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Thread: do you realize how MUCH food it takes to live "wild'?

  1. #1

    Default do you realize how MUCH food it takes to live "wild'?

    3-5 lbs per day. Only about half of an animal's live weight is edible food. Most wild foods offer less than 1000 calories per lb. a good sized man needs 2000 calories per day, just to lie around! you burn 300 calories per hour, just WALKING. Anyone who 'thinks' that shelter building, wood processing and hauling, digging and using latrines, getting water, gardening etc, aint harder than just walking has never done such things, for certain. A red squirrel is well under 1 lb of edible meat. About half of your diet needs to be of plant origin, or you'll get sick eventually, from lack of vitamns, and as Cody Lundin says' plants dont run very fast". :-)


  2. #2

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    If you burn 700 calories getting the 600 calorie squirrel (and prepping it to eat) etc, you LOST on the deal. You also have to count the getting/processing of wood and water, to cook the squirrel, disposal of (or processing/use of) skin and guts of squirrel, folks. It's all in the equation of whether you are saving or losing body weight and storing up reserves for when the harvest fails and some disease kills all the critters, etc.

    Foraging, long term is a LOT tougher than you think. You need major, easy sources of food, like herds of migrating caribou, forced thru a narrow gully, and you eat dried fish, plants, jerky-pemmican for most of the rest of the year, with the occasional fresh critter that you luck onto during that time. You almost never can spare the time or calories to "go hunting". What you do is keep your eye peeled and your rifle handy while you tend your traps, nets and garden. That's an efficient use of time/resources and sometimes you score pretty well.

    Nets, fish traps, snares, bird lime on roosts. Methods that produces many lbs of food, reliably, easily, repeatedly. That's what you want/need. your local fish/game agency is the place to start. Get a copy of all their laws, and notice what's illegal. It's illegal cause it WORKS too good! :-)Naturally, such things are for life and death emergencies only, but few ever learn to think in the ways that are needed if things get REALLY tough.

  3. #3

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    Mostly true, but mostly. Many native peoples subsist only/mostly on animal products, inuit, the masai of Africa, etc. They manage by eating all parts of the animal, especially the organ meat, which has the vitamins you mention. But your right much of survival and subsistence living is about being opportunistic and managing calorie expenditure.

  4. #4

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    We are sustaining ourselves on 60% wild foraged food on good years. A tight calorie budget is one of the laws of the land. Human law is rife with excessive calories, unnecessary energy expenditure, and "laziness" replacing a genetic predisposition to conserve calories. Nature is nutrient rich and calorie rare. Our modern chairborne ranger is a product of a calorie rich, nutrient poor habitat. To hope to have any success, you have to put in the dirt time, establish seasonal awareness, and build a reliable, resilient community of self starting and skilled hunters, trappers, herbalists, and fisherfolk. This is especially true if you are north of the mid-Atlantic States, in higher elevations, or in sparse country. A coyote runs on a razor thin energy budget, Fifi the wonder dog runs in circles and pees on every other tree. Too many folks who find themselves transitioning to the law of the jungle, (also called the laws of creation by some), are going to be their own worst enemies because of their own habituated mindset. Move more like a creature of the landscape, keeping a low signature, being pushed and pulled by available calories, and storing what you can when you can. Crazy loud zombies playing "rat patrol" in "technicals" can kill each other off for crappy MRE's, while you gather the greens, hare, water snake, rats, and berries from the same areas undetected by using the same methods the deer use, even in the middle of suburbia.

  5. #5

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    a good sized man needs 2000 calories per day, just to lie around!
    Eh, that's not true. The 2,000 calorie a day diet is for an active adult male. If you're lying around and not doing anything, you don't need as many.

    you burn 300 calories per hour, just WALKING. Anyone who 'thinks' that shelter building, wood processing and hauling, digging and using latrines, getting water, gardening etc, aint harder than just walking has never done such things, for certain. A red squirrel is well under 1 lb of edible meat. About half of your diet needs to be of plant origin, or you'll get sick eventually, from lack of vitamins

    I think what's being left out here is trapping, fishing, and still hunting. If you're at a camp, you're naturally going to attract animals. Squirrels get into my garbage at home all the time. It doesn't take a lot of brains to trap, shoot, or throw a rock at one of them. Forraging is great, but you've got to realize that your body needs a lot of protein or you'll also get sick.

  6. #6

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    try it a while. You'll find out. You'll have to move around a lot, cause all the squaw wood is soon gone from a given area. sending up smoke signals is going to call in your killers. Several million guys in US have plenty of the savvy needed to find guys like you. So, while 99% might well be nothing more than zombies, that still leaves 3 million, divided by 50 states, and smoke can be seen for miles, Shots can be heard for miles. Footprints in snow can be followed by a blind man. Some will have dogs to help find you, too. Or they'll just notice that the starving packs hang around a certain area (where they smell YOU and your food)

    Traplines, to be worth tending (at night with NvD goggles) have to be baited (and not "set") thruout the year. Then the critters learn to associate your scent with food, not fear. Then, in time of need, you dig up the snares, etc, and get enough harvest to be worth your effort and risk to run your lines. Preserving that meat will require metal drums or buckets, or at least, plastic ones and a double wrap of ratwire.. They'll have to be buried out of sight, and if you have bears in your area, you've got a problem. You'll have to shoot/snare them, hang your food in trees (ie, visible to men) or create very large, heavy concrete "caps" for your stashes.

    You'll end up eating a lot of dog, cat, coyote, possum, coon, owl, hawks. They have to go, cause they are eating YOUR food, and once you kill them, you need the meat and it's wasteful-stupid to not utilize it.
    Last edited by taint; 03-05-2016 at 10:06 AM.

  7. #7

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    I take in 2500 calories or more per day and gain no weight. I'm 6 ft and 200 lbs. I walk an hour a day and drive some iron at the gym. not a lot, about 3 hours per week. notice all the hunter-gathers, with the exception of the Innuit, are all short, skinny people? :-) that is the case cause they don't get the needed nutriants and calories to be full sized humans. they are trying to survive on 1500 calories a day. I saw a 250 lb man reduced to 180 lbs by such a diet, in a bit over a year, and a lot of what he lost was not fat.
    Last edited by taint; 03-05-2016 at 10:10 AM.

  8. #8

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    in cold weather, working hard, you can EASILY need 4000 calories per day, scared/stressed, if you must sustain that performance/condition for weeks. They never drop Naked and Afraid people where it's really cold, but some of the guys lose 2 lbs per day during their 3 weeks of hell. The women lose half as much, unless the guy taps out early. When that happens, the gals lose a lb a day, too, cause the guy was doing all the heavy stuff.

  9. #9
    Administrator Rick's Avatar
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    Folks are short or tall because of their DNA. In order for nutrition to affect growth you would have to be severely malnourished or suffer from some clinical problem.

  10. #10
    Super Moderator crashdive123's Avatar
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    sending up smoke signals is going to call in your killers
    Does every conceivable scenario you can think of involve you hiding or running from "bad guys". I sure does seem to be a common thread in most of your postings.
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    Senior Member natertot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by crashdive123 View Post
    Does every conceivable scenario you can think of involve you hiding or running from "bad guys". I sure does seem to be a common thread in most of your postings.
    Perhaps he is running from himself.
    ”There's nothing glorious in dying. Anyone can do it.” ~Johnny Rotten

  12. #12

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    Surviving and "Living wild" are two very different things. As Mors would say, an American can go up to a man living in the middle of the Sahara Desert and ask him how to survive in the desert or any hot climate - the desert man is going to shrug his shoulders, he does not know how to answer your question because he lives it. He has lived it since he was being toted on his mothers shoulders and it is second nature for him. It is why adaptability is key

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by taint View Post
    in cold weather, working hard, you can EASILY need 4000 calories per day, scared/stressed, if you must sustain that performance/condition for weeks. They never drop Naked and Afraid people where it's really cold, but some of the guys lose 2 lbs per day during their 3 weeks of hell. The women lose half as much, unless the guy taps out early. When that happens, the gals lose a lb a day, too, cause the guy was doing all the heavy stuff.
    Taint true

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