Survival Hunting without a gun

No one likes to think about society breaking down and how drastically our lives will change when it happens. If we are lucky, it will be relatively short term (think hurricane) but with the tensions between governments in the world getting worse and worse, the chance for something much larger feels very close.

If society breaks down for any reason, your best chance to get killed is within the first month. Most people do not have stores of extra food. In fact, it has been estimated that about 40% of Americans go to the grocery store at least 3 to 5 times a week. They simply do not stock extra and would go hungry quickly if there was no store to go to.

The average grocery store has a 3-day supply of food in stock. If the trucks stop running, by day 4, a large part of the population will be getting hungry. Hunger is something you cannot ignore. Since most people have no idea how to find edible food in the wild, in less than a week people will begin attempting to forcefully take food from others.

If you can hold out for one month, your chances of not being killed increases because a large portion of the population will already be dead. That first month, people are their own worst enemy. They will have killed many others to take what food they had.

Staying quiet is your best chance for long term survival

Whether you live in a city or so far back in the mountains there is little chance of someone finding you. Using a gun for hunting is not always the best way to hunt. Guns make noise, a LOT of noise and the sound will carry a much longer distance when all the sounds of human life are not humming around you.

A group of bad guys could be roaming more than a mile away, hear your gun shot and be determined to find you. After all, a gun shot in the middle of no where probably means food and they are VERY hungry.

Learn to hunt quietly

There are 3 main ways you can hunt and make very little noise. Trapping, Bow Hunting and with a knife. They all require learning how to do them now, rather than depending on your lack of skills to put food on the table later.

There are MANY different types of traps. You would be wise to learn as many of them as you can. There is no way to know exactly where you will end up when the SHTF. You never know what supplies for building a trap will be around. By learning many ways to trap, you can easily “make do” and devise something with the materials you have on hand.

Bow Hunting can be learned by almost anyone. It does take practice and you would be better off, learning how to accurately shoot now rather than waiting till you are depending on your skills to put food in your family’s bellies.

Hunting with a knife may be one of your best choices. It is very quiet and very efficient. If you didn’t have a good knife in your bug out bag, you were not in the correct frame of mind when preparing your bag. You can learn to throw a knife with great accuracy. You should be training now rather than waiting until your skills are needed to survive.

Your chances of sneaking up on an animal to be able to slice its throat or plunge your knife through its heart are slim unless you have had many years of specialized training. Wild animals are much smarter in terms of survival than most humans are.

Have-a-heart traps

Everyone should keep at least one of these traps in your home at all time. They are not very expensive. Depending on the bells and whistles and how large of a trap you want, they range from less than $20 to around $100.

I would not buy the smallest one they make. It is mainly for catching very small animals such as mice. It would work for many birds however. A medium sized trap made for catching stray cats, small dogs and assorted small to medium sized critters is best in most cases.

Once you have trapped an animal, you can kill it by stabbing through the wires. Just make sure you do not take it back to where you are hiding until after it is dead and drained. Blood soaked ground can attract predators large enough to kill you or a member of your family.

Have you learned to hunt animals without a gun?

How many skills have you learned that will help you hunt edible animals in an emergency? The time to learn is now. Don’t wait until an emergency happens to begin learning. You could die before you perfected your skills.