(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.
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