"Trapping vs. Hunting Post Apocalypse Survival" Topic

"Shelter? Check. Resources? Check. A way to resupply your food stores when your canned goods, jerky, and freeze dried food supplies and survival food kits run low? Welcome to Trapping 101.

Trapping: getting past the first days of survival and into a more food-secure future

Whether you have accomplished a pre-catastrophe relocation or evacuated just before it happened, at some point the carefully planned and stored foods will dwindle. Preplanning for survival must include resupply and continuity of food supplies. And at some point even the most high tech clothing will wear out. Replacement of food sources and warm clothing and other supplies will depend on several factors: growing and storing foods, hunting and fishing and trapping. In reality, hunting is a labor-intensive activity. It expends calories in the effort to find them. Depending on hunting alone for protein and materials for survival such as fur, pelts and other things made from the carcass is not a wise decision. Most likely you will settle with like-minded survivors and this will place an increased demand on local game animals…"
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Amicalement
Armand

Not many folks left around that know how to do either, hunt or trap. Lots with guns, not that many with specific skills.

Time to break out the Foxfire books.

"Not many folks left around that know how to do either, hunt or trap."

Or even skin & prep what they can catch. (I can scale fish, if desperate… ;-)

"Archery is an acquired skill and unless you are proficient at it, all you will do is scare off the game to an even further distance away from your home site and lose valuable arrows as well".

Archery isn't all that difficult. I was given a long bow as a gift when I was 12 and I became fairly proficient in a short period of time by just practicing. Later, when I was in the Air Force, I found that I had a talent for firearms, and when I got out I started shooting in competition. That translated well when I started to use a compound bow as well. I have taught several people to operate a pistol, and the basics that they learned would also translate well to the bow and rifle. As a result, I am confident that I could train a community to defend itself if they had firearms. In my American suburban neighborhood there are enough firearms , and people who know how to use them, to train, equip and maintain at least a squad sized unit. It has also been my experience, observing at firearms ranges across the country, that people arming themselves for defense in an uncertain future, tend to be lousy shots, because they don't want to take the time to be proficient. Those are the people that will be wandering around, disorganized, trying to steal from others. So they don't worry me in the least. Which means, because ammunition and gunpowder can be easily manufactured by an average community, that hunting with firearms will flourish and remain the main means of harvesting game. Of course, there is nothing wrong with trapping as an additional source for food and pelts, but it will not as necessary as the article suggests. What's more, I can't imagine any apocalyptic scenario where people wouldn't band together and begin finding ways to provide all of the other basic necessities.

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

Nice…

Amicalement
Armand

The problem is, in many/most areas, except way out in the country, there'll be so many competing for food, it'll be very scarce indeed. Also, other people will likely poach your traplines, or scare off the game.

Unless 90% plus of the population are wiped out by something, competition for scarce resources will be very tough indeed.

I don't think a loss of 90% of the population is a stretch at all, should an apocalyptic event occur.

Estimates are that 10-15% of the population relies on specific medicines to survive. If society crashes (say, EMP attack and the grid is toast), 1 year later these people are gone.

Estimates are that another 10-15% of the population requires regular medical treatment that requires power (dialysis for example). No power means these people don't get the life support they need. so 1 year later, they are gone.

Then figure at least 50% starve to death. No motor transportation is working, so no distribution system to move massive loads of foods from where it is gathered or produced, to where it is needed. Stores will be empty in a week, and no matter how much food people have saved up, it will not be anywhere near enough for most people. And looting your neighbors will only buy you an extra week here and there. I figure 1 week after a major collapse, half the people have starved to death.

These three items account for 70-80% of the population, leaving those who managed to survive the first year to rebuild and stabilize what they have. They will have proven themselves resourceful, capable, and skilled. When that group get together to make ends meet, I think they will be successful.

But it will take that first year of surviving without any outside help to weed the population down to a much smaller number.

I think that most people can live off their own fat for two weeks, some longer then that. But by the end of the first month those who haven't prepared will be desperate,and not thinking clearly but weak.

For a true apocalypse situation three months later and the world will be down to two groups, those who have taken precautions and prepared and the criminals who have been stealing from others.