Help please?

[R/PPPP]

Hello,

Can anyone help me out please??? I am wanting too learn too hunt and gather,including tracking, and trapping.And too learn the survival skills that go hand in hand. I had a look on the library,but there's so many books. I am confused as too what books too use.

What about courses???

Is there anyone in the North East of england???

Thanks.

[Mortblanc]

One of the most obvious things I see concerning British preppers is their belief that anything can be learned by reading a book or "taking a course".

The activity is called "hunting", not reading about hunting and most definitely not

[Mortblanc]

(Why does this site not have an "edit" feature?)

most definitely not simply walking into a field and killing something.

It is also different in each geographic area and may change completely each 1/4 mile you walk down the road.

You need a mentor from your area, not a scheduled course dealing with what is possible 200 miles from your location.

[harrypalmer]

First things first PPPP, join a clay pigeon shooting club, get the feel for a shotgun, learn how to fire it, how to maintain it, you will more than likely meet members who hunt and most are happy to take newbies out for bunny shoots etc.

Look at the various UK Bushcraft forums and join up, they often hold weekend camps and welcome newcomers plus you get hands on experience.

If you can get books by Ray Mears or Mors Kochanski then get them and read, both full men are full of knowledge.

There are a few videos by Mors on youtube but there is a LOT of videos by Ray...watch them all...that said, Ray Mears is IMHO the best bushcraft instructor out there (MB, watch some of Rays videos too).

MB, reading books and taking courses is not a bad introduction to bushcraft/survival and prepping...its a start. There are thousands of yank preppers putting up videos, selling courses et al...how many of them are good?

[Stewart]

you can feed yourself with a good spring powered air rifle. also search for fourteen acre books who do some excellent books on making traps with diagrams and cutting lists.

[Mortblanc]

(27 November 2016, 19:03)harrypalmer Wrote: MB, reading books and taking courses is not a bad introduction to bushcraft/survival and prepping...its a start. There are thousands of yank preppers putting up videos, selling courses et al...how many of them are good?

First, the OP was concerning hunting alone. I know very good hunters that know nothing about what we term as "bushcraft". They know how to camo up, spray scent killer around, situate a tree stand on a deer trail and kill a deer, but spending the night in the woods would put them in abject misery.

Ray Meers and the others might show how to set some traps and snares but they can only give a limited advisement on where to set them, which is the key to getting food and different in each area.

The quality of videos from the U.S. and the rest of the world, runs from fairy good to totally useless. Any fool with a camera can make a video. There are no other certifications or qualifications.

Of them all I prefer Ray Meers above and beyond anyone else, Brit, American or Martian. Ray is on my list of people I would like to share a pint with.

Add to that the variations in environment differ completely. Much of what is there is not applicable to the UK at all, since it is not applicable to the area 50 miles from where the guy lives.

At my home I can sit on my back porch and shoot deer. That is not hunting, it is shooting deer. I have not taken a local deer this year due to the absence of any fawns from last year. Apparently the local hunters wiped out all the breeding bucks before the rut last year and we had no breeding going on.

I stood on the porch last week and watched a 4 point buck of about 150# walk past at about 50 yards distance. I let him go in the hope that I will see does with twins when spring comes. It was the first buck deer I have seen in the garden in two years.

Managing the heard is part of hunting too.

Three miles down the road it might take a major effort to scare then out of the brush with a long period of study on movement and habits. I actually leave my own area to do most of my real "hunting". I leave the garden at any rate.

Same with small game, where one of the big concerns with subsistence hunting is that you can shoot out or scare away all the game in your immediate area with a single pass through the fields and it may take weeks for game to return.

If not only you, but every hungry maniac with a catapult is roaming the fields the game is going to change their habits and location instantly, and probably before anyone can kill anything with their crude equipment.

I have a pet rabbit that lives under the shed. He/she has been there for some time. I hope I never have to eat him. He has gotten to the point that I can almost pet him. I am sure he would consider it an insult if I attempted to shoot him with a 12# air gun!

Most of your big estates raise their own small game and restock annually or by season to sustain their shooting. Our commercial shooting areas do the same. Without seeding new stock on a regular basis unregulated hunting will clear an area in no time at all. That is why game laws exist.

When I was young I had some good books and resources available, but no deer. When we finally built a deer heard in my area and opened for hunting I discovered that the deer in my area had not read the book!

They were not moving like the book told them. They were not going to the water when the book required them too. I think that some of them were walking backwards just to leave false trails for me to follow.

I finally stumbled over a fresh scrape in the woods and realized I have hit pay dirt. I was on that spot at "Oh God Thirty" a.m. waiting for that deer to show up. The book said he would show up at dawn.

He didn't.

Fact is he did not come back for two days and it was ten a.m. when he arrived.

The point is that the book does not know what the game in your area is doing. It is the hunter, pulling on his wellingtons and getting in to the fields year around, that knows where the game is, where it is going, what days it gets there and which direction it is coming from. And a good deal of that knowledge comes while you do not even have a gun, bow or catapult in your hand. The guy that eats best SHTF might be the guy that walks his lap dog down the green lane daily.

And as soon as any hunting pressure is applied all of it will change instantly.

I once had a farm that was covered with wild turkey. I had to kick them off the steps to get into the house. Yes they were that bad! I was certain I was going to have wild turkey for Thanksgiving dinner that year.

However, the state game management people must have sent out an E-mail to turkey headquarters with the hunting schedule posted on it. The day the season opened every one of those birds was GONE! And they did not return until the hunting season was closed.

The book did not say that was going to happen either.

Those are a bit of my thoughts and experiences, but the deer might know how to read in GB, and the small game may be more cooperative.

[CharlesHarris]

I would advise simple fishing tackle as being the best way to gather a useful amount of protein easily without attracting attention. Using fishing gear with strong line and large hooks will also trap small animals to eat. Firearms are great if you have them, but attract attention.

Fishing, trapping, foraging and gardening are the best low-attention gathering techniques. Learn edible plants, bushcraft skills. If you can find any of The Foxfire Book series, these are great for primitive living skills. For long term survival and evasion skills in a hostile environment Six Ways In and 12 Ways Out by George Jasper is the best to be had in the "open" , unclassified literature.

[Mortblanc]

If you have water resources that is always the easiest way to acquire protein.

Very few times I have dropped a line in the local lake that I did not come up with a meal.

I am not a fancy fisherman either. A hook, line and sinker baited with local bugs or worms works fine.

[harrypalmer]

MB said

"First, the OP was concerning hunting alone. I know very good hunters that know nothing about what we term as "bushcraft". They know how to camo up, spray scent killer around, situate a tree stand on a deer trail and kill a deer, but spending the night in the woods would put them in abject misery."

Sorry I missed the bit where the OP said he wanted to be a lone hunter. My reply was just a path to getting outdoors, a little shooting, some bushcraft etc.

Fishing? Great way of gathering food, also learn how to dry fish...sad to say my fishing skills are pretty much zero but I'll remedy that when I move to NZ.

Have you watched any of the youtube Ray Mears videos yet? I enjoy vids by Dave Canterbury and Cody Lundin, they are very entertaining.

[Mortblanc]

Again, keep in mind that Dave Canterbury operates out of the eastern woodlands of Ohio primarily. It is a niche that covers a lot of the U.S. but might not be applicable to the UK outside the Scottish Highlands. Some of his woodcraft skills are transferable to other areas, but our eastern woods are a Middle Earth all to themselves. He also has access to about half a million acres of pristine National Forest to operate from.

Dave is still recovering from being fired from his TV gig for padding his resume. He was not Special Forces, survival trained or even in a combat unit. He was a clerk-typist for a HQ unit in Korea and the AC unit breaking was a bad day for him.

Cody Lundin was also fired from his Dual Survival role when it became apparent even to the TV producers, that he was completely bonkers and going barefoot in the arctic was endangering not only his life but the lives of the people that would have to rescue him. He was cut lose for disagreements over health and safety issues in a situation where the employer was concerned over Cody's health and safety! Cody feels that clothing and footwear are "optional" at -30.

He is also a desert specialist so much of his expertise is useless in anything but that dry climate zone. On the TV show any time they left the arid regions Cody became dead weight unless they needed a fire started.

So you can see that our most famous survival instructors have a touch of insanity running through their veins. It seems to have always been that way. In the early days of the genre we had famous writers like Nesmuck and Kephart, who everyone idolized. Only we found that Nesmuck had abandoned his family to run the woods and normally only did day hikes from one hotel to another, and Kephart was a raging alcoholic who finally wrapped his Tin Lizzy around a tree on a mountain road.

Ray Mears might be just as crazy as Cody and Dave, but it does not show. I know he gets his facts and speculations jumbled with myth on occasion but I can forgive that to a large extent, it is typical for non-historians to do so.

I would stick with Ray Mears for your UK situation.