|
Buckshot's Article
Learning To Harvest Small Deer
|
|
Buckshot's Article
Learning To Harvest Small Deer
|
|
|
What other people over look in survival is several animals. Americans are spoiled when it comes to food. You want fresh vegetables you go to the super market. Fresh meat you go to the super market and there sits fresh chicken fully cleaned. Want a steak? What kind? All the choices in the world. What is removed from today's modern society is the processing of the food. Who kills, cleans and cuts up the meat? Where is all the blood and guts. Millions of folks have never cleaned an animal. There is a learning curve and things you have to know to do it correctly. What is a small deer? Small deer are the medium size animals most folks overlook as a food source. Such as ground hogs, raccoons, beaver, marmots, even coyote if you have to. Having taught thousands and thousands and thousands of folks over the years in all 50 states and 8 different countries. I have wrote hundreds of articles that are published all over the web and several magazines and I find the exact same trend as when I started. Most folks only see and think one way. I want traps and snares for rabbits and squirrels. I think most of it is they don't have the woods knowledge of their areas. They DON'T know about the small deer in their area. America is heading into a Great Depression 2 nothing can be done to stop this. It is simple demographic. The Baby boomers have the greatest wealth and start to retire in greater numbers each year. As they retire they pull money out of the stock market, they start collecting Social Security, they try to sell their houses to move into something smaller. Add that pool of houses into the housing crisis and you have a downward spiral that is going to take 12 to 15 years to straighten out.
Snared Raccoon. Shot In The Head. (Note the twisted snare by the back leg.)
The latest is the food and energy crisis. Rice is being rationed already, in fact in some parts of the country you will find empty shelves. As diesel fuel heads higher in price so will everything else. I just ordered a spare hand water pump which weighed 19 pounds. Cost to ship from 1 state away $19.80. That was just the shipping price. Had to order it because no one local carried them. That is just showing you that cost on everything is going up and now is the time to prepare. I have talked to deer hunters and they amaze me. They hunt hard. Walking, or still hunting in a blind and they come into the woods for 1 week out 52 weeks a year and think they understand the whole woods. They have told me there are 5 does, 6 fawns and two bucks in the area. One coyote came through and a couple of grouse. Amazed I asked, "Are you sure? Oh yeah, I have hunted hard and sat for hours that is it for this whole area. No use correcting guys like this because they can't see the forest for the trees. What do I mean? We were standing on a beaver dam when he told me this. In the beaver pond was beaver, muskrat, mink, weasel and snow shoe hares on the edge. Not to mention the fresh raccoons tracks or the bobcat tracks or the black bear tracks. Also, not to mention just before freezing up a family of otters would come through and hunt the small brook trout one last time before it froze up. Not to mention the monster buck that only travels at night and comes through the area once ever 8 days.
On Open day of deer season I was sitting in blind. 1 mile away up on a hill I could see the trucks drive by. This dirt road normally had about 2 trucks per day. Note that opening starts 12:00 PM in North Dakota. From 12:00 until dark about 6 hours I counted 52 trucks drive by. Mostly road hunters. I saw 4 guys walking and actually hunting. Because most hunters now days don't actually hunt. As times get tougher simple economic will result in less road hunters. Hard to justify spending $200.00 in gas to get 60 pounds of venison. Before I learned to trap I used to think the same way. But I learned to see everything, all the animals and signs. A lot of folks are going to over look the small deer when the going gets tough. Learning to trap and snare is a wonderful hobby. But that is good to have lots of folks think that way because those of you who know better will have the woods more to yourself after the deer are hunted out.
You will be pleasantly surprised how great the wild foods are when you haven't had meat in weeks. I can't remember what radio show I on and talking on this subject, but boy did I get phone calls and e-mails later. A typical phone call was like this, "Wow I had no idea. I had the game biologist from my state go through my area and he gave me a list of animals living there I never knew of." How many animals are in your area that you never knew of?
For small animals like rabbits and squirrels the #110 Conibear is the best trap to own. For small deer, Snares are the best way to go. Time to learn how to collect added meat. BBQ the raccoon that is raiding your corn patch. It well not only protect your corn but give you an added supply of meat, the hide can be tanned for warm clothing, the fat rendered down for soap. This skill needs to be learned now before you have to survive.
Bruce Buckshot
|
Copyright © 2007 - 2009 to present all rights reserved worldwide. No part of this web site can be copied or reproduced by any means without written permission from the owner (Bruce Hemming.)
