The Fruitless Hunt - Survival Hunting

When talking with families about how they might feed themselves in a long-term disaster scenario, you’ll often hear somebody mention how they’ll just grab a gun and head out to the hills to do a little hunting. If you’ve ever thought this in your mind, I’d like to ask you to reconsider your opinion. Many people have the thought in their mind whether they are sheltering-in-place, or if they can strap on their nice 72-hour kit, and head to the hills to live off the land. Is this possible? Maybe, but lets look at what that really entails. Just recently I was able to head out for the annual deer hunt. I had a tag that allowed me to attempt to find a buck, in a general area of Utah, and take it with any legal weapon. As for the gear, I was prepared. I had each tool that I would need to look for deer, to shoot one at a decent range, and to then field-dress, and pack out. I was ready to get my deer. A good friend and I headed up into some of the mountains in our area, and stalked the deer. We were dressed for the cold, and careful of our scents. We drove to a good base area, and hiked into a place that was a natural pass for deer traveling for water and food. We found nice high ground, and used out binoculars to ‘glass’ for movement from our vantage points. We tracked fresh sign, and made note of bedding locations. And with all that work, what was the result? A really good workout, and not even a single view of a deer. Yes, we were skunked. Now deer season (the whole week we had this year) has its difficulties. In a survival situation you obviously aren’t going to care about having a ‘tag’, whether it’s a doe or buck, or how far you must travel. And yet we went to a place that we know had deer. We saw signs that they were recently around. But we still came up empty handed. Now lets discuss hunting in our worst-case survival situation. In your average part of suburbia, just how many other people have even less food storage than you do? How many of them will be attempting to hunt also? While you may get frustrated right now at the occasional deer that destroys your tulips and trees, do you think they’ll be sticking around for you to grab? Do you live close to where you could hunt without having to drive? Do you actually have a firearm, with ammunition, and especially the ability to shoot it accurately at a distance? Do you know how to dress the game? ** Know where you’re hunting ** know what you’re hunting ***not just big game, rabbit/etc ** Crowds ** scarcity