Fall a thousand years ago in an area known as ohi-yo’ a man dressed in brown and tan animal skins picked up an almost straight stick with a flint arrowhead on one end and a notch at the other. Feathers were glued and tied just ahead of the notch with animal residue and sinew.
He was hidden behind a few leafy branches he'd carefully positioned downwind of deer approaching the waterhole from the trail.
As a deer approached the man carefully calculated the range, pulled back the bowstring and sighted along the arrow at the deer's heart.
Last fall in Ohio a man dressed in Mossy Oak Camouflage pattern picked up a nano-carbon shaft arrow with a nock at the back that would light up from the inertia of being fired from his single-cam aluminum and carbon compound bow. The arrowhead was a mechanical titanium broadhead with four razor sharp articulating blades that would expand at the instant of impact.
He was hidden in the portable folding blind he'd unfolded downwind of the waterhole. But he wasn't worried about the deer catching his scent because he'd sprayed his clothing and equipment with a scent blocking chemical. His Kestrel weather meter gave a digital readout of wind speed and temperature.
As a deer approached the man checked the digital range finder on his bow as he brought the bowstring to full draw with his wrist mechanical flight release.
The hunter lined up the middle pin of his seven pin illuminated bow sight on the deer's heart.
So what do ancient and modern bow hunters have to do with you ?
Remember that guy you knew who only thought he knew how to play the guitar? Well I found him. He's playing background music in the hunting videos on the Outdoor and Sportsman Channels.
These half hour long shows on satellite and cable TV range from 30 minute hunting gear infomercials to halfway decent shows wherein the stars go out of their way to mention the brands (sponsors) of the hunting gear they're using.
The Crush with Lee and Tiffany on the Outdoor (OTDCH) channel actually has some production values and is entertaining enough to be worth watching either on TV or their website.
Family Traditions with Haley Heath on the Sportsman (SPMAN) channel is another good one where wife and kids play a big role in the shows.
So why am I offering to reunite you with the garage band legend in his own mind guitar hero?
Despite all the modern gear I went to such great lengths to link to for you; modern bow hunters using fair chase methods often don't even see a deer within shooting range and many times miss their shots when they do. One reason experienced hunters "go bow" is that they get a third hunting seasons (besides firearm & muzzle loader) each fall.
The other reason these knowledgeable hunters choose to bow hunt is that with modern firearms, cartridges, rangefinders and scopes fair chase hunting with a gun is just too easy.
It won't be that way in another depression. To feed their families people will take whatever game they can get any way they can get it legal or otherwise.
Even before the Great Depression predation by humans wiped out some species and came close to exterminating others.
With traps, snares and iron-sighted firearms Depression Era hunters swept the land clean of wildlife:
PARKERSBURG - Many wonder how they will get by if the current economic times get worse, but for those who lived through the Great Depression, self-sufficiency was the key during the hardest of times.
[snip]
"People were self-sufficient in those times. They had to be. There wasn't much money anywhere. People improvised. They raised their own food and traded for what they needed. People survived. But even before the depression, people weren't used to having much. If it gets that bad now, I don't know what people would do, they aren't used to that. It would be a completely different world for them," Stanley said.
He said most everyone had a garden to sustain their families.
[snip]
When Amma resident Howard Carper Jr. was a boy in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he and his family survived on what the land would provide and little else.
[snip]
Every day after school, Carper and his older brother, the late Roscoe Carper Sr., scoured the woods near the farm for whatever small game they could find. There were no deer in that area then, so they kept the family fed with small game.
[snip]
Carper said the boys learned a great deal about animals. They learned how they behaved and knew where they lived.
"The groundhogs, muskrats, squirrels, rabbits, possums, skunks and raccoons sure had a hard time when me and Roscoe was boys," Carper said.
Their hunting style bears little resemblance to most hunting today. It was Depression-era hunting, hunting that the family not only relied on for sustenance, but with a maxim of shooting only when absolutely necessary.
Larger animals, such as raccoons, Roscoe dispatched with the .22 rifle. Squirrels, however, the younger Carper brother sometimes killed with his bare hands. Shells, after all, cost money. Minor injuries from bites did not.
[snip]
Just as in Parkersburg, Carper said there was virtually no actual money circulating in the Roane County economy. Muskrat hides, however, were an unofficial legal tender in Roane County. He traded 13 muskrat hides for his first rifle, a .22 single-shot Winchester.
[snip]
Luxuries most hunters enjoy, such as warm clothing and Thermos bottles of hot coffee, were unknown, Carper said.
[snip]
Depression era remembered
Some people made a living hunting and trapping during the last depression.
Even today some people continue poaching deer and fish illegally.
U.S. population was between 121,000,000 and 133,000,000 from 1929 to 1941 with a large percentage living on farms Can you imagine what will happen to game and non-game populations if some large percentage of our present day population of over 300,000,000 Americans turns to hunting/poaching to feed their families?
BOTTOM LINE
If moving from a bungalow in the burbs to a bunker in the bush and living off the land was your Great Depression Survival Plan A you'd better start working on Plan B.
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Showing posts with label Bugging Out. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bugging Out. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
Bike or Hike?
At dawn you were surprised by what looked at first to be a WTSHTF (When the $#!t Hits The Fan) event which quickly turned out to TEOTWAWKI and now you're stranded many miles from home.
The lights, TV and clock radio went out simultaneously in your hotel room. Looking out your fourth floor window you see the whole city is dark. The phone didn't work anymore nor the elevator. You suspected this isn't a local WTSHTF event. Your just recharged cell phone is dead, as is your laptop. EMP?
Your large dark gray airline compatible suitcase is also a rucksack that came with you as checked luggage so you've got your genuine Swiss Army knife and genuine Leatherman multi-tool in addition to 50 feet of 550 paracord, a boonie hat, a good pair of hiking shoes (with two pairs of wool socks and a packet of Moleskin stuffed inside), pants (with small first aid kit in one cargo pocket and a space blanket in the other), shirt (compass and Bic lighter in one breast picket and waterproof matches and a bullet space pen with waterproof notebook in the other) and a jacket with gloves in the pockets.
You empty out your suits and shirts from the suitcase to the bed repacking the big bag with two hotel blankets and the extra roll of TP the hotels always provide. Then you put on your hiking clothes.
You consult the local phone book then tear out two yellow pages and a map page.
You take both bags down the fire stairs to the lobby where confused business sheeple are demanding hotel management "Do Something!" right now.
Your smaller camouflage pattern carryon is also a backpack which, you can piggyback onto your large pack. You fill its pockets with complimentary hotel matches and fruit.
As you munch on what is likely the last cream cheese covered bagel you'll ever see (even if you survive) you contemplate the continental breakfast bar.
Handy little individual size boxes of dry breakfast cereal? Light but bulky.
Handy little cups of yogurt? Maybe one or two for the first day, but they'll spoil soon without refrigeration.
Handy little cartons of juice and milk? Same problem and they're leaky.
Handy little packets of honey? Yes! A compact nonperishable energy source that is not only food but an anti-bacterial agent. You take them all.
Crushing some of the dry breakfast cereal boxes flat you extract the flattened wax paper bags from the cardboard and stuff them into the camouflage backpack with the honey.
Bottled water? You betch'a! Ed Begley, Jr. be damned! Humans need a gallon of water a day so you load up the side pockets on both packs before leaving the increasingly hysterical business class to their whining as you walk out the side door with an open carton of juice in one hand and a half eaten bear claw in the other.
Poking around in a nearby construction site you find a two and a half foot long piece of one inch rebar with one end cut at an angle. It'll have to do until you can find something better. You 'dismount' the smaller bag and carry the small backpack like a satchel with the rebar sword/club between the handle straps so as to be instantly available yet not obvious.
Wearing the large bag as a backpack you walk forcefully, like you know where you're going, with your head on a swivel looking out for danger from all sides. People tend to avoid you on the sidewalk.
By ten am it's pretty obvious to everyone that "something" is going down. The owner of the pawn shop has come down to guard his goods. You have to talk your way in by offering to pay with cash then shop by sunlight coming through the windows.
You slit open one of the secret compartments in your carryon bag and show him the hundred dollar bills. He informs you he can't legally sell you any pistols from the case, however he'll sell you his 'personal' .38 stub nosed double action revolver. For an extra hundred dollars he throws in his holster and a box of bullets.
Outside, as you consult your yellow pages and the map, you see him rearming from stock. You head for the sporting goods store stopping to buy some road maps at a gas station along the way.
You must get home as quickly as possible, but the roads while not impassable will be patrolled by local cops turned highwaymen and desperate refugee sheeple unable to think outside the trunk of their cars. Eventually thirst and hunger will force them off the highway. In the meantime they'll be sponges absorbing the resources of any who come near.
Freeways and highways offer smooth, convenient, fast travel; out in the open where you can easily be seen from afar and ambushed from cover.
You've decided your choices are hike or bike, but offroad.
The few employees that showed up for work at the sporting goods store are mostly just standing around. With no power to run the cash register or credit card machine there's not much for them to do.
You find a ready to go mountain bike on display with saddlebags and a rack for mounting them. Grabbing some other gear and a topographical map of the nearby park from the camping department you take the lot to the manager who says he and the employees are just there to watch over the merchandise until the power comes back on because accounting wants him to sell everything through the register.
You show him some hundred dollar bills saying you'll take a hand written receipt now and he can mail you the register readout later. He sells you the bike and gear but won't sell you any guns or ammo. You talk him into selling you a hunting knife and a plastic backpacker's camping trowel instead. He doesn't offer change or a receipt and "forgets" to charge sales tax. You don't bother to remind him he'd need an address to mail that receipt to you.
You spend the last of the hundred dollar bills filling up your packs with freeze dried food.
As you're packing the food some boisterous customers enter the store so you exit the store quickly then install your rack and saddlebags with your Swiss Army knife and Leatherman multi-tool under a tree behind some bushes in a large vacant lot across the street from the store.
With the Swiss Army knife and Leatherman tool on one side and the revolver on the other your most basic survival gear is on your person at all times. You fill the small camo pack with food and water stowing the rest of the freeze dried food and large backpack in the saddle bags you head off across country as the sun hits it's zenith in a sky devoid of airplanes.
By dusk you've reached the suburbs. Staying off the roads has cost you a lot of time but you haven’t been robbed, mobbed, molested or arrested. It's a good tradeoff.
You find a small tree atop a small rise surrounded by large bushes. You disappear into it with a last look around to be sure no one is watching.
You dig a Dakota fire pit and heat some water in the Sierra Cup on green branches over the pit without bothering to remove the store's price tag then pour it into a package of the freeze dried food.
From your position you eat your food and watch the candlelit houses as the dusk turns into dark.
Resting until rise of the crescent moon as the fire burns out you fill in the hole before walking game trails to the railroad tracks. Careful to take your last compass reading several hundred feet from the metal tracks you determine the direction you want to travel before pushing the bike up onto the tracks. The spaces between the railroad ties make it too bumpy for bike riding so you walk.
A few miles later you're at the railroad crossing. Both the railroad and the road will take you home. Or you could break new trail between them which would take even longer.
Riding the bike on paved surfaces would be the quickest way home, provided you weren't waylaid on the way.
On the plus side the bike's tires would be nearly silent on the pavement and riding at night would vastly decrease the chances of running into other refugees. In theory you'd be past anyone camped by the roadside and disappearing into the darkness before they realized you were there.
But as Yogi Berra once said: "In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is." You'd be exposed on the roadway and a bullet is faster than a bike.
Walking the bike on the railroad tracks would be the second fastest way home but, again, you don't know how bad things are going to get or how soon. There'd be no trains, of course, but there might be other refugees and the raised railroad line would make you obvious to anyone who happened to glance in the direction of the railroad tracks.
Both road and railroad would tend to go through towns and cities. Also roads tend to accumulate homes and businesses along their route. One of the principles of Escape and Evasion is to avoid people and the places people frequent like buildings, trails, roads, and railroads.
You could abandon the bike and use your Escape & Evasion skills breaking new trail through the wilderness with just your backpacks. It would take much longer, but you could be virtually certain to not run into any Robin Hoods.
It's all a question of speed vs. security.
What would you do; bike or hike?
To Comment on this article
E-Mail Me Unless you specifically ask me not to, I'll post your reply here in the blog so everyone can read it. Of course I'll remove your last name, email address and any other specific information for privacy purposes.
The lights, TV and clock radio went out simultaneously in your hotel room. Looking out your fourth floor window you see the whole city is dark. The phone didn't work anymore nor the elevator. You suspected this isn't a local WTSHTF event. Your just recharged cell phone is dead, as is your laptop. EMP?
Your large dark gray airline compatible suitcase is also a rucksack that came with you as checked luggage so you've got your genuine Swiss Army knife and genuine Leatherman multi-tool in addition to 50 feet of 550 paracord, a boonie hat, a good pair of hiking shoes (with two pairs of wool socks and a packet of Moleskin stuffed inside), pants (with small first aid kit in one cargo pocket and a space blanket in the other), shirt (compass and Bic lighter in one breast picket and waterproof matches and a bullet space pen with waterproof notebook in the other) and a jacket with gloves in the pockets.
You empty out your suits and shirts from the suitcase to the bed repacking the big bag with two hotel blankets and the extra roll of TP the hotels always provide. Then you put on your hiking clothes.
You consult the local phone book then tear out two yellow pages and a map page.
You take both bags down the fire stairs to the lobby where confused business sheeple are demanding hotel management "Do Something!" right now.
Your smaller camouflage pattern carryon is also a backpack which, you can piggyback onto your large pack. You fill its pockets with complimentary hotel matches and fruit.
As you munch on what is likely the last cream cheese covered bagel you'll ever see (even if you survive) you contemplate the continental breakfast bar.
Handy little individual size boxes of dry breakfast cereal? Light but bulky.
Handy little cups of yogurt? Maybe one or two for the first day, but they'll spoil soon without refrigeration.
Handy little cartons of juice and milk? Same problem and they're leaky.
Handy little packets of honey? Yes! A compact nonperishable energy source that is not only food but an anti-bacterial agent. You take them all.
Crushing some of the dry breakfast cereal boxes flat you extract the flattened wax paper bags from the cardboard and stuff them into the camouflage backpack with the honey.
Bottled water? You betch'a! Ed Begley, Jr. be damned! Humans need a gallon of water a day so you load up the side pockets on both packs before leaving the increasingly hysterical business class to their whining as you walk out the side door with an open carton of juice in one hand and a half eaten bear claw in the other.
Poking around in a nearby construction site you find a two and a half foot long piece of one inch rebar with one end cut at an angle. It'll have to do until you can find something better. You 'dismount' the smaller bag and carry the small backpack like a satchel with the rebar sword/club between the handle straps so as to be instantly available yet not obvious.
Wearing the large bag as a backpack you walk forcefully, like you know where you're going, with your head on a swivel looking out for danger from all sides. People tend to avoid you on the sidewalk.
By ten am it's pretty obvious to everyone that "something" is going down. The owner of the pawn shop has come down to guard his goods. You have to talk your way in by offering to pay with cash then shop by sunlight coming through the windows.
You slit open one of the secret compartments in your carryon bag and show him the hundred dollar bills. He informs you he can't legally sell you any pistols from the case, however he'll sell you his 'personal' .38 stub nosed double action revolver. For an extra hundred dollars he throws in his holster and a box of bullets.
Outside, as you consult your yellow pages and the map, you see him rearming from stock. You head for the sporting goods store stopping to buy some road maps at a gas station along the way.
You must get home as quickly as possible, but the roads while not impassable will be patrolled by local cops turned highwaymen and desperate refugee sheeple unable to think outside the trunk of their cars. Eventually thirst and hunger will force them off the highway. In the meantime they'll be sponges absorbing the resources of any who come near.
Freeways and highways offer smooth, convenient, fast travel; out in the open where you can easily be seen from afar and ambushed from cover.
You've decided your choices are hike or bike, but offroad.
The few employees that showed up for work at the sporting goods store are mostly just standing around. With no power to run the cash register or credit card machine there's not much for them to do.
You find a ready to go mountain bike on display with saddlebags and a rack for mounting them. Grabbing some other gear and a topographical map of the nearby park from the camping department you take the lot to the manager who says he and the employees are just there to watch over the merchandise until the power comes back on because accounting wants him to sell everything through the register.
You show him some hundred dollar bills saying you'll take a hand written receipt now and he can mail you the register readout later. He sells you the bike and gear but won't sell you any guns or ammo. You talk him into selling you a hunting knife and a plastic backpacker's camping trowel instead. He doesn't offer change or a receipt and "forgets" to charge sales tax. You don't bother to remind him he'd need an address to mail that receipt to you.
You spend the last of the hundred dollar bills filling up your packs with freeze dried food.
As you're packing the food some boisterous customers enter the store so you exit the store quickly then install your rack and saddlebags with your Swiss Army knife and Leatherman multi-tool under a tree behind some bushes in a large vacant lot across the street from the store.
With the Swiss Army knife and Leatherman tool on one side and the revolver on the other your most basic survival gear is on your person at all times. You fill the small camo pack with food and water stowing the rest of the freeze dried food and large backpack in the saddle bags you head off across country as the sun hits it's zenith in a sky devoid of airplanes.
By dusk you've reached the suburbs. Staying off the roads has cost you a lot of time but you haven’t been robbed, mobbed, molested or arrested. It's a good tradeoff.
You find a small tree atop a small rise surrounded by large bushes. You disappear into it with a last look around to be sure no one is watching.
You dig a Dakota fire pit and heat some water in the Sierra Cup on green branches over the pit without bothering to remove the store's price tag then pour it into a package of the freeze dried food.
From your position you eat your food and watch the candlelit houses as the dusk turns into dark.
Resting until rise of the crescent moon as the fire burns out you fill in the hole before walking game trails to the railroad tracks. Careful to take your last compass reading several hundred feet from the metal tracks you determine the direction you want to travel before pushing the bike up onto the tracks. The spaces between the railroad ties make it too bumpy for bike riding so you walk.
A few miles later you're at the railroad crossing. Both the railroad and the road will take you home. Or you could break new trail between them which would take even longer.
Riding the bike on paved surfaces would be the quickest way home, provided you weren't waylaid on the way.
On the plus side the bike's tires would be nearly silent on the pavement and riding at night would vastly decrease the chances of running into other refugees. In theory you'd be past anyone camped by the roadside and disappearing into the darkness before they realized you were there.
But as Yogi Berra once said: "In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is." You'd be exposed on the roadway and a bullet is faster than a bike.
Walking the bike on the railroad tracks would be the second fastest way home but, again, you don't know how bad things are going to get or how soon. There'd be no trains, of course, but there might be other refugees and the raised railroad line would make you obvious to anyone who happened to glance in the direction of the railroad tracks.
Both road and railroad would tend to go through towns and cities. Also roads tend to accumulate homes and businesses along their route. One of the principles of Escape and Evasion is to avoid people and the places people frequent like buildings, trails, roads, and railroads.
You could abandon the bike and use your Escape & Evasion skills breaking new trail through the wilderness with just your backpacks. It would take much longer, but you could be virtually certain to not run into any Robin Hoods.
It's all a question of speed vs. security.
What would you do; bike or hike?
To Comment on this article
E-Mail Me Unless you specifically ask me not to, I'll post your reply here in the blog so everyone can read it. Of course I'll remove your last name, email address and any other specific information for privacy purposes.
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