Hunter gatherer

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rfgh
Posts: 43
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2016 2:00 pm

Hunter gatherer

Post by rfgh »

Any (likely already retired) folks use fishing, hunting and foraging for extreme cost savings on food? How much of your caloric intake is covered this way? Do you have any specific nutrient deficiency concerns? How does it vary through the seasons? In which type of bio region do you reside? Are you in a city or the country? If you also gather water, how do you make it potable?

slowtraveler
Posts: 722
Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2015 10:06 pm

Re: Hunter gatherer

Post by slowtraveler »

There's a documentary on Netflix called Ultimate Penny Pinchers that shows a dude who makes some nice bbqs out of foraged road kill. He's in UK, I believe.

Riggerjack
Posts: 3180
Joined: Thu Jul 14, 2011 3:09 am

Re: Hunter gatherer

Post by Riggerjack »

Look up riparian. She used to post here.

Hunter gathering takes a lot of land and time. Many folks in rural areas will hunt, and I've known folks who thought hunting season was for tourists. As in rules for foreigners, as in, "those city people from Seattle". Other than that it was all a game between them and game wardens...

But gathering is time and energy intensive, so most would garden. And the REALLY efficient would garden, as game bait...

I could probably get by on rabbits I caught in my yard, so long as I didn't have to compete with my neighbors.

True hunter gatherers had enormous amounts of land they covered, though. It's not easily compatable with any population, really.

My best friend's uncle was ERE, before there was a name for it. He was a civil engineer, who worked a few years, saving, then took several years off. Took a Jeep with a winch and a chainsaw, and built a log home on family property. Then, each day for exersize, he would row his boat across the hood canal (in Puget Sound) and catch enough rock fish to eat for the day, add oysters when the tide was low, and gather on his way back up the hill to his cabin. He would go back to work when he ran low on money, and take the layoffs as they were offered. I talked to him last summer, and the pursein fishing by the local tribes had wiped out most of the rock fish, and his expenses had gone up a bit because of it. But he still gathers oysters as it is convenient.

The woods around here offer fiddleheads (young fern fronds), berries, mushrooms, nettles, cat tails, and lots of greens, etc. But I am partial to food I can buy. It's just easier.

I've known folks who took extended vacations in the woods of the Olympics, doing extreme survival training. Go into the woods with a pocket knife for a few weeks, kind of thing. But they did it in the summer, I expect it to be much harder in the late winter/early spring.

In short, with the right mindset, it can be a fun challenge, but I certainly wouldn't want to do it full time, or be in any way depending on it.

Farm_or
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Joined: Thu Nov 10, 2016 8:57 am
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Re: Hunter gatherer

Post by Farm_or »

I have a neighbor that hunts and eats Marmot. It cracks me up how he describes it. "It's kinda fatty. Kinda like pork. It leaves your lips soo smooth!"

vexed87
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Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:02 am
Location: Yorkshire, UK

Re: Hunter gatherer

Post by vexed87 »

Gathering edible wild plants can supplement a vegetable garden. Learn to know what plants near you are edible, particularly the things that other's wouldn't expect are edible (i.e. go beyond berries), you won't find much competition for them in these prosperous times, that might change eventually though.

Here's a taste of what you can expect:
http://www.moneylessmanifesto.org/book/ ... -foraging/

Obviously, best bet is to plant a perennial fruit and veg garden that requires minimal inputs and labour. There's a reason why we left behind the hunter gatherer lifestyle. You'll need to read into permaculture if you are interested.

Hégé
Posts: 23
Joined: Wed Feb 22, 2017 6:51 am
Location: Somewhere in western europe

Re: Hunter gatherer

Post by Hégé »

To add to what vexed87 said,

A good option if you have a land is to plant a "forest garden". You plant trees, shrubs and perennial herbacious and they make up a low maintenance food forest.

In Europe, Martin Crawford has a 23 years old forest garden and he is the expert in the subject. He told us (I went to one of his courses) that his forest garden produced 70% of the food requirement for 10 people. He has 2 acres and it needs 1h/day of maintenance.
The other 30% you can probably grow in a annual garden.

Another very interesting thing, but little studied, if you happen to own a bigger land (more than 1 hectare) is to look into "paraculture", a term coined by Edmond Dounias who studied forestry management by Pygmies It's a bit more complex than the hunter gatherer lifestyle because the Pygmies also integrate light cultivation methods. (basically, if they feed from a wild plant, they will try to make the wild patch bigger by seeding in the same area, or they will only eat a part of the plant so that it keeps on living and giving crops)
http://horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl ... 025488.pdf

George the original one
Posts: 5404
Joined: Wed Jul 28, 2010 3:28 am
Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Hunter gatherer

Post by George the original one »

Salmon, trout, steelhead, and razor clams here in the wet, coastal corner of Oregon. I don't hunt the elk because license fees & likelihood of success make them uneconomical. Dungeness crabs would be on my menu, but wife is rather against my harvesting them whereas she's willing to participate in digging razor clams; she doesn't eat either. Crawdads & bay clams would also be on the menu if I was so inclined.

In a good year, about 15% of my calories come from these efforts. Economically, crabs & clams are the best return as the required license is only $7. Fishing is as much about exercise & adventure as it is for food, so it's around break-even in expenses compared to the supermarket. El Nino greatly affects the reliability of harvesting these creatures; this season sucks because razor clams have been closed due to domoic acid & El Nino clobbered south-ranging fish (first coho & now steelhead).

There's a reason the native diet relied on salmon/steelhead... the local edible plants, though used in the native diet, are mostly described as insipid or bitter, at best, and, at worst, mildly poisonous!

Gardening offers a good return. $100 of seed potatoes (50 lbs), Yukon gold and norland early red, planted last year produced a surplus harvest and the leftovers have already been planted, producing this years harvest. I bought $12 of german butterball potatoes (2 lbs) this year to try as a high-yield experiment... if it works, then my $100 biannual purchase may be down to $50 next year. We've got strawberries & blueberries galore; knowing how to propagate them reduces startup costs. $25 of tomato plants (I'm too lazy to start them from seed) kept us supplied for 4 months with fresh tomatoes and another month with dried tomatoes. Probably a third to half of our food comes from the garden.

The downside to having a good garden, however, is then one spends extra money on wants rather than needs in the grocery store. I seriously need to quit buying chips, even if they are on sale, but...

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