Think you are really ready for SHTF? It can get quite scary.

[pamplemousse]

Larsbarbow, good story to add to the thread, thank you!  And welcome to the forum!
'Mousse

[knestle]

Then again, fish and game in my area isn't thick, and better hunters than me will quickly clear what little there is...

I have posted in other forums(several months ago) my thoughts on fleeing the city/suburbs to survive in the wilderness when TSHTF.

It is my opinion that the very few who actually survive the exodus from the cities will still be more than enough to totally eliminate every last bit of wildlife in a matter of weeks, a month at most.

I have been adamantly contradicted on every post. "There's plenty of wild game out there. Enough to support hundreds of thousands of hunters!"

I still don't believe it.

[Broil]

No, not true here in California, knestle.  Might be true down south though, where there is still a strong hunting/fishing tradition.  I think practically everyone hunts there, and knows a bit about realistic survival.

Part of the problem is in seeing deer as the main source of game meat.  They wouldn't go extinct, but they'd be hunkering down in impassable brush far from human paths, just as at the end of hunting season.

You'd have to be willing and able to hunt critters that are unappetizing such as black bears, raccoons, and rodents.  You'd have to locate near big water to find fish.  Maybe you'd have to set nets for fish AND small birds.

Rodents such as squirrels and wood rats might become a mainstay food source, along with acorns.  Squirrel and acorn soup for the rest of your life, yum!  And dandelion salad with wood sorrel and toadstools.     You'd have to know how to make the rodent traps (squirrel poles and maybe commercial rat traps .... maybe some quail sets too, with little cups of water).  Conibear traps for bigger stuff like rabbits and your neighbor's cat.  But if you set out rodent traps, it wouldn't be just one or two - they don't have much meat.  50 or maybe even a hundred (for big guys like me) along a trapline would be more like it.

Very few people know that stuff, which is why the countryside won't be anihilated.  Also people born in cities are city folk, and even when starving won't bail out into the woods.  They'll stay and wait for food and water to be delivered, which might actually happen for a while.

The vast majority of people would starve if we had a really fast, total collapse of civilization (which I doubt), but that's not necessarily true for people who learn advanced survival skills AND locate themselves in a good area.

[KumeraKid]

I'm not in the US but we have a saying that I believe will apply there as it does here. 80% of the game is taken by 20% of the hunters. We call this the 20%/80% rule. If you are not one of the 20% forget hunting as a reliable source of food, you will expend more energy finding, killing and carrying the animal out than the animal contains. I do not see trapping the same as hunting, hunting is a battle of wits while trapping is the art of temptation. What I think will happen with hunting is the easy game will disappear quickly and become much harder to find. It will be a little like Peak Oil. 80% hunters will hear and act on rumour as to where game is, that is why they are in the 80% group, and filled with hope will expend energy they cannot afford in search of the rumour. Some will die exhausted in the field after having been driven beyond their endurance by the vision of their family in need. Some will make it back home disillusioned and empty handed until they stop trying since it has now become beyond them. A few will make it home with some food and will go again and again until they fail to get enough meat to cover the energy they expend. In the mean time the 20% group of hunters, who get 80% of the game,will be putting greater and greater pressure on the surviving animal stock. Of this group only 20% of the hunters will get 80% of the game. The remaining 80% will go the same way as the first 80% group. This cycle of the 20%/80% rule will continue until an equilibrium between hunter and hunted is reached.

Trapping on the other hand is an entirely different game, although I suspect the same 20/80 rule applies. Hunting or/and trapping or/and fishing will be an important part of my food gathering, more so than finding edible plants. The most important thing to remember is that if I am going to hunt/trap/fish/forage I must gain more calories than I expend doing that gathering. If I don't I'm going to die. It is exactly the same in business; if costs exceed profit you eventually go bankrupt.

[goldenseal]

While we're waiting for SL to post more notes, I think he brought up a very interesting subject, namely, the 'fast crash' vs. 'slow burn'.  This leads me to ask: when do you pull the trigger?  When do you bug out?  Go too early (or at the wrong time) and you risk burning supplies needlessly or worse, looking like a fool and losing vacation time/income and possibly a job.  Wait too long, and you become mired in the throng of people fleeing and never make it to your BO location.

I agree that we're in a slow burn, but the floor may suddenly drop out to take us the rest of the way down.  Do people have a checklist or are they simply relying on gut instinct on when to head for the hills?

[NY Longbow]

I have posted in other forums(several months ago) my thoughts on fleeing the city/suburbs to survive in the wilderness when TSHTF.
It is my opinion that the very few who actually survive the exodus from the cities will still be more than enough to totally eliminate every last bit of wildlife in a matter of weeks, a month at most.
I have been adamantly contradicted on every post. "There's plenty of wild game out there. Enough to support hundreds of thousands of hunters!"
I still don't believe it.

I have seen this perspective that wildlife will be eradicated because of the hoards leaving the cities and coming out and shooting everything they see. My personal opinion is that wildlife can and will be decimated within strategic regional areas. Those regional areas will likely be defined by the geography of the local roads. Most 'hunters' dont travel more than 1/2 mile (in my experience) to hunt. And these are life-long hunters. Most new hunters and even non-hunters in search of food will likely only travel further when desperate. But wildlife doesnt just sit there and wait to be killed. Especially wildlife that is already on alert from over hunting.

A refugee from a city or suburban life isnt going to continue to press on through more than a mile of 'wilderness' in search of food that might be there. I doubt they will be able to track their quarry (some may not be able to track themselves back out).

Will all these factors support increased difficulty in hunting and trapping? You bet. But the wildlife that is 5 miles in from any accessible roadway isnt going to be overly stressed due to the 1 mile killzones the roads have become.

But of course, my opinion is just that. Nobody here has gone through these scenarios in North America and exactly how this will all play out is bound to be unique.

[houseoftang]

While we're waiting for SL to post more notes, I think he brought up a very interesting subject, namely, the 'fast crash' vs. 'slow burn'.  This leads me to ask: when do you pull the trigger?  When do you bug out?  Go too early (or at the wrong time) and you risk burning supplies needlessly or worse, looking like a fool and losing vacation time/income and possibly a job.  Wait too long, and you become mired in the throng of people fleeing and never make it to your BO location.

I agree that we're in a slow burn, but the floor may suddenly drop out to take us the rest of the way down.  Do people have a checklist or are they simply relying on gut instinct on when to head for the hills?

Well, I'm banking mostly on a bug-in strategy, and I'd only leave if this area were uninhabitable.  That would probably mean a massive fire or flood, and even that might only mean a temporary bug-out.

Although if I were inclined to bug out because of civil unrest, I'd be watching for things that might collapse society, like impending hyperinflation literally around the corner.  If the dollar (or whatever your local currency) suddenly drops astronomically in value, it will mean civil unrest very soon.  Most people probably wouldn't see it that way though.  That, or announcements about government action to control people, either keeping them in place or moving them out.  Obviously you might want to bug out if nuclear war is happening, or other types of weapon-doom scenarios.  If an epidemic is becoming serious, again, you might want to bug out if that's your strategy (and I think it's a poor one).

[Broil]

While we're waiting for SL to post more notes, I think he brought up a very interesting subject, namely, the 'fast crash' vs. 'slow burn'.  This leads me to ask: when do you pull the trigger?  When do you bug out?  Go too early (or at the wrong time) and you risk burning supplies needlessly or worse, looking like a fool and losing vacation time/income and possibly a job.  Wait too long, and you become mired in the throng of people fleeing and never make it to your BO location.

I agree that we're in a slow burn, but the floor may suddenly drop out to take us the rest of the way down.  Do people have a checklist or are they simply relying on gut instinct on when to head for the hills?

If you have enough armed and willing people in the house to stand guard 24/7, and if you have a plan to deal with zombies setting the house on fire, you might not need to bug out.

Basically I would leave at the time when the police dept is disbanded due to lack of funds, and the sheriff or state police are unwilling or unable to respond to violent robberies and murders in rural areas, AND if such robberies and home invasions are becoming common especially from gangs.  There'd be no sense in me staying at such a time because I'm alone and can't stay awake all the time.  Bug out and wait until things improve.

The only people who shouldn't even consider bugging are the elderly who are on lots of meds, or severely disabled.  Better to die home if that's the case.

[Synergy]

Broil offered some excellant advice for me to define my disaster, so i can focus on making my preparations but I haven't been able to,  as I see it, from the collapse of sustainable living on all fronts that we are already on the slippery slope and have an added possibility of other events making immediate changes to our way of living.   Mostly from information gleaned from this forum I have been making layers of preparations for varying situations based on my own geography, skills, resources, dependants, allies, threats.   To me these layers can work independantly or complimentary to one another  I started with the basic  short term / temporary and portable preps that are in place ready to go or be utilized in my daily life. Bugging in preps are another layer , for intense short term situations  and another layer is the longer term basically gearing up the farm for more sustainable practices .  Bugging out , most extreme worst case scenario short term  is optimistic but long term is bleak if I do not reach a a specific remote destination that is partially set up for habitation but by no means a doomstead. And I need to reach it with a substantial amount of portable preps .
I am having little dependance on living off hunting, I live on a farm and hour from a major city , my destination has no large game at all so my live traps are essentially going to double as cages to transport some meat rabbit does and a buck ,they can be utilized later for catching raccoon, squirrels. I plan to adapt my farm to have other small stock that may be transportable as well such as  muscovy ducks.   I will contemplate breeding  guinea pigs to eat, heck I will eat edible bugs and larvae,  before  I have any wild dreams of living bugged out off hunted game, though fishing is  a good possibility I am geared for ,  but I still don't see long term survival in that situation without a lot of further preparation and stocking at the bug out destination. I would consider solidifying relationships with trustworthy people is another layer of preparation.   I have embraced the idea that  to fail to prepare is to prepare to fail .

Afterthought;  I stock seeds  and have bought nursery stock and I still could not feed myself through a single  summer off my gardening effort, with previously worked soil, manure and bonemeal ammendment, running water, and all the modern luxuries of living,   let alone could I up and move from at home on my farm  to a patch of wilderness and simply plant successfully .  I could forage a bit to supplement through mild seasons but without a stockpile of food to enable me to make it through two years, chances are slim of success. All elements of harvesting food would have to be successfully employed . Now I am a farmgirl capable of stacking hay bales four high, I breed animals for a living, I have endurance to work outdoors day in day out dawn to dusk everyday for years on end.  And i know my weaknesses and am planning for them, such as weak knees and not being able to work if run down and the fact that I am ageing and I find my maximum physical stress I used to be able to deal with , run five miles without breathing heavy , backpack through mountains for three days eating trailmix and trout I caught, that was years ago, not now.   I truly think most of the nondoomer masses are  delusional if they think they are going to make it. Maybe there will be a good population rise in scavenger species, like vultures and rats.

[knestle]

I have seen this perspective that wildlife will be eradicated because of the hoards leaving the cities and coming out and shooting everything they see. My personal opinion is that wildlife can and will be decimated within strategic regional areas. Those regional areas will likely be defined by the geography of the local roads. Most 'hunters' don't travel more than 1/2 mile (in my experience) to hunt. And these are life-long hunters. Most new hunters and even non-hunters in search of food will likely only travel further when desperate. But wildlife doesn't just sit there and wait to be killed. Especially wildlife that is already on alert from over hunting.

A refugee from a city or suburban life isn't going to continue to press on through more than a mile of 'wilderness' in search of food that might be there. I doubt they will be able to track their quarry (some may not be able to track themselves back out).

Will all these factors support increased difficulty in hunting and trapping? You bet. But the wildlife that is 5 miles in from any accessible roadway isn't going to be overly stressed due to the 1 mile killzones the roads have become.

But of course, my opinion is just that. Nobody here has gone through these scenarios in North America and exactly how this will all play out is bound to be unique.

A very good point, and something that I had not considered.

But then, isn't wild game that is for all practical purposes unobtainable the same as an absence of wild game?
The masses of survivalists will wipe out all game within .5/1/5 miles from the access roads.
While very determined hunting parties may undertake the longer trek to take a very few animals, and a few less wary animals will always wander into the areas near roads, the de facto situation is still *all 'available' game annihilated* in weeks/months.
My only point is that the romantic notion of 'hunting for survival' will evaporate rather quickly as a lot of so-called 'survivalist hunters' die of exhaustion, exposure, and starvation while persuing game that is not there, or is beyond their reach.