Stealing Cattle If The SHTF? Bad Idea

I was on a social media group and the discussion wound it’s way around to the idea that cattle will be plentiful and easy to take for food if we end up in a Stuff Hits The Fan (SHTF) situation Without Rule Of Law (WROL).

Since it’s a closed group, I’m not going to include the questions as they were written by others, but I will share with you a version of my responses.

These are not exact quotes of me or of the original questions, but this does let me share my points.

Let me be frank, there is not some vast “future cattle rustling” movement in the prepper community, this is one of those things that came up in a discussion and I just thought it was a fun topic to contemplate on a late winter day. Sometimes it’s fun to let the mind wander.

Since there are so many cattle, they will be available for the taking?

My answer? It depends on how long you want to live before a farmer, rancher or one of their family members / associates / neighbors take you out.

Right now, when the S has not HTF, cattle are very valuable and while it may look to somebody who doesn’t ranch like they are left on their own to take care of themselves, it only SEEMS that way.

If the stuff that comes out of the hind end of a bovine impacts a rotary oscillator, they will be even more valuable, and even more watched and guarded.

Cattle rustling – wild west style?

In a SHTF situation anybody caught rustling livestock (which is what you would be doing if you kill somebody’s property) would be shot on sight… and country boys and girls can shoot a long, long way with their scoped bolt actions.

That is assuming you make it out into the country where most of the cattle are. We’ll come back to that in a bit. 

The idea of sneaking onto a property and taking a cow down may sound easy, but if the SHTF and people start trying it, I’d estimate a raid-survival attempt rate under 50 percent.

Why?

I think a lot of people don’t realize that farmers and ranchers see NO difference between somebody breaking into their house to steal food out of their kitchen and somebody crossing a fence line to steal food away from their children’s future. Somebody breaks into your house to steal your food? You are going to shoot them, right? Somebody comes onto a farm or ranch? Well… there’s lots of room to dig holes for rustlers’ bodies.

But It’s a numbers game, right? 

One of the forum users made a good comment, talking about it all being a numbers game. You have one old farmer (many farmers are in their 70’s and 80’s) and his family to protect a huge amount of land… and there may be hundreds of hungry people raiding the farm in a total Without Rule Of Law situation. 

That actually makes a lot of sense, especially with cattle being raised close to cities (say within an hour’s drive). But once you get past that, get off the main roads onto the blue highways, county roads and onto gravel, things change quickly. 

It all comes down to “where are the cattle?”. As silly as this sounds, they are in the country. Not the country next to the city, but the REAL country. 

Country roads, take me home, to the place I can steal cows… 

Bear with me.

How do you get to the country to steal cattle?

Well, the only way you can hope to transport something as big as as meat from a dead cow is in a vehicle. So you have to drive out into the country.

I live in the country, where the sounds I hear are the birds and the animals. I can hear a car coming while it is still two miles down the road.

People from the city who are visiting us at our cabin are often freaked out by how “quiet” it is. If a vehicle coming down a gravel road, I can see the dust plume from more than 2 miles away winter or summer, unless it’s been raining. If it’s been raining, that’s a whole different level of fun for people not used to driving on mud roads… and we will still hear them coming.

At night, they will either be driving in with lights, or they will be driving down a country road without their lights on (one that likely has barricades if the SHTF). In this type of situation, there WILL be barricades.

Bridges will be blocked.

We know who belongs

Here’s what else I know… I know who belongs on these roads, and who doesn’t. I know what my neighbor’s vehicles look like, and I know who has business being out in the fields.

Here’s the reason stealing cattle is a bad plan for survival.

It’s not the farmer who’s being attacked that you have to worry about, it’s his 30-50 or so neighbors and their families that’s the problem.

Unless you are driving down the road in an MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle you aren’t going home. Lots of people have the image in their mind of solitary old farmers out there with their old double-barrel smoke-pole, sitting on the front porch of their run down houses while somebody plays a the theme from Deliverance on the banjo. 

In reality? Not so much. For one thing, the 70-year-old may own the farm, but most of those animals out there are belong young men and women who are renting the land. Sure, Tom may still run a few head to keep the freezer full and give him something to do with his time, but the truth is livestock farming and ranching is hard work, and it’s a young person’s game.

One thing the old rancher and farmer does know, however, is who his neighbors are. He knows their children, and he knows the folks from town. He knows who belongs, and who doesn’t. 

Let’s say our cattle rustler does find an unmonitored field

Let’s say he’s driving along in his vehicle, finds some animals, and after watching for a while he decides he’s in the clear to “harvest” a steer.

Out comes the gun, he draws aim on the perfectly stationary, stupid steer, and puts one in the brain pan. The steer drops in it’s track as the crack of the shot echos through all around the neighborhood.

Now what? Well, our rustler now gets to find a way to get his vehicle through the fence, and field dress a steer that weighs in at half-a-ton, all while keeping watch knowing that the crack of a rifle can be heard for miles. 

I think we know this isn’t going to end well for somebody… and I doubt seriously it’s the rancher who’s land the rustler is on.

Take it from somebody who once worked at a slaughterhouse, it’s a lot… and I mean A LOT… of work to take a steer and turn it into something you can put over a fire… it’s not a 5-minute job, more a “many-worker-hours” job, especially when you are talking about doing it out in a dirty cow lot or pasture. 

The Golden Horde of cattle rustlers

A staple of prepper fiction and of much debate is the idea that there will be a “Golden Horde” of looters coming out of the cities and suburbs, walking out to act like locusts in the countryside.

While I personally don’t see this as a high probability event, let’s assume for the rest of this article that it indeed happens.  

I don’t find a lot of examples of this type of “Golden Horde” activity in recent world history, but let’s assume it’s accurate. Let’s assume the collapse scenario we’ve all read about in prepper fiction actually happens, the cities dissolve into chaos, people engage in social unrest and riots, the whole nine yards.

Most people still won’t leave. I would be surprised if we don’t all agree on that. People will stay even if they are unprepared, waiting for “somebody in charge” to save them.

Forward thinking people (like, for example, preppers) will have their plans in place to deal with situations as they arise, but for most of the people? Well… I think we know what happens to them.

Green Acres is the place for me

SHTF WROL within an hour’s driving radius of any large city? Well, it’s going to be a heck of a mess.

That’s one of the many, many reasons I don’t live within a four hour drive of any of any significant size.

As things break down, people would leave by car and then by foot. Sound about right?

Let’s look at 3,000 of our fellow Americans hitting that old highway

First, 3,000 is a random number, it could be 30 or 300 or 30,000, the logic works the same.

How can a farmer or rancher stand up to 3,000 people? 

Well, 3000 people-turned-locusts would be a real problem… but as we’ve seen in mass evacuations throughout the ages, people don’t tend to turn off the main roads, they tend to group together and stay on the main roads.

I’m going to use St. Louis as an example, but this could be any city in America. I happen to live in Missouri and know this area better than elsewhere, so roll with it. I’ll help but showing a map.

Let’s get them all the way out of the city before we let them branch out. We will take those 3,000 people and put them on Interstate 70 at Wentzville at the intersection of Hwy 61.

OK, now that we are in Wentzville, which way to we go?

Which way do they go? North up 61? West towards Columbia, MO? North towards Hannibal? One thing to keep in mind is that we are already 25-40 miles out (41 miles from downtown, 25 from the burbs).

Since the narrative is the Golden Horde walking out of St. Louis with all of their survival posessions, we are assuming they are walking. Now 25 miles is more than a lot of people CAN walk, especially with stuff.

We are in Wentzville, so what happens to our 3,000? Half decide to go west, half go up Highway 61 towards Hannibal.

 Of the 1,500 that head west, how many get off at the next intersection, Z, the one that heads down towards New Melle and Wine Country?

How many keep going? How many turn off at Forestell about 6 more miles down the road? Of those, how many go north on HWY W? How many go south?

Of those that go south, a couple of miles down that road you hit the intersection of N and OO running east and west. Of those people, how many go in each of the three possible directions.

That 3,000 becomes 1,500 at a major intersection but do they get off the main road?

There’s a lot of intersections between Wentzville and NE 45th Avenue in Grundy County

Where I’m going with all of this is that yes, next to a city you will have chaos no doubt, but every road that branches off either thins the herd or they keep on the main road until they hit the next big city town… for example going north it would be Moscow Mills, then Troy, the it’s a LONG way to Bowling Green, then Eolia, Hannibal, Quincy, etc, hitting intersection after intersection all the way out.

Sooner or later (probably sooner) bad things will happen to people who are doing this, simply because there’s no way the people of a town like Hannibal (which could just block the bridges) will let a mob wander through.

Again, you make good points but there’s a reason I think if people need to bug out, they need to go immediately and get to where the food is and start becoming a member of the community there. Your mileage may vary, and this is just one person’s opinion; it doesn’t mean I am right.

What about armored bands of looters in vehicles?

Fun fact, in Missouri (again I’m using my home state) there are over 10,400 bridges in the state, each and every one of which could be roadblocked.

If there were bands of armed looters running around, I’m pretty sure communities all over the state would throw up roadblocks and shut that stuff down. Pretty darned sure they would.

So what do you think?

Is ole Salty full of beans or making sense?