I think a lot of people need to rethink the availability of meat in a post SHTF situation.
What brings this to mind today?
I was driving around from one very rural bird watching area to another, and as I was driving I started looking for deer. We live in one of prime whitetail deer locations in the world, and yet I didn’t see a single deer all day.
That’s, of course, surprising to nobody who knows about deer… deer don’t generally hang out in fields during the middle of the day, they usually stay hidden and often sleep the day away. When you see deer, it’s usually starting at dusk and ending at dawn.
So what did I see? Cattle. Chickens. Horses. Non-game birds. That’s about it.
This is one of the animals I saw today. She and her calf were part of a herd.
Let’s look at meat and post SHTF availability
I’m going to be strait up… where you get your meat in a post-Stuff Hits The Fan (SHTF) situation is likely to be one of three places
- Your pantry stores
- Buying it from somebody else
- Doing without
The idea of going out and hunting or fishing long-term is a complete non-starter for reasons I will go over in just a bit… for now, let’s just point out that game meat and fish would be exhausted in the first couple of weeks of a SHTF event.
That leave commercial cattle, hog and poultry animals. Those animals belong to farmers or corporations, and they will be even more valuable property if the Stuff Hits The Fan. Individual people will most likely not have the ability to go out and obtain cattle or hogs for many reasons.
Could the government seize all the commercial meat asserts in the country? You bet they could… on a local, county, state or federal level. Could John Smith from 2954 Maple Lane, Sunnybrook? Not so much.
I wrote this article on poaching, and I think it’s worth checking out.
Take a realistic look at where you are
I think every prepper needs to take a realistic look at where they are, right now, both geographically and in the progress of their prepping.
Do you live in a city? How about a suburb? If you do, in a SHTF situation you can just forget about hunting unless you bug out first… and then, of course, game availability comes into play.
Do you live in a small town, or a rural community? Do you live on a farm?
Each situation differs. Heck, you can live on a rural cattle ranch and think “I’ve got no meat problems, I’m good…” Five minutes after thinking that, people in black SUV’s with guns and large livestock semi’s may show up at your ranch house.
I heard a debate on a prepping forum the other day about how people planned to shoot squirrels in their neighborhood for meat.
Squirrels. To feed a family.
Seriously, people, how many calories worth of meat do you think li’l Rocky has on him? 50? 100? You are going to burn most of those calories in the process of butchering him. This blighter lives in my Oak tree in my front yard, photo shot yesterday.
Let’s be realistic
In a SHTF situation, the meat you are likely to have available to you is the meat that you have already in your house. If you have a bunch of meat in the freezer, you probably should planning to preserve what you have in the freezer & fridge a priority.
Unless you are one of the very first ones out there hunting (and ignoring game laws by poaching) the wildlife will be hunted out before you can get to it.
Fishing pressure will quickly make “food on the fin” scarce as well.
So what’s the answer? Since we are all in different situations, there is no one answer. I just think it’s important to REALISTICALLY evaluate what getting meat will mean in a SHTF situation.
I have thought as you but didn’t think about the black suv’s. I do know that there are some areas where the black suv’s would be very unwelcome and would need a lot of the big green machines to back them up.
I would really be interested in hearing more about this article, actually would be interested in all forms of food gathering in this environment. Any suggestions?
Yeah, while I eventually plan on hunting small game to supplement our supplies, I fully expect to be eating mainly rice or pasta and just enough meat to keep healthy. Worst case I have lots of lentils and rice that can be eaten as a survival food with no additional meat. Of course I’ve put back a lot of meat and meals that contain meat, but that would be a limited resource and virtually impossible to replace in any long term event. Guess I should get another case of Yoder’s Bacon just in case. 😉
Mmmmmm Bacon!
Deer, this year I have seen more dear deer on the sides of different
highway’s in WI this year then any year in memory.
Possibly it was just more noticeable to me this time around.
One 200mi trip more than 18 that day.
Last spring I took down a nice 8pt buck with my car I only bought a month before.
there is a small herd of solid white deer very near to where I live, see them often.
Turkey’s.. lot f them around.
I can see hunters being a dangerous thing in a collapse.
There’s a bunch of them around now, yes…but even when the population was much smaller, we hunted deer to local extinction pretty darned fast. I read yesterday that elk were first hunted to extinction in Minnesota by 1937. Deer take longer, but they were unhuntably scarce in Missouri for many years before the temporary hunting ban allowed them to recover.
You are absolutely right about this. Meat has always been a concern of mine should a SHTF situation arrive. My thoughts are to buy canned meat that will last for a long time. Seems there are very few canned meats on the market but fish (tuna, salmon, sardines), chicken, and SPAM are a few. Use a FoodSaver to protect meats that are frozen and freeze each in small quantities to limit waste. Werling and Sons has a variety of canned meats at a reasonable cost as well as Keystone. Also, eating habits will have to change. I doubt that sitting down to a steak will be possible then. Meat should be used sparingly and in other dishes and not as a main course. Use rice and pasta to stretch the use of meat in a meal.
Agreed, meat will be a luxury at most homes.
Ground hog is pretty good meat so is coon, beaver, skunk, wild cats, and snakes.
Of course raising some chickens and rabbits might a way to go as well.
Skunk? Given their tendency to release their musk when they die…how could you ever clean them without everything, including your chance of being allowed back in the house, being ruined?
I raise my own beef, take my advice, raise goats or sheep. If you harvest one animal a week you don’t have to worry obout preserving hundreds of pounds of meat. I like a good steak but do so knowing the extra expense.
Good idea. Personal observation: Some of my neighbors keep sheep; and they always seem to be in their pasture. Others raise goats, and those often seem to be in *trouble*. Wandering, stuck halfway through fences, got somewhere interesting but can’t get back out….Goats.
It is much easier to stock up on Protein than it is to stock “meat”. Vegetable protein is renewable. So while you contemplate “meat” check your stock of seeds that provide protein. And add more to your stock.
Yeah, meat is not a necessity for good health. Most of the drama about it is really because people *like* it; it’s not that they *need* it. As far as prepping goes, whole grains have a protein content that would surprise a lot of people; and of course egg powders, chili mixes, and the meat sub vegetable proteins are staples in the freeze-dried world.
The worst thing about it will be is all the meat harvested going to waste because most people doing the hunting will have no idea how to properly dress and store it via canning, dehydrating or curing. Heck, two years ago my brother and his buddy had a deer they shot stolen by a group of 5 guys while hunting. They reported it to the Sheriff because one of them said, “there’s 5 of us with guns vs you two”. They tagged it and drug it off. Sheriff said unless there was video, it would be he said/she said. Now think if it was grid down how much worse It could have went.
step 1 – forget your normal meat protein sources. 2 – consider all the rest; to include, all domestic animals and pets, all edible insects, all edible living creatures. 3 – never turn cannibal
What about rabbits? They obviously reproduce 😉
I know people who have great success with rabbits; and you get fur as well as meat. Just one thing: Superfencing. *Everything* loves to eat bunnies, and packs of coyotes or dogs are good at tearing open wire fencing, while owls and hawks are good at arial attack, and foxes are sneaky SOBs. (Ok,so I May have been a bit horrified by the end of my pet rabbits as a child…)
Spice here in NH we have it all. Bears that love to smash and eat everything, raccoons that can open latches, coyotes semi wild dogs owls hawks heck even voles and squirrels that love to eat and foul rabbit food.
Super fencing indeed.
I have found great success with conventional elevated rabbit cages with anti rat supports, a worm bed poop system, a tin roof and surrounded by a chain link dog kennel reinforced with solar electric shock wire. I also dig in some tin or hardware cloth all around to prevent diggers around the dog kennel fence.
Happily if you check Craigslist and such you can normally find old dog kennels cheap or even free if you haul them away.
Since this is incorporated with the Chicken house and the two chicken yards-garden sites it works out well enough as Chickens also attract everything.
Oh I forgot the chicken wire roof over the chicken yard and gardens. But a chicken wire roofed garden allows you to keep more of your fruits and vegetables so…
A lot of work to set up and yearly maintain to keep up esp. keeping the shock wire live but worth it when you hear of others chickens and rabbits got hit.
Sad to say my set up is also designed to keep two legged thieves out of my food system, not a big problem now but after SHTF…..
Raising only rabbits will put you in the need for a fat source as they are pretty lean. Ever hear of rabbit starvation? Mostly from hunting and eating wild rabbits but only pet rabbits are very fat. Thus I keep chickens for eggs, meat, fat (Smoltz) and bug control in the garden.
Now if I can talk my lady into a yard hog or two…. The American Guinea Hog is a heritage breed small and gentle good forager that runs well with other critters.
Michael, You might also look into the KuneKune pigs. They are another heritage breed small, gentle pig. Advantage with them is they won’t be mistaken for a feral hog due to coloring. The AGH looks very similar to the feral hogs in Texas so that could be an issue. How do you keep the chickens out of the worm bins you said were under the rabbit pens? I’m considering moving my elevated rabbit pens inside the chain link, roofed chicken yard for extra safety & have thought about adding worm bins. Wasn’t sure how it would work with the chickens in there too.
In the county where I grew up, a (city) guy once tried to register a black and white spotted ‘deer’ he shot. It was my neighbor’s calf. I can’t put too much confidence in that “wouldn’t be mistaken for feral”…. Still, small and gentle is a plus for a ‘homestead hog’.
Deborah the space between the bottom of the rabbit pens and the top of the worm bins is covered with a upwardly hinged bit of welded wire fence. I’ve had critters get under my nesting does before, scaring them into eating or dumping their kits out of the nest. Not any more. Rabbits scare easily even a Chicken pecking at the poop hanging off the floor wire can cause a doe to destroy their litter.
Chain Link Fencing When it REALLY Counts, accept no substitutes. 😉 Just add tighter wire fencing to keep out snakes, ferrets and raccoons.
I live in NH and the AGH is a older breed well known in New England. They do well with our snowy winters here. No feral hogs here yet.