Stocked & Regulated: Why Game Will Be Scarce If The SHTF

Fact. A lot (in some cases nearly all) of game wildlife and fish in the USA are stocked from commercial breeding programs. If the Stuff Hits The Fan, the stocking of game may well stop… leading to a nearly instantaneous population collapse as hungry humans hunt out the wildlife.

Stocking is widely ignored by preppers making plans

The massive amount of game and fish stocking is something a lot of preppers… even those who are outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen… seem to not realize. In many, many cases, the hunting pressure of even standard managed seasons is too great to allow for a natural population to be maintained.

The truth is that a lot of the high-revenue game is stocked, and that stocking is done to a level designed to keep the game wildlife population appropriate for the amount of hunting pressure that the various state governments dictate.

Current game levels are regulated for NORMAL hunting pressure

The various states regulate their game populations at a level that is healthy for the animals and sustainable for the environment, and they change (often seasonally) due to population increases and decreases.

For example, in Missouri, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) does a population census of an animal (I will use whitetail deer as an example) and determines the amount of hunting pressure needed to maintain a healthy level. This may change due to hard winter die-offs, drought condition die-offs, disease die-offs and other factors.

Want to know what is not taken into consideration? The needs of a massive group of people hunting in the woods following a Stuff Hits The Fan (SHTF) event.

Populations are controlled for “normal times”, not for SHTF times, meaning that game will be almost instantly scarce. Public lands will be hunted out within days of a SHTF event, and landowners with guns will enforce their property rights vigorously. Further information about property rights are available in my articles No Vacancy and Purple Means No Trespassing.

There are exceptions, of course… but they are few and far between 

But Salty, what about game like whitetail deer in the midwest? Those aren’t stocked. Right?

Right. Well, at least sort of right.

Whitetail deer were hunted nearly to extinction, as were Canadian geese. Seriously? Yes, they were. If you want to read a fascinating story about the near-extinction of the North American whitetail look no further than Leonard Lee Rou’s excellent book “The Deer Of North America,” in which he chronicles the history, lives and habitats of the various deer species inhabiting the continent.

The whitetail was reintroduced through a captive breeding program, and much of the gene pool was lost in the holocaust hunt out. This also happened, but to a lesser extent, in the Canadian geese population.

However, it’s much more of a critical thing in mammals than it is in geese for some reason I’m sure Spice could explain The white tail gene pool limitations make them more susceptible to diseases than they might otherwise have been.

At the end of this article, we will place an “additional reading” section penned by Spice to explain the importance of genetic diversity, and hybrid vigor. We’ll also talk about the strange but wonderful story of the Nene geese of Hawai’i. There are prepper lessons to be learned from that lovely little bird as well.

Game laws are designed to do two things: maintain healthy population levels and make states money

Using my state as an example (it’s fairly typical), the Missouri Department Of Conservation has stocked a ton of different game to get the game populations up to levels where hunters can have a sporting chance of success.

Virtually all fishing lakes in Missouri are stocked, as are virtually all fishing ponds (at some point in time, anyway). When you head to a state park and drop in a fishing line, the bite on the other line is most likely going to come from a fish that was stocked in that lake from a commercial fishery.

There are no streams in Missouri naturally cold enough for trout to live, yet Missouri has a large and successful trout fishing programs, several trout streams and a LOT of out-of-state fishermen. How? Trout fisheries located at the base of dams. Know what comes out of the bottom of Missouri dam’s water release tunnels? Refrigerator-cold water that trout love.

Trout fishermen spend enough money in fees to pay for the entire program, it’s actually a (very small) revenue generator for the DNR.

South Dakota Pheasants as an example

Pheasants are a big business in South Dakota (for example), as well as other states in the midwest. They grow naturally there, but they are also widely stocked by the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks department.

Here’s the sales pitch strait from the GFP website: “Without a doubt, South Dakota is the pheasant hunting capitol of the world. Pheasants and pheasant hunting are solidly engrained in South Dakota culture for good reason. First successfully introduced in 1908, this game bird native to China thrives in South Dakota’s diverse landscape of grasslands, croplands, wetlands and shelterbelts.

Since 1919, the tradition of pheasant hunting has brought friends and families together in holiday-like fashion. Every year opening weekend brings unprecedented enthusiasm, excitement, and activity to cities and rural communities across the state,” the sales pitch concludes.

According to their own statistics, they generated $77.1 million dollars of revenue from in-state pheasant hunters, plus a whopping $131.8 million dollars for a grand total of $208.9 million dollars spent. For a small-population state that depends A LOT on tourism for its economy, that’s a serious chunk of change.

Here’s the rest of the South Dakota pheasant story

It sure sounds like South Dakota has an active thriving pheasant community… but a whole bunch of those birds are hatched in Missouri and other states and shipped out there for hunters to shoot.

I have a friend who owns an “outfitter service”, putting together “canned hunts” where he actually purchases game birds like pheasants and quail, and before the hunt he drives out to the hunt area and releases the birds for the hunters dogs to flush out and the hunters to shoot.

Not really my idea of fun, shooting captive raised animals, but it’s quite a profitable business. I asked him about it in a recent interview, and he shared his thoughts about the business.

My friend, who I’m going to call Smitty, tells the story of how he learned about South Dakota’s bird-buying practices as well as why he got into the outfitting business. I think that if you are not already a hunter and don’t know much about hunting, it will become very apparent by reading his comments about both what it takes to hunt successfully and about declining natural game populations why the idea of “just going out into the woods and shooting animals to eat” isn’t a very realistic plan.

You would be competing for game against guys like Smitty, and you will either have to have your own land to do this on, compete with other people on public land or trespass on land owned by people like Smitty and try to take their game off of their own tables (hint, this is a very good way to not live long after the SHTF).

Keeping the old memories alive for the next generation

Smitty’s words: “Nowadays, yes, there’s been such a decline in the natural bird population that guys aren’t feeding dogs any more. It used to be that every neighbor had a bird dog, and when you needed a bird dog you went to one of your neighbors and got a pup from them, and when they needed a dog they would come to you and get one of your pups. I had never paid for a dog until I started this outfitting business. I’d never once paid for a dog to hunt birds with, and I’ve bird hunted all my life.

They are not feeding dogs because the birds are just a lot harder to find than they were a few years ago. Therefore, the success goes down and nobody’s hunting them any more. But… everybody remembers the good old days and that’s the great thing about hunting, you don’t remember all the times you sat out there and didn’t see anything.

You always remember the good hunts, and that’s our selective memory at it’s best, remembering the good times. My enjoyment out of outfitting is seeing the older gentlemen with their grandchildren are getting to hunt birds, because yes, we do put them out… but the kids are seeing dogs work, and it reminds them of their own dogs and it reminds them of the good hunts that they have been on back in the day. They get to tell their grandchildren about those hunts and that’s just a neat experience.

Hunting is just like your job, or a hobby you like to do, it takes a lot of time to perfect your skills, and it takes a lot of time for the dogs too, it takes them a long time and a lot of opportunities for them to learn right and wrong a lot of time spent with them.”

Predation of stocked animas starts the minute you set the animals out

Smitty’s words: “Foxes, weasels, coyotes, eagles, hawks… I’ve seen a bald eagle snatch a pheasant out of mid-air, that was kind of interesting to see… I can be setting out birds, and hawks will start populating the trees all around where I am, just waiting for breakfast. That’s frustrating, you will come back along there a couple hours later and see nothing but a pile of feathers, and that’s kind of frustrating, but that’s nature.

Predator numbers are as high as they have ever been. Rabbits are kind of like quail in my mind, quail and pheasants, and game birds, they are low end of the totem pose out there and you just don’t see them much any more… we’ve have less turkeys than we have ever had now.”

South Dakota’s Missouri pheasants

Smitty’s words: “Everybody always talks about going out to the Dakotas to pheasant hunt, a lot of those birds are release birds… the only thing they do different is they release a lot of those birds earlier in the fall… it’s just not natural to have those numbers in the bird population.

They release a lot of those birds because it brings in a whole lot of money into the local economy. That’s great, I think it’s a wonderful idea, I’m not saying anything bad about it. Iowa’s starting to do that too.

One of the guys I buy birds off of, half way through the year he was already out of birds because South Dakota and Iowa had bought everything he had. That’s interesting, buying from a Missouri bird raiser.

The Place as an example

We have one of the largest commercial fresh water fisheries in the midwest located here in North Missouri, and that’s where we got the fish to stock our pond at The Place.

We designed and built our pond specifically to be a fishing hole. It’s deep for it’s size, there’s plenty of water under the ice in the winter so that our winter-kill is very limited.

When we stocked the pond, we put in 30 catfish… and since it’s unlikely that our catfish will procreate (it takes some pretty specific conditions for catfish breeding to occur) then probably the max amount of catfish in that pond today would be 30. I’m sure it’s much less than that in reality.

There are bass, minnows and bluegill in the pond as well, we tried to make it a self-sustaining ecosystem and we do have fish years later. What we haven’t done (except for a couple of test-casts just to see what would happen) is fish the pond. We are leaving it untouched, it’s a larder for us in case of emergency need. Food on the fin, if you will.

Area lakes are constantly being stocked, however

Fishing pressure means that lakes have to be restocked on a regular basis, in order to maintain them as a good fishing resource.

Without restocking and with increased fishing pressure, how soon do you think lakes near large metropolitan areas will be useful as a source of food? My guess? A few days, tops.

Takeaways from this article

Just like bread and milk disappear off the grocery shelves before a hurricane or snowstorm, if the SHTF and people start ignoring game laws, public lands will be hunted out and fished out in a matter of days.

Game that people eat (deer, turkey, etc.) will quickly be gone, and people who have depended upon hunting public lands for food are going to get to make a very tough choice… to starve, or trespass or even start poaching domesticated livestock.

I maintain that trespassers or poachers are going to lead very short post-SHTF lives.

I think it’s time to come up with a better plan, be it storage food along with gardening/livestock or some other idea.

Spice’s Sidebar: The problems with limited gene pools

There’s a reason mutts are often healthier than purebreds; and it’s basically the same reason most human cultures developed taboos against incest: Hybrid vigor.

Every animal has two copies of most genes; one inherited from the father and one from the mother. Occasionally a gene is miscopied as it’s being passed on, creating a mutation. Mutations are random events. If you took a watch that worked ‘pretty well’ and whacked it to cause a random change, what are the chances it would work better than before? Pretty slim. Similarly, most (but not all) mutations are harmful.

Fortunately for us, those bad effects don’t usually show up unless we don’t have a good copy of the same gene. It’s like having two recipes for lasagna, and one is missing a page. The other cookbook still has its lasagna page, so you can still make a good lasagna.

When animals are very inbred, they have gotten a lot of their genes from the same ancestors, so they are more likely to have inherited two bad copies of a particular gene. To continue the analogy, they got both copies of their lasagna recipe from the same cookbook. That means they’re more likely to have the bad effect.  (They don’t know what’s on the missing page of the recipe.) The bad effect may happen right away (like a birth defect) or it may be a susceptibility to a particular disease.

How to protect against genetic problems

The way to protect against bad effects is to have two different versions of genes. The best way to do that is to not be inbred; to have a big gene pool that has lots of different versions in it. Populations that have small gene pools tend to have the organisms in the group be very similar to each other.

If an inbred group happens to meet up with a problem that their genes are susceptible to, the whole population can be wiped out. All remaining big game species in the U.S. are now inbred, because they were hunted almost to extinction before seasons and limits protected them.

Why some groups tolerate inbreeding

All the above is true for species whose normal social systems cause them to seek mates outside the immediate family under normal circumstances. Most mammals don’t show interest in mating with those they grew up around. These species are normally outbred, and the bad mutations survive because it’s rare for any one animal to have two copies, and the animals carrying one copy pass it on to their offspring.

There are a few species, such as rats and geese, that don’t mind mating close relatives in the wild. In these groups, bad mutations tend to be weeded out because individuals Do end up with two copies of the bad versions of genes and those individuals die out (taking both copies with them). The gene pools of these species don’t have many bad mutations lurking, so they tolerate inbreeding better.

The NeNe of Hawai’i are an especially extreme example of the Canadian goose tolerance for inbreeding. The NeNe genetics shows one male and one female Canadian goose founded the whole species of Hawai’ian NeNe geese. All members of this species are very much alike, sharing both strengths and weaknesses. It’s precarious; one flu virus might kill them all — but so far they’ve been lucky.