that in a SHTF scenario they are not the only people out there now hunting. All the more reason to prep and supplement when you can. It’s going to happen, over hunting, but with a SHTF scenario 90% of the population will be dead in 6 minths. It will then take time for the animal population to rebuild itself. Can we all make it that long?
Like Sgt. Dale said and a few weeks most of the deer will go nocturnal. They also tune into the sounds you make and start their run long before you see them. One of the problems will be those that use catch dogs. They will run down game and only bark when they have cornered the game. Bear, hogs, deer and maybe cattle and all those animals you have on your farm are fair game.
Where I am at, a run through the swamp might catch you a water moccasin or eastern diamond back. Hunting at night can get a hog that jumps from the palmettos snapping his cutters at you. Not many city ginks will take a liking to that, and that is in the daytime let alone at night. ;0) In the south Hunters have the heat and humidity. All types of bugs that annoy, bite and itch and burn. How about those banana spiders and those webs they spin. Stir up some Bull Ants and see what happens.
There again you might get the game but you might not have a vehicle when you get back where you parked it. Or somebody waiting on ya. Hahahaha!
Deer already spend a lot of the night out. The pressure from hunting will just make sure that they will not let you get within shooting distance. Most people think that they are dumb critters. Along side the road the older ones will stand still ten feet from moving cars because generally it is safe. During bow season they will hang out 100 yards from you because it is safe. Rifle season 400 yards to 1/2 a mile. Or in the woods they will only be close enough that you will see a flicker of a tail off and on for maddening hours. They are not dumb critters.
Regular hunting will be gone quickly, so you will have to switch to traps and snares for smaller animals. I own part of a swamp, so I can set traps in there for possums, raccoons, foxes, muskrats, and the occasional otter. There are also turtles, snakes, herons, rabbits, squirrels, and other animals.
Its called ‘HUNTING” for a reason, and not “shooting”. Those people who write about this must be able to harvest a animal every time they hunt…. Yeah dont think so.
There’s no good reason to call it “hunting.” I always thought the word “hunt” meant to search for something. I don’t know how deer “hunting” is performed in the rest of the country, but there’s no real hunting involved around here.
There’s two types of deer “hunting” in this area.
In one type, the “hunter” sits in a chair on the back of his pickup on the shoulder of the road while his dogs run through the woods and hopefully chase a deer his way. Then he ambushes the deer and shoots it. Hopefully he doesn’t hit one of the dozen other “hunters” sitting in their pickups along the same stretch of road.
In the other type, the “hunter” climbs up a deer stand very early and waits for a deer to happen by. Then he ambushes the deer and shoots it.
In neither case did the “hunter” actually hunt for anything, except maybe for another cold one in the cooler.
Anyone that can hold a gun can “hunt” those ways. I don’t consider it real hunting unless you actually go into the woods, look for signs and tracks of an animal, track it until you get close, carefully sneak up on the animal without it noticing you, and then shoot it.
Squirrel hunting is another matter altogether. Those things are sneaky. You need a dog trained to go on the other side of the tree from you so the squirrel will run back around to your side.
I don’t plan on doing any hunting anyway. The large animals will be gone soon, so we’ll have to trap or snare smaller animals.
Consider,
While you’re out hunting a deer some cannibal is out hunting you.
And he is probably more likely to see you than you are to see a deer.
I don’t eat meat but I suppose I would if I was starving. My diet consists mostly of beans in different recipes, pasta and bread also. Bread worries me because grown grains are sprayed with Monsantos glyphosate before harvesting.
When we consider wild game that is far less toxic or chemical free, than Store bought Meat full which is full of hormones, vaccines, and the rest, caged, little exercise or sunlight. However if you think you are going to fish, most lakesrivers and streams in our country are full of mercury and other toxins.. Warning for Pregnant women do not eat shell fish or Fish which contains large amounts of Mercury. Mostly polluted from Coal Fired Power plants.
Off the MOTHER JONES site: Here’s Food & Water Watch’s “dirty dozen” list of seafood that failed to meet at least two of the group’s criteria. For more details, plus a list of alternatives for each verboten species, check out the guide. In no particular order:
1. King crab: Even though crab is abundant in some parts of the US, imports from Russia—which aren’t well regulated—are much cheaper and more common.
2. Caviar, especially from beluga and other wild-caught sturgeon: Overfishing and poaching of this coveted species is very common.
3. Atlantic bluefin tuna: Extreme overfishing, plus concerns about mercury and PCB contamination.
4. Orange roughy: May contain mercury and “is particularly vulnerable to overfishing due to its long lifespan and slow maturation.”
5. Atlantic flatfish (e.g. flounder, sole and halibut): Seriously overfished.
6. American eel: Concerns about mercury and PCBs.
7. Atlantic Cod: Overfished, and also has major bycatch problems.
8. Imported catfish: Much of it comes from Southeast Asia, “where use of chemicals and antibiotics is barely regulated.”
9. Chilean seabass: Concerns about mercury, plus illegal fishing in Chile damages marine life and seabirds.
10. Shark: May contain mercury, also overfished.
11. Atlantic and farmed salmon: Concerns about contamination with PCB, pesticides, and antibiotics. Also, waste and germs from salmon farms often leaches out of the cages and can harm the surrounding marine life.
12. Imported shrimp: About 90 percent of it comes from countries where the seafood industry (waste control, chemical use, and labor) isn’t well regulated.
Live Free, Live off the grid. Do a trial and error garden this year. My garden I tried was mostly failure, in the city, shitty soil and watered with city water. Most everything started out great, then just died. Or funny looking carrots with 4 legs. I wanted to do this with regular seeds. They sucked. I did not waste any of my heirloom seeds. The Tomato plants and beans were OK. The snowpeas harvest filled one small kettle for one meal. So as my 78 YO Uncle says “Farmer are the biggest Gamblers out there.”
Planting a garden is a Big Prepper Illusion, if you have not down that in a while, it is a challenge, just pulling weeds. Do you have a rototiller?
~WWTI…
WhoWTFKnows – you have to be extremely leery of anything that comes out of the Pacific now too. Fukishima has been leaking radiation into the Pacific since its meltdown in 2011. All the water they continue to use to try to cool that mess is released back into the ocean. California, finally, issued a radiation warning about all seafood from the Pacific. Seals and sea lions along the West Coast have been suffering from radiation poisoning for several years now. In 2014, a young girl in the Pacific Northwest (I can’t remember her name or find the article again, sorry) did a radiation experiment for a science project. She took a Geiger counter to her local supermarket and scanned all the seafood in the seafood counter. It all showed high level of radioactivity then. It’s probably a lot higher now. Gulf of Mexico seafood isn’t much better. All the chemicals they used to “clean up” the oil spill a few years ago is still in the water and can be found in the seafood. The Atlantic is so overfished that it will take many years to fully recover, if ever. If TPTB ever wanted to reduce our food supply, they’ve got a good start on it with the seafood.
Their intentions are to reduce the output of ocean foods (ALL foods), so that it can only sustain a limited number of mouths. The rest are ‘fixin’ to die (either from starvation, genocide and outright murder).
WWTFK: At this juncture here in the Rocky Mtn West, the biggest threat to gardening is the daily chem-spraying they are doing overhead. You can do everything by the “natural” book but it is all tainted by the chem-trailers, by design. Fellow gardeners in the area talk about all of their natural approaches to gardening in the best weather conditions and report that they’ve had poor harvest – if any, or malformed plants, etc. Few get excellent results! I think much of that is from the glycosphate-drenched soils nationwide as well. God bless our gardeners!!
Garenwill
we are being rained on by atrazine also. Even in the Artic people have toxins. Still, the only thing to do is not add to your own chemical load. We are now exposed to 85000 different chemicals that have never been known before. Never mind the peculiar combinations thereof. I am an organic gardener, and mostly have good production once I get a new garden going. I also use the help of plants to keep as healthy as I can. Food is medicine. While all are fritz in over the election, I am paying attention to Bill Gates, Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, Dupont… all of whom are well supported by the D/R corporate machine. We did stop the DARK Act in the Senate… for now.
Wow; I want to party at your place! Just kidding anon.
If it ain’t bad enough that the fields are saturated with weed killer before planting then pre-harvest dry down spraying to kill the cereal grain plants should scare you. In theory the spring spraying has a chance to break down naturally and be run off from natural rain or in most cases irrigation but in the harvest dry down the weed killer is not supposed to be washed off by rain as it spoils the crops. So you have yummy residue.
Still think im nuts for storing a few hundred pounds of rice?
Would this be a good time to sell off my hunting rifles and buy some more battle rifles?
Sgt.
I thought about that too. I go paintballin occasionally and if people act like that in shtf, you probably won’t have to. There’s gonna be so much pandemonium and chaos, I think you’ll be better off just layin low and stayin out of view. I know it’s not nice to say, but people are generally just stupid. They do stupid shit and say stupid things. It’ll be that x 10 in shtf. Be smart and stay quiet.
There are many “first rules” of survival. For myself, the most important act of survival is to be extremely ‘stealthy’. (Out of sight, out of mind). Once your presence is ‘made’, you’ll most likely be facing a problem, or one of MANY problems. So, lay low, ‘shut-up’ (low voice ‘tones’ can carry 0.5 miles when the “air is hollow” …and you DO NOT want to be discovered without warning nor would you enjoy an ambush).
Download a .pdf that has SERE training within it. (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). It may well serve to save your life, as opposed to making a ‘stupid’ mistake …so it’s a worthwhile read, and obtaining and reading the Military Tactical Books (while they are still down-loadable, especially via TOR) won’t hurt your thinking either. In fact, it will bolster your thinking and perhaps you’ll incorporate what you ‘pick up’ into your future plans? I’ll warrant you will should you read them.
lol….considering that the vast majority of people have no idea how to hunt, field dress, skin, butcher or process their own meat, I’m not overly concerned. I’ve been killing two deer a year for the past 15 years or so and after I get done with the aforementioned, I have enough venison in the freezer to feed my family for a year. That’s before I even bother to drop a line in the water, dig a clam, drop a crab pot or even consider hunting small game or water foul. We also grow and can our own vegetables every year and harvest apples and pears in abundance. We keep bees. Been living off the land most of my life, I don’t expect that would change if the shit hit the fan.
One note to the author, you obviously don’t hunt or you wouldn’t be spouting on about good management, that’s a joke and the entire hunting community knows it. The laws are being written by politicians who are controlled by the insurance industry, you dolt. They want lower deep populations because every time someone in a new car smucks a deer, Allstate has to pay for it. This is why states like Ohio where I grew up have a 9 deer limit per hunter per year. Yeah, that’s good management. That’ll certainly help the herd grow. The reason deer herds are growing is because there’s no almost natural predation anymore and unfortunately, hunting is a dying art. Maybe just a small amount of due diligence before you post garbage…….
Thank you for the reality check. Sure sounds spot on.
Dose gets 2 points for the bitch slap
Don’t see the game animal stock being depleted as quickly as the author believes. Why? The number of urban dwellers who will actually be able to make it out to where the bulk of those game animals reside is going to be relatively small.
Think true SHTF, where you’re going to have to make it out of the urban areas either on foot or bike. The vast majority of those urban dwellers fall into two categories. The first are people who have neither the physical ability nor the skill set (especially the mental skill set) to get the job done; they’re suburbanites surrounding major metropolitan areas. In overly simple terms, their fitness level isn’t there, and they’re completely lost if they don’t have a book of matches to start a fire when they need a fire bad. It’s also very likely that the only other food strategy they have is to stick cans of Chef Boyardee in a backpack, then do whatever they’re going to do.
You will also have inner cities and urban slums. Your typical inner city Apex Predator is going to be the welfare monkey who raids the liquor store before he raids the grocery store. No food left in the grocery store? No problem, just kill off the weakest people who can not escape the inner city and grab their food. Before you know it, you’re going to have Apex Predator welfare monkeys killing each other off because there won’t be anyone else left. Within a matter of weeks to perhaps a couple of months, you will be left with a very small number of people left to flee the inner cities once they become completely depleted of resources, but what’s left is going to be a rather nasty group to deal with.
The inner city mass extinction will be amplified by the fact that the prey will be completely ignorant to what’s going on around them, not having the mental ability to put together what’s going on. They’ll stay right where they are, expecting someone to come in, feed them and help them, when the only person who can help them is going to be themselves. They’ll be easy pickings for the predators in their communities.
It’s not the numbers you need to worry about. It’s that you’re going to have a small number of survivors going from inner city to countryside who are going to be killing machines.
PF
See how they like getting stuck with a frog gigger.
There is enough people with deer rifles that have a rough idea how to hunt that there will be a game animal die off. I used to know many people who belonged to hunt clubs and they were city people. You have ten to 12 guys with a couple designated shooters even though every one had a rifle and they majority would push bush(talking swinging sticks) and flush out everything to the far side for the designated shooters to take. IT is not much different than traditional fox hunts, the native fire hunts, or even old time safari hunts. People figure things out quickly and if they decide that rules do not apply to them then look out as they will be coming to a bush near you. They could all be bad shots but 12 guys shooting somebody will get something and they will share the kill. I used to laugh at the guys who would spend lots of money and take their week holiday to only bring home a single roast. But it happens alot. I have known guides, trappers, pickup hunters, stand hunters and tracker hunters. There are many ways to hunt various game, not all legal, not all safe, but all have been used. Desperate people will try anything. And there is a type of hunting for every skill set.
These “traps” many are speaking of? In some areas near large metros, you may discover ‘human traps’. (As they DO exist and I need not state why).
Cow Peas are the ticket for protein. They will grow almost anywhere there is a warm season. Don’t need fertile soil and produce a lot of food. While I intend to supplement my diet with fish and animals I can catch, my main goal is to grow as many different types of cow peas/southern peas along with other veggies as I can. I will also set traps for animals and fish traps for fish. I have no problem eating things that others look at as trash. I am from Louisiana so making normally unsavory animals/fish/crustaceans into gourmet fare is a normal way of life lol
The one thing that really bothers me about TEOTWAWKI is the those idiots who think they can live off the land will be shooting at anything and everything that moves. Granted, it probably won’t take long before they kill each other off thinking they’re shooting at game or they simply starve to death, but those first few weeks will be hell for the rest of us. They’ll just drive away the game that the coyotes haven’t gotten to yet. Since I don’t have enough land for anything larger than a dog, I might invest in some guinea pigs. I understand they make good eating. In some Peruvian restaurants, you can select your guinea pig the same way we do a lobster. Just a thought!
Nub you know how hunters like to tell their stories about the days hunt, well back in Missourah during hunting season you could come out of the woods at noon and there might be a half dozen cars parked along the road at a good hunting spot where guys would be eating a bite and telling their stories. When ever they would ask how your hunt went, you could just tell them “Well I didn’t see anything, but I did take a couple of sound shots” Usually wouldn’t be as many hunters in that area the next day. Trekker Out.
If you don’t own enough land to hunt on right now, it doesn’t matter. Hunting any public land in a SHTF scenario would be a fruitless effort somewhat suicidal anyway for a multitude of reasons. If you don’t already live out in the country and live a fairly self sufficient, rural life style, it won’t matter. You don’t have the skills or infrastructure to survive anyway. Not long term. While you were thinking about guinea pigs, I was thinking about how I can put a hand pump on my well in addition to the electric submersible pump in case my solar ever takes a dump on me and I can’t fix it. Those batteries have a limited lifespan no matter what you do. I hope you have a lot of room to raise guinea pigs, you’re going to need it, that and something to feed them and access to water to obvious reasons. That whole guinea pig thing cracked me up considering the fact I’m one of those “idiots” you talk about who think they’re going to live off their land. The irony. But I’m not an “idiot” planning to do it, I’m an “idiot” who has been living off his land for a long long time. Like I said earlier, I don’t expect that to change one bit when the rest of you can’t go to the store. I don’t worry much about the hoards, the city people will kill one another off and those who escape will die of starvation or exposure. Walking dead, indeed. See my above post.
A dose – I live in a rural area but my little plot of land is only a half acre. Half of my backyard is unusable for gardening due to the way the septic drain field was put in. Our garden takes up the remaining space in the back yard. There is a power cable running underground the width of my front yard making part of it unusable. At the time that I bought, I was simply needing a place for my son and I to live (but that’s another story). There are woods behind us where we might be able to secure a squirrel or two, and plenty of fresh water around that we can purify (yes, we know how) and, hopefully, the lakes and steams contain some fish. One of my neighbors is from deep in the hills of West Virginia. They have forgotten more about living off the land than I’ll ever know. My son and I are learning a lot from them. Overall, we are making the best out of what we have here by working around the obstacles in the yard. Step by step, we are learning on a daily basis. I’m glad that we’ve had the time to learn, someone to teach us, and live in an area where we can do pretty much what we want to on our own property. As long as the walking dead don’t make it this far out of town, we should be OK. We’re at least 11 miles in any direction from a town, with the largest town having about 30,000 people. Most people couldn’t hike this far out on level ground, let alone doing it in the mountains over rough terrain. As for the guinea pigs, I was half joking and half serious. I’ve raised animals of all kinds from gerbils to a black angus bull. If it’s got four legs and fur, I can raise it. That’s nothing new to me. My brother used to bring animals of every description home and leave them for me to raise. Some were so young, they were not yet weaned. I even gentled one of his horses so it could be ridden.
Nubmaeme
Gardening: try potato towers, powers raising potatoes as a protein and calorie source.
I just looked at raising guinea pigs, sound like an easy protein source in a small space so I might try it.
Rebecca – thanks for the tip. Never thought about potato towers.
Nubmaeme,
I never thought about guinea pigs, but after looking them up, seems like a good opsec source of protein. I’m willing to try it. Beats bugs!
Folks in Peru raise Guinea pigs and feed them mostly scraps. The only trick to Guinea pigs is to make sure you dose them with Vitamin C. They are easy to raise, fast breeders, and the advantage to small game like Guinea pigs, rabbits, chickens, pigeons, and quail are you don’t need refrigeration. One or two per person and just butcher when you are going to eat.
Many people take refrigeration for granted. That allows a lot of luxuries. Great as long as the power stays on.
Come one let’s not be negative about the upcoming shtf event..
My menu..
Roasted, or barbecued human calf muscle or quadriceps, forearms and pictorial muscles, with hand with a foot.. be creative we can make it..
Long pork, chinese favourite.
Barbecue chiwawa.
Cat or dog cooked with A1 sauce. And backed potatoes..
Human barecoa…meat from the face of people, good eaten..
Well I am kidding of course but this could happen and from what I am told will be happening.. and Plum island is busy working on viruses designed to kill off animals so hat the human population stands a zero % chance of survival. Within 4-5 days not a single city dweller will have any food or water how has not prepped and the smell from the rotting, sticking decayed bodies all over, this alone will kill you and give your diseases, so breaking away to outskirts of the city via your BOL is the best way to go..
And the list goes on.. I have to admire James Wesley Rawles.. he advised keep lots of seasoning and I do, that it make your cat or dog taste much better, and my take is you may have to start eating dred lock for meat..i have been told by my locals that since I ear well that I will taste better than the medicated over weight drugged up folks.. I told them that if I get killed the they must eat me to survive because my meat is good and organic..free range and less polluted . we will have plenty of food..guns, ammo, food, shelter and water is the key.
Aka
HCKS..
I’d really like to let you loose at the Democrat convention. You could do America a lot of good!
rellik.
Hahahahaha!
Water filtration is the key to survival and is more important that survival food.. water comes first, without that you can’t hunt, you can’t walk, you can’t maintain your energy levels.. your phucked..preppers must have a plan an form a group so that if it strikes your ready, the first think is to secure your residence. Get gas containers filled up at least 50 gallons on hand so that if you and your group have to leave the area because of the dead bodies on you front lawn, next door etc, then you will need late of supplies and then comes the attacks during transits from soldiers, gangs nigger thug. Make air that all shot guns and roles have a sling, have knives and disposable gloves and lots of lighters, lights fuel, etc…. order lots of vitamins, mukti,c, d3, to bots your immune systems to prevent getting sick in this tim period because of you get sick your phucked. Then get the hell to the BOL..if I an stuck in
T city then I am stuck but I am going to become a vicious animal if I have to live here becaus now I am stuck with very dangerous animals of the dred lock variety..
Aka
HCKS..
Yes we are passed THE SHTF EVENT HORIZON..we are just waiting to see what happens next. We are in the shtf commenses period now.
Many people who think they may live off the land have no clue even how to butcher animals. Raccoon for instance have four separate scent glands that must be removed undamaged before cooking or the meat will be inedible. YouTube has videos on butchering wild game. Watch them while the Internet still works.
In a SHTF world we would need first to eliminate all animal predators that would compete with humans, next concentrate on animals that raid our gardens.
Understand about the diseases that animals carry that can kill you, if you simply cut yourself while cleaning them. Example, tularemia often infects rabbits, I knew someone that raised and ate rabbit for decades. He died from tularemia.
Going in the woods? Many states are now infested with disease transmitting mosquitos and ticks. In a collapse there may not be available medical treatment and Lymes disease, encephalitis etc you may not recover from. Fish antibiotics should be on your research list.
You can get tularemia from ticks and deer fly bites too… not to mention unfiltered water…
This, along with many other diseases makes you wonder how mankind survived all these hundreds of thousands of years without modern medicine….
Perhaps they weren’t a bunch of sissy prick bitches back then like most are now? I just don’t know.
WTF? I am not new, nor has my email or IP addy changed. Whatevs!
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They only lived to be about 30 years old too.
This “theory” is based on the notion liberal retards could actually hunt, catch and dress game…. Are you fucking serious? The liberals in this country- no- in the WORLD dont have a clue as to how to use a gun, let alone hunt, gather and dress animals! Whoever this “author” is needs to stop writing…
Oh please. I would venture that at least half the population has ever hunted. The majority probably don’t know how to safely clean and prepare game.
Most of the country is so urban, overweight, out of shape and medication dependent….30 days with no electricity, pharmacies, gasoline, groceries and they are done.
That said, rural areas in the US are essentially empty of people, and have lots of game. 2010 stated 80% of the population lives in urban centers. I don’t think this story holds water.
I’ve been focusing on perennials, everything from apples & pears to jujubes, goji, climbing spinach, cattails, Jerusalem artichokes. I am working on the greatest planting density that will still be productive. I’m also big on stuff like Siberia pea shrubs & various other perennial legumes like Amphicarpaea bracteata and licorice. I have a variety of nuts like pecan, walnut and hazelnut. My garden looks nothing like a conventional garden.
If I see SHTF about to go down, I can pretty much guarantee the property outside the evergreen/thorn hedge will be ringed with water hemlock (which could be mistaken for carrots or parsnips) and nightshade (which some might mistake for fruit berries). A dick maneuver I know, but essentially flypaper.
I would try to minimize hunting since it would require venturing too far away from the homestead during SHTF. My plan would be to hunker down. If I shoot at something it would most likely be with the crossbow. If there is a greater threat, then I go to the armory and break out all the rifles, including my personal FNH SCAR in 7.62×51.
Baltimore
sounds like my food forest! I love perennials. Don’t forget asparagus.
even better, wild violets for greens.
My BOL is in northern Wis. , the deer population is way down . Poor management, a couple of bad winters and too many bears and them @’)/:$?! Wolves . There was a reason our fore fathers put bounties on them. That will be first , rid the area of them and there little brothers. Not everyone will be allowed in , lake effect snow in winter can be disabling. Fishing will yeld more protein , if you haven’t got outdoor experience already your screwed .
Silverbuck;
We live out west but I hear you loud and clear. The oldies told me when I was a kid that they poisoned the wolves and coyotes because they were way too elusive. Now they have been re-introduced and are protected. The same stupid fucks out here, the game commission, a couple of years ago killed over 3,000 bard owls because some power bar eating dickwad claimed he saw one kill and eat a spotted owl. If you folks who plan to hang politicians would be kind enough could you drop the game commission a line too?
I just watched a guy skin and cook a racoon. It didn’t have that much meat and the guy kept saying the “fat doesn’t taste good.” Gross. I like chicken so that is the route I am gonna take. I like chicken and other game birds, they don’t require a lot of space. Maybe goats, too. I don’t know about rabbits. I am thinking it is best to be able to breed what you eat and raise it where you live.
I have eaten bear sausage and the thing that made it taste horrible was the fat. Bear fat is just disgusiting. I am guessing if I were starving I would eat it but not before. No fricken way. Bear sausage is greasy and you can’t get the taste out of your mouth for a day. This is going to be a lot more work than I thought.
For bear, mom and grandmother would often just ‘boil hell out of it’, and THEN butcher it into the various cuts (this got rid of a great deal of raunchy-tasting-bearfat) and made it very suitable for eating …don’t taste like chicken though! lol…
If you can’t handle a bow & arrow, you’d do well to consider getting a silencer (um, “suppressor”) so that you don’t attract other ‘curious’ hunters. And as for ‘hanging’ the deer, I’d not want it outside, and it wouldn’t be the first time a deer got skun-out and butchered in an unused bedroom. (This was back when game was in abundance in Northern Maine. We hear that now they are all but hunted out, Moose are the same way as are bear. People just get a license, shoot them and walk away EVERY DAY of hunting season there. They don’t mind at all that you ask then take it for yourself. (They just want YOU to take a pic of them and their kill). I don’t understand but I’ll take the free venison or ‘whatever’. btw: Bear-fat has 1,000 uses with waterproofing (stinky but works great) being #1 on the list. Want to keep deer out of an area? Spread it thick with bear fat …on evergreen tree trunks and under rocks. It will last nearly all winter (or until a good rain dilutes it beyond usefulness). Of course, it will also attract more bears (especially black bear), which are taking over The Smokey Mountains (allegedly protected) yet not enforced due to a total lack of enforcers. I LOVE IT! NO man has any right to tell me I can’t “forage or hunt” for my food. Good grief everyone, no matter what the government has to say, or states, “hunting and foraging” for food has ALWAYS been the way. Today the majority, in America, “forage” in grocery stores, others have gardens and know the edibles that nature supplies (why buy onions when there are so many wild varieties there’s no need to buy a thing)?
Just as you have the right to life, and the right to defend your life, you also have the right to EAT to sustain your life. Anything that infringes upon that I ignore totally. (Like hunting nocturnally. For Heaven’s sake, NIGHT is when the critters come out of hiding so that THEY can forage. Therefore, night-time has ALWAYS been the best time to “forage” for meats and ‘the like’. Screw the laws prohibiting such as THOSE laws prevent you from feeding you and your family. NOBODY has the right to force you into not providing for your family and I’ll readily shoot anyone who remotely tries that shit with me. (Then use them for ‘bait’). 🙂
I wonder if the desperation for food will bring out the worst in people like the Black Friday sales?
You can bet your life on it. That would be my biggest concern when hunting. If someone hears a gunshot in the woods, they will be trying to ambush the hunter and take the game. This is where trapping will come in handy, as there will be no noise to alert others to your possible success. In my area of Florida they have stocked a lot of the water runoff retention ponds with grass carp to keep the weeds down. They are protected as private property, but bore than once I have seen some old black man, hiding in the bushes along one of the ponds, trying to catch a meal for his family.
…oh, it’s going to get far worse than any Black Friday ever thought of being. You’ve never seen war I take it …what’s coming is going to be every bit ‘like war’ if not IS war.
Seems to me that the shit has already hit the fan, and we are now “running the months” prior to the “kickoff” of a full-scale, global war-scenario (for the good of the elitists and TPTB).
I believe that since they ALL lack ‘critical knowledge’ (such as living in nature), that even TPTB will eventually run into food shortages themselves. Ironically, this is the truth and has never failed to happen in any past war. So, I trust they are just as prepped to starve as we are? lol…
We’ll see just WHO kicks WHOSE ass …when it’s over and done. (They say it ain’t over until the fat lady sings. Well, she won’t be singing cuz I shot her ass …so prep for an extended life-of-strife unless you are ‘country-fied’. (or make good friends with as many hill-billys, rednecks, ex-combat vets and ‘farm folks’ as you possibly can …while you still have time to do so. Today, you could be a possible friend arriving at their door. Later down the road, you’d for sure be a target, at least at first, if not for sure).
It’s not hard to imagine that there will be a never-ending list of missing persons when this gets ‘well-underway’ and the list will only grow and grow, for years if not decades.
Swinging Richard
Fear brings out the worst in people. Fear of not surviving at all turns normal folks into peppers and abnormal folks into attack machines that want everyone they dislike to die. Perhaps it is better to know in advance and not be too rosy visioned about the human attack dogs that cannot emotionally handle what’s happening during this collapse. Other countries are already there and so are we. It will take resilience, stacking, team work, community, self-sufficiency skills, good decisions, and emotional stability. Someone who has already fallen apart, and has no internal moral compass? A moral compass is never acquired by calling on Jeebus afte
r you roll in filth, it is earned by everyday decisions and
responsibilities fulfilled over many years. If you don’t have it now, it won’t show up like some miracle… the miracle is in the daily doing.
far worse i assure you. so expect the worst and be prepared to defend yours.i also believe gardening along with hunting will be the key to survival.
Are you really willing to leave your family and preps to go foraging? Who’s gonna guard the house. Your going to have to walk there. No trucks,quads etc. Anything that moves will be a target one way or another. Which brings me around to……you will also be a target! All bets are off! People beat each other on Black Friday just to get a tickle me Elmo doll for Christmas, how do you think they will act when they need food? Hahahah. They will shoot you, gut you like a fish…..watch The Road movie. You will be fair game.Also your gear, clothes, weapon, and the game YOU were dragging home! Better to store,than to go into the war.
It is simply not possible for the current population to survive on the existing wild animal population for food. Current human populations in Western countries far outstrip carrying capacity and can only survive through intensive farming.
In an shtf, either the population will have to come down by 80 per cent to re-size it to the carrying capacity of game animals, or, some other intensive food growing mechanism would need to be put in place (insects, human offal, etc.).
As a former mayor of London admitted to the BBC, the current UK military’s standard operating procedure for shtf in London is to mow down the population as they exit the city for the simple reason the population is too great, and would destabilize the food capabilities of the human population outside London. I imagine this is probably the same in the US: kill the urban populations and then re-populate the country using a mix of rural populations and migrants brought from other countries. The military would probably enjoy capping the urban population of effete yuppies, transsexuals (pre and post-op), homosexuals, gang-bangers, six-pack willies, Me-hee-ans, Muslim welfare recipients, single mommies etc.
Frank, your aint kidding that’s exactly what I believe will happen. And a lot worst. Dmonic…the disease from rabbits is real and you must have lots of disposable gloves and water filtration supplies.. how in the hell did our ancestors survive in these times… they had something that most will not be having in this modern callapse, lots of clean water running from streams that were not poluted so they simply boiled the water and carried cantines..The Revenant gave us a reminder of what it was like back then..One damn good shtf movie that everyone needs to see, because even when you numbers are large, you may not survive. Even with all the preps I have I can only carry so much stuff, so much supplies and if I am trapped elsewhere from the rest of my preps other will get them. It’s not going to be a cake walk that’s why the scientist told me about the cabalist survival numbers of us preppers, that 90% will not survive the first 3 years..they didn’t build the underground bases for the hell of it they know what’s coming. The women are literally extinct by then because have nor complications to deal with in the environment that at men don have to deal with and they cannot protect themselves without men..the women will be targeted by the soldiers the local men, etc..
Yes ladies this is for of life you need of accept..you are and instant target by bad people post shtf.. if your attractive then you are really in a lot of trouble.
HCKS..
No need to worry hcks, like you said, Nibiru is coming here next month, scientist friend told you when it gets here we’re phucked so why are you worried about three years from now? Remember when your buddy ” USASECURITYGUARD” said how we had to get as far north as possible because everything south was going to be destroyed by the pole shifts? You told us all here he was the ” real deal” and we MUST listen to him. The strange part was at the same time you were telling everyone they had to get to Texas because that was going to be the only place left where there was economic stability because Texas was the only place to have the ” gold”. Remember all that? I do. Naturally I suspected the entire time you were both the same poster and how convenient it was that ” security guard” disappeared from the face of the Earth when it was pointed out that you were both the same. Just a coincidence I guess, right? Anyway, we have one month from now until the arrival of your big prediction on Nibiru, would you like to update us on how it will end the world for us all? Or will that upset Trump’s Earth shattering decision to pick Cruz as his VP?
Most people will not be able to make it. I agree with you: the plans are well advanced to protect the military and the elite. The rest of the population is going under the bus. I suspect the elite and the military will not need to do much themselves: just turn the Muslims and blacks on the rest of the population and slaughter them in a crazy, race-based frenzy (they have done it many times before: Rwanda etc.).
As for women, you just have to look at what is happening now all over the world, where there is war and civil unrest. Pretty women get raped (they are the ‘lucky’ ones); the ugly women just get killed because they are of no sexual interest (look at Iraq/Syria where this has happened). Absent, decent, strong men, women will be prey to scummy men driven by religious fanaticism, horn and greed. There is no lesbian ‘Agents of Shield’ out there who will protect women in trouble.
You can include yourself in the part of the population that’s going under the wheels of the bus too frank, so you needn’t worry about what’s going to happen to everyone else, you’ll be experiencing it alongside of them as it happens.
I don’t think so: when you know the script, you know the timings and you also have the Plan B. Just saying…
Frank, it doesn’t matter what you ” think”. By your own admission, you’re an old man. Knowing the script isn’t going to hide you from the military forces rounding people up when the time comes. Old men don’t move very quickly either and you’re not in the 0.01 per cent of the elite so don’t plan on being around for much longer then anyone else. The only people they’ll need will be slaves to cater to them, and you ain’t young enough to fit their bill.
Can you conceive of the trouble there will be when ALL of the warehouses that use liquid nitrogen to store “perishables” fail, and the stuff ‘perishes’?
There goes the ‘long-term’ food supplies …which is all the more reason everyone needs a damn garden. THIS YEAR and every year afterward (so grow a separate ‘seed plot’ as well, so that you maintain “primo” seeds in adundance …which will make superb bartering ‘stuff’. 🙂 Avoid hybrid ANYTHING …even flowers, we don’t want that stuff. Real thing or nuttin’ honey.
btw: my neighbor keeps bees and as of two years ago they started dwindling. He’s died (over the winter), and his “hives” are void of bees. Since they certainly didn’t have to depend on him to survive, where’d they go? Anyone? I’m asking cuz I wish to make myself some ‘box-hives’ IF there’s a chance of it surviving (I mean the bees surviving).
I look at my survival two ways. One, most people don’t know how to hunt or fish successfully and will come up empty handed most days. Hell even the best hunter comes up empty handed quite often. Two, I won’t just consider game animals as the article does. I have no problem eating any bird or animal I can get. While a good squirrel pot pie is fantastic, don’t forget that you can use rats, or any other animal as a substitute. My wife has a recipe for beer braised chicken or rabbit in the crock pot, but we have used it with turtle, muskrat, beaver and raccoon. I would not hesitate to through in fox or coyote instead. One of the things I have stored up along with my other preps is rat traps, they work great for small animals anywhere. The biggest issue will be making sure to cook anything you get well, since disease will be running rampant during these times.
You would actually eat fox or coyote? eeeeYUK that shit is terrible! Even buzzards won’t touch a fox or coyote carcass. Hey, that just brought something to mind.
I’ll bet that RoadKill will become something you’d NEVER see again …just bloodstained sites of killin’s. Road Pizza YUMMM YUM!
While I would prefer a good steak, if things are bad enough you will eat what ever is available. I cities, rats will multiply very fast and will make good eating if cooked thoroughly. I could probably live off the lizards around my house for quite awhile, not to mention the Ibis and cranes. But yes, if I get hungry enough, fox or coyote will be on the menu right along with skunk, opossum and armadillo.
don’t forget nutra rat they are common here in Louisiana.never ate one but they say they are good
I ate one and it had good flavor but tougher than a rubber tire. I recommend pressure cooking it. Former Toledo Bend resident…
The most dangerous “animal” is the city dweller. When things get tough, these people grow desperate. They will hunt you if you don’t watch out!
Wolf,
Why is a city dweller more dangerous then anyone else? Have you ever read the story of Eddie Gein? He was a good old country boy from Plainfield, Wisconsin. He also cut up and ate the bodies of women he murdered. Police found the severed head of one of his victims hanging from a hook in his barn. But yeah, you’re right, those evil ” city dwellers” are far more dangerous for sure…….
We hunted and trapped a lot here in the Ozarks during the 1950,s and sixties. Just seeing even a deer track was rare. And we had all the game reduced for miles around. We had our territory and other clans of relatives had theirs. Im a really good hunter and keep the game on my land down to a minimum level. In not a sports man. I hunt for the meat. I would shoot fish in a barrell. I hunt over bait.And if shit hits the fan I will kill everything wild first. Then as last eat my livestock. A neighbor made the remark why dont you butcher your young billy goats? I replied I can sell a 6 month old goat for $100. And I can kill a young deer anytime I need the meat. I prefer venison to goat. My domestic stock is a backup for my hunting. Ive got the Know how to harvest game. And game laws dont mean nothing to me. If it is on my land its mine. And I am not going to share it with any starving outsider. I dont take kindly to tresspassers.
Have read through all the comments and have less hope for any kind of positive outcome than I did before this time investment. Of one thing I am sure, if God intends for me to survive with whatever skills I have acquired, I will survive. If His intention is to take me Home, I’ll go regardless of how well armed, trained, prepped I am!! And you can take that to The Bank!! God bless!!
This is actually a very interesting subject. I live in a semi-rural area myself. I can tell you that “most people” are NOT going to be “heading to the hills to hunt game” when the grocery stores close.
Even here, “most people” lack the tools and skills to hunt. And a lot of the people living out of town could be called hipster/fake bush people. Their homes are located in the bush but all of their food is brought in from major grocery stores. Quite a few of them don’t even own firearms. Not like the real bush people of past years. I suspect that many other areas its the same story.
Even being out here in the country, I’m guessing that 5 – 10% of the local population has what it takes to sucessfully get game so I’m not too worried about running out of deer/moose/rabbit/squirrel/etc, etc….
Not sure that having your own animals is a great prepper strategy, either. It’s hard to keep them hidden/quiet and just begs someone desperate to come kill you for your animals.
Yes my livestock will possibly become a target for poachers. My place is hidden from the public road. overgrown fence rows. A locked gate 1/4 mile from the public road. No mail box. And I set stuff out away from the house with hidden cameras to find out which neighbors where thieves. Ive now got a list of unsavory characters that I would not tolerate if the situation warrented it. I remind myself daily. DTA. Dont Trust Anyone. When I have surplus to sell I take it to market a 100 miles from home. Ill not let anyone come past my locked gate. The only people who come in my house are Me & mine. Not paranoid just careful.
when people are hungry, nothing is safe!
Eat bugs.
If you’re in the sun make sure get polarized sunglasses… You can see through reflections and they block out the sun way more then tint. We purchased ours at sandy sunglasses for 69$