The Preppers Lament (19 page)

Lastly, all of the numbers provided in this post assume 100% accuracy and unlimited availability of any particular resource. Obviously that is not the result in reality, but here I am assuming best case scenario. Success rates for hunting, or hunting strategies are beyond the scope of this post. The only thing I will say on the subject is to be careful when extrapolating success rates for a wilderness living situation based on anyone’s success rate when hunting closer to home. A lot of hunting these days is done on people’s personal property and close to civilization. That has a huge impact on game centralization. Food plots, open terrain of farms, fields, and roads are a great attractant to animals, which in turn become familiarized with people. Hunting in such an area is very different from going deep into the woods and attempting the same thing. One way is not necessarily better than the other, but there is a danger in trying to extrapolate your possible success rate when hunting in a wilderness living situation based on success rates in the woods behind the house.

Trapping

I have added a trapping section to the post since I first published due to several comments requesting information on the subject. The reason why I didn’t originally include a section on trapping is that an animal caught through trapping has the exact same caloric value as an animal caught through hunting. The ease of hunting, trapping, or gathering is beyond the scope of this post. For all of the numbers I have presented here, I have assumed 100% success rate and infinite availability of the particular resource.

I will discuss a few of the legal issue involved with trapping, but I will mention a few things here.

First, it is very hard to get data on trapping in the wilderness. The reason is that most trap lines are run close to home for reasons I will explain in the section on legal considerations. As a result, it is hard to find data from an actual wilderness trap line, so some of the aspects of trapping during long term wilderness living are hard to address.

Also, just like with hunting, be careful when extrapolating success rates for wilderness trapping conditions based on trap lines run close to home. Around where I live, there are large numbers of raccoons. I saw five of them walking through the parking lot two weeks ago. It is a different story when you are actually in the forests.

As I will explain below, trapping, just like hunting, requires gear. You will have to bring your traps with you. What traps you use and their size will vary greatly depending on what animal you are trapping and where you are doing it. Factor that weight into your calculations and determine the opportunity cost to see if the numbers work out under the specific conditions.  

Legal Considerations

Lastly, we have to get back to that issue which we put to the side earlier, the law. Assuming we do not wish to be poachers, and are actually contemplating living in the wilderness within the real world rather than some imaginary scenario, we have to comply with regulations. Hunting seasons will vary trough different areas, but for most species, especially large species, it will be quite limited. For example, in the State of New York (southern region), deer and bear seasons are from Nov 16 – Dec 8; turkey season is from Oct 1 – Nov 15 in the fall and May 1 – May 31 in the spring; cottontail rabbit is from Oct 1 – Feb 28; gray and fox squirrel is from Sept 1 – Feb 28; grouse is from Oct 1 – Feb 28, etc. There are a few species that can be hunted year round, such as red squirrel, porcupine, rock pigeon, and woodchuck. As you can see however, the limitations are severe.

Above we calculated that a mature white tail buck will give us about 21 days worth of calories if properly processed and preserved. Let’s assume that you can supplement it with other sources of food, and extend that time to a month. If you are hunting deer lawfully, that would mean that to provide sufficient calories for the full year, between the dates of Nov 16 – Dec 8, you will have to kill 12 mature deer in that 3 week period. You have to average 4 deer per week. The practical difficulty with such a task is not the only problem. Most states have restrictions on the number of deer that can be harvested. In NY it is usually 1 or 2 per year.

Now, using
New York State as an example, let’s see if the necessary calories for a person for a period of one year can be legally acquired through hunting. The generally available large game would be deer, bear, and turkey. In certain areas, the hunting of other large game like elk, moose, duck and geese may be legal and available. In NY we have good access to duck and goose hunting, but no elk or moose hunting. So, let’s look at the generally available game. Let’s assume that you have two buck tags, one bear tag and four turkey tags (two spring and two fall).

One black bear gives us 68,800 calories. Two bucks, at 59,360 each will give us 118,720 calories. Four turkeys at 7,200 calories each gives us 28,800 calories total. Combined, the bear, deer, and turkey give us
216,320
calories for the annual hunting season.

The caloric requirements for one person for one year based on the 3,300 daily requirement we used above, would give us 365 days times 3,300 calories per day, for a total of
1,204,500
required calories per year.

So, assuming you are a skillful hunter, and luck was on your side, and you managed to fill all of your tags (one black bear, two deer, and four turkey), that will still leave you at a caloric deficiency for the year of
988,180
calories. In other words, you will have no food for 299 days out of the year. If available in your area, you may be able to decrease the deficit by hunting other large game if available, like elk, moose, and duck, although, it appears that a large deficit will remain.

Just to give some perspective, assuming that a duck or goose provides the same amount of calories as a turkey, it would require 137 ducks or geese to satisfy the above caloric deficit (assuming no legal limit on the number you can harvest). Assuming you are hunting those ducks with a 3 inch shotgun shell with a 1 3/4 load, which weigh 2.2 oz each, and assuming perfect accuracy, that would require about 19 pounds of ammunition.

On the other hand, you will have to kill or trap a whole lot of squirrels to make up for the deficiency, approximately 7,486 squirrels, which if hunted with .22LR ammunition, and assuming perfect accuracy, would require about 47 pounds of ammunition.

Trapping is also an option, but you have to keep a few things in mind. First, trapping, just like hunting is regulated and only allowed during certain seasons. Second, the way you can trap is heavily regulated. Deadfalls, snares, hooks on trees, and virtually all DIY traps are not allowed. The regulations are very specific as to exactly what trap you must use for each animal. Third, trapping is generally only allowed for furbearers. In most areas you are not allowed to trap game animals. Some furbearers like beaver are edible, others not so much. Last but not least, regulations typically require that you check all of your traps every 24 or 48 hours. For most people that places serous restrictions on where traps can be placed and limits the size of the trap line. The result is that most trap lines are run close to home with the few exceptions for people who travel deep into the woods and then live there for the trapping season.

The alternative is that you need to systematically exploit another abundant resource such as large scale gathering and processing of acorns when in season, or moving to take advantage of large scale fish migrations and then catching them with nets, fishing wheels, etc. where the law allows.

Do the numbers work out? You do the math. I think we get a better appreciation for why high calories foods such as pemmican and corn meal were so highly valued and commonly carried by woodsmen in the past.
  

I don’t write this to discourage anyone from attempting the challenge, nor do I believe it to be impossible. In this post I am simply attempting to provide some more solid data that can be used to make a realistic evaluation of exactly what it would take to thrive alone in the wilderness. As Thayer writes:
“In a long-term subsistence situation, food is the priority. In former times, the native people of the Far North planned each move according to food availability… In a short-term survival situation, food is of minor importance. However, in long-term survival or “living off the land,” it is of paramount importance.”

There was a time when men who ventured into the wilderness knew what resources were required, and how much of them had to be brought along. Their accounts often refer to base camps, cabins, and food stocks being carried on horse back, mule train, or by dog sled teams. Somewhere along the way we seem to have lost the realistic grasp on those requirements, and were left with nothing more than romantic musings and conjecture.
 

My Readers Might Also Enjoy:

THE RURAL RANGER A SUBURBAN AND

URBAN SURVIVAL MANUAL & FIELD GUIDE

OF TRAPS AND SNARES FOR FOOD AND

SURVIVAL

By Ron Foster

The Modern Day Surviva
l Primer for Solving Modern Day Survival Problems! This book will teach you the techniques to not just survive, but to use ingenuity and household items to solve your problems scientifically with a bit of primitive know how thrown in. A complete and detailed section utilizing explicit drawings and easy to understand photographs covers thoroughly the topic of survival trapping using Modern Snares, Deadfalls, Conibear Traps, and Primitive Snares. This book is dedicated for long term survival in the country or the suburbs to insure you survive and thrive! Build a solar oven

or pasteurize water its all i
n here! Catch your dinner, then cook it or preserve it, too! Food procurement is the name of the game along with purified water in a survival or disaster situation. Are you ready?

Check Out The Original Prepper Trilogy

Preppers Road March

A solar storm has just hit the world causing an
EMP event. An emergency manager visiting Atlanta GA must find his way back home after this electromagnetic pulse has stranded him away from his vehicle and his beloved "bug out bag". With 180 miles to go to his destination, David must let his street smarts and survival skills kick in as food and water becomes scarce and societal breakdown proceeds at an unrelenting pace. An interesting and often funny cast of characters from the Deep South helps the displaced Prepper on his way, as he shares his knowledge of how to make do with common items in order to live another day. Ultimately, he acquires an old tractor and heads for home on a car-littered interstate. This is book one of the Prepper Trilogy.

BUG OUT! Preppers on the move!

Book two of the Prepper trilogy finds the disaster planner and emergency manager Dave faced with the choice of bugging out with his cohort of friends and family as he watches the societal collapse and demise of civilization around him after an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) solar storm has taken out the grid. A post apocalyptic fiction series that takes you through the trials and tribulations of survival after the predicted NASA 2012 solar super storm unravels the lives and lifestyles of a group of modern day survivalists. The preppers decide on a lake front bug out with bags in hand as well as a unique group of operating vehicles from a bobcat loader to a lawn tractor. Will they survive? Could you? Let us find out, and join the party down the desolate dystopian landscape of a new beginning in a world without lights or technology.

The Light in The
Lake

Book three of the Prepper Trilogy finds our band of refugees from a solar storm safely moved into a several lake cabins and trying to work on their short term and long term survival. The lake is a beautiful place for a survival retreat, but is it safe with roving groups of lake residents all looking for what meager food resources remain after a EMP event has shut down society as we know it. Can society be recreated and restarted here, or will starvation and anarchy take over? Can a simple light in the lake be the solution to survival and the reconstruction of society, or is it merely a symbol of what has been and might be yet again?

Introducing a new series of books for the home library. These books will be consolidated under the
Prepper Archeology Project
. Website will be up soon.

The Prepper Archaeology project is a joint venture between Ron Foster, Cheryl Chamlies, Goat Hollow Press and Elemental publishing to establish a collection of historic preparedness research and information books under the banner of Elemental Publishing. We search the antique book stores and the archives for old tomes of forgotten knowledge contained in out of print or forgotten books and make arrangements to republish them as a resurrection into good quality modern books.

Meticulous care and detail in reproduction is undertaken to preserve and honor the author’s original works and preserve the old time secrets and methods used by great pioneers and woodsmen.

The republishing process utilizes good quality low acid crème colored paper and modernized high gloss book covers for durability.

The books included in the collection are hand selected by experts in their field for the Prepper community’s enjoyment, so that this historical lore will not be lost and may be reused again to face the disasters of an uneasy world once more.