Let's see how that would pan out in my corner of heaven.
Michigan is home to about 2.0 million deer. I live in Eaton County which has between 30-and-40 deer per-square-mile. In order to give Hawkeye a break, let's go with the higher number.
Unlike the picture in our city-dweller's head, Eaton County is not untrammeled wilderness. People already live here.
As a mental exercise, let us assume everybody in Eaton County (+ Hawkeye) has the same idea and see how long the deer will last.
Assumptions
- Every deer is harvested
- Every deer is recovered
- Every deer is optimally butchered to recover all of the edible meat and organs
- No meat spoils
- Half of the deer are fawns or less than one-year-old
From experience, the typical "adult" deer will yield 75 pounds of meat and perhaps another 25 pounds of organ meat if you take the trouble to boil the meat off the deer's head while a 6 month old fawn will yield half that. These numbers are a little bit generous but I want to give Hawkeye every break and keep the math easy.
On a per-square-mile basis
Twenty adult deer at 100 pounds of meat per animal will yield a total of 2000 pounds of meat and twenty yearlings will yield another 1000 pounds for a total of 3000 pounds of meat per-square-mile. Sounds promising.
Venison yields about 700 calories per pound when harvested in the autumn. It is a low-fat meat and for much of the year it is a VERY low fat meat.
An adult or growing child needs between 2000 and 3000 Calories a day. Again, we are going to help Hawkeye out. We will go with 2100 calories a day or three pounds of venison per day for every person.
My township has a population density of about 100 people per-square-mile. That means we would need to eat 300 pounds of venison a day per-square-mile. To meet that need, the entire deer population would be wiped out in ten days.
Doing the math with the deer and human population of the Lansing Metro Area drops the projected time to extinction for the deer herd to about three days.
Conclusions
The numbers do not pan-out for Hawkeye's plan even when every assumption is bent to help him.
From a human/deer population ratio, Eaton County is better than many other Michigan counties and worse than others.
At best, meat harvested in the wild will be a welcome addition of protein and flavor but it is not a viable source of Calories in most places, even in a state with a deer herd of 2.0 million animals.
I am assuming "Hawkeye" is a theoretical construct and not someone who has recently suggested this, as the sort of math you carefully do here has been pretty much done again and again over my own lifetime.
ReplyDeleteIt also assumes, of course, that an individual has the weapons, tools, and knowledge to track, shoot, kill, butcher, process, and preserve a deer. I have theoretical knowledge of many of the activities but little practice so at best I might get lucky and waste half the meat in butchering and another third in processing, allowing me enjoy my 1.5 ounces in my cup of hot water.
This stems from a much more fundamental problem: In a modern world, not many people understand what goes into preparing/providing/transporting their "food". I suspect for many, it is simply something that happens "out there" where it is done by people "out there" whose job it is to make sure everyone else eats.
Hawkeye is a composite construct. Yes, the math has been done over-and-over again but most people do not read SurvivalBlog or the kinds of places where they would be exposed to it.
DeleteSomebody is going to get those deer. Snares work 24/7, are quiet and materials are readily available. YOU might not get them if you are thinking about using methods that are currently legal. Remember, legal methods of take are legal because they are not very effective.
Regarding butchering, if you are really hungry it will take you all of about ten minutes to figure out what you will use for kettles to boil the spine, neck, ribs and head to recover that hard-to-disassemble meat.
I agree with your last paragraph. Subject for a future post.
My 'Honey' made the same comment about how we could just shoot deer. I told her that in 3 wks, you'd be lucky if you saw a squirrel.
ReplyDeleteWatching the show "Alone" shows that even when you screen for people with the ability/skills to live of the land most fail within 30 days and few last 90 days.
ReplyDeleteHi Joe. Was wondering the same thing about cows,hogs and sheep, if the goberment was taking what they wanted. Write another book Joe. I bought 2 of yours. Woody
ReplyDeleteLower the number of humans for proper calculations. If things go MadMax, you won't have the same density of people as today.
ReplyDeleteThe time between normal and full MM will be spicy. Some who will not make it will shuffle off without a fight.
DeleteOthers of us will go down hard.
If the countryside is depopulated of deer in ten days, I don't think the attrition will have thinned out the humans much.
Agreed. In my opinion, 7 to 10 days after interstate transport (and likely the electric grid) stops is when the conflict will really start as people run out of food, fuel, stored water, etc
DeleteIt also won't take long for rural areas to set up official or unofficial roadblocks to keep available resources for local residents. I assume some of these efforts will be successful, some not so successful.
I have had a lot of experience over my lifetime in wilderness backpacking and serious multi-day and multi-week mountaineering trips. My experiences have left me with a number of personal realizations.
ReplyDeleteFirst, even for someone who is experienced and who has all the right outdoor clothing and equipment, living outdoors IS NOT EASY. Mike Tyson famously said of his opponents, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face". In the same vein, until you get 'punched in the face' by torrential rain for days on end, or cold weather for week after week, most people have no idea how difficult it is just to exist outdoors, even if you have all the right gear.
Second, the idea of harvesting flora and fauna to feed oneself in the great outdoors is largely a fantasy. In a lot of areas where I have camped or backpacked, there is simply NOTHING TO EAT out there. Or at least nothing the average person will have much success in catching or harvesting. On a lot of my trips to the outback, I have often been struck by how barren of life much of the wilderness is. (Which is probably why nobody lives there.)
And as our host has demonstrated with unassailable math, what wildlife might be out there now will be mostly gone within weeks of a SHTF or grid down event that sends hordes of would-be campers flocking to the countryside.
Finally, even a minor injury or health condition flare-up while living in the outback can instantly render you unable to function or perhaps even walk, and can quickly become life threatening. In my own case, a twisted knee two days hike from the trailhead in the Weminuche Wilderness resulted in an agonizing three day ordeal getting out of there. We ran out of food while still 24 hours hike to the trailhead. It's a good thing that I was strong and fit, and had a young, strong, and fit buddy with me.
People who have this vague idea of "going up the country" or "living off the land" when the grid goes down are going to experience a rude awakening of deadly consequences.
Joe, does the math cover all the "hunters" who will be potted by the "hunters" from the cities who believe the rural areas are over-run with meat, just sitting there waiting for them?
ReplyDeleteI'm sticking with my idea-hunker down for 45-60 days while stupidity, hunger and bad water winnows down the surplus population.
May I suggest that you function as an observation post and report to outside forces who have values in alignment with your own.
DeleteThen, should you need to relocate after you decant from your bunker, you will have a place to go. You are their ally at that point.
The risk of passively sitting in a rabbit hole and popping out after sixty-days is that you have no affiliation to watch your back.
Just a thought. For the price of a couple of periscopes, listening devices and radio protocols you just bought some family.
Ahhhhh, seems like the bible mentions salt..... possibly for meat preservation. How many have just a lb. or two of table salt, which is iodized. Seems like plain non caking salt in 50# bags is what might be needed for the job.
ReplyDeleteLewis and Clark almost starved on the Oregon coast. And the had ALL the der they could eat.
ReplyDeleteThey finally traded the deer to the Indians for dog meat.
Behind the scene, the Indians were feeding deer to the dogs and making a profit.
Annnd as Soapweed notes, dont forget long pork. Very fatty.
DeleteCertain breeds are plentiful and not much use for anything else.
DeleteThere you go with those pesky facts again...
ReplyDeletemost of the deer (and wildlife in general) population is supported by farming. the state sets aside land for Animals, but they tend to go where the food is. as in planted crops. this is why food plots are grown in state game lands.
ReplyDeleteremove that from the equation (as is happening now with fertilizer, herbicide shortages and bankruptcy of the small independent farmer and the wildlife population will also reflect shortages. rather quickly, too.
Speaking as a Yooper, we can't eat deer because there aren't many; BUT there will be 10,000 wolves at the start of spicy time. Recipes anyone?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was growing up and many were around that had lived hard during the great depression, a common comment that was heard every year around hunting season was ' we never had deer and turkey all over the place when I was a kid '. Reflecting later on this, it was because they were almost hunted to extinction in our rural area. Also why hunting stories from that era revolved around bagging squirrel or rabbit, only the small game that reproduced quickly was left.
ReplyDeleteAlso consider the population of U.S. during the Great Depression was about 125,000,000 (or half of what it is today), many of them rurally raised. Most of them have never seen an animal processed, let alone done it themselves.
ReplyDeleteStarvation diet with venison or hominy Hominy will mean the grain bins get opened. One bushel of corn weighs 65#, but you have to know how to make hominy. Just sayin'
ReplyDelete