S13's Skills Project. Skill 1 - Hunting

[Mortblanc]

The "failure" you speak of is to be noted, filed in the memory and included in your survival planning.

Planning a hunt is wasted time and effort unless it is a community wide effort with drivers, shooters and shared kill at day's end.

But the concept of "forage hunting" is a valid exercise. It simply requires a different approach to the effort.

Over here, during our settlement era, most homesteaders went armed daily. This was not as much for protection as for foraging.

Many British/European travelers noted in their reports that any time a rural American walked through the door of his house he was carrying gun, knife and tomahawk and that they never saw a man or boy in the rural areas without those items. the gun was a farm implement as much as the sickle, hoe, shovel or plow.

It was not because they were afraid of attack, it was to take advantage of any opportunity to take food that presented itself. Bare in mind that everyone walked or rode horseback so there was more time to observe the surroundings, spot game and make a closer approach if on horseback. And that there might be miles of forest between the cleared fields.

And that over here the wild game was not "owned" by anyone, and still is not. One can post and restrict human access to their land, but any game on that land can not be hindered from movement and is not owned by the landowner.

"Hunting" was seldom a planned activity, and it was not sport. It was a valid way to put food on the table, give a bland diet variety, extend the food supply, and preserve livestock to serve as a "cash crop".

It should serve the prepper in the same context.