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Preparing for
the End Times II
Gardening & Hunting
By Aaron Olson
The wise see danger ahead and avoid it, but fools keep going and get
into trouble. Proverbs 22:3 NCV
The Bible talks of prepping several times. Look to the story of
the 7 brides waiting for their bride groom, or to the story of Noah. He
was, in my opinion, the ultimate prepper. Only he and his family
survived the flood. Granted, the reasoning was divine will in his
favor. However, he was called to gather, with the help of God, enough
food for his family and all of the animals that were aboard, along with
building the ark. Luckily we have better technology to obtain both food
and water. For this column I will be focusing on food gathering.
In a previous column I spoke briefly on gardening. Gardening in and of
itself is multi-functional. Not only are you growing your own food, you
are also attracting wildlife onto your property.
Let’s focus on gardening for a little bit before getting into wild
game. Gardening is one of those things that requires practice. Some
trial and error will be involved, learning what plants grow best in
your soil conditions, when to harvest, how to treat for pests. Things
of that nature.
Start by looking at you and your family’s eating habits. Grow what you
eat: if you don't like spaghetti squash, don't grow it. Keep heirloom
quality non-GMO garden seeds on hand. They usually have a 5-10 year
shelf life if stored properly, along with the benefit of not having any
chemicals in them. Organic crops have been proven to grow as well as,
if not better, than GMO crops. They also develop traits faster than GMO
crops, such as flood and drought tolerance. A lot of this has to do
with the fact that you can plant multiple generations of the same crop.
With GMO crops, they have usually been sterilized so the seeds they
produce will not grow crops. If you have seeds in storage for a few
years you can plant the seeds, grow your plants, and harvest the seeds
for the next season.
This also applies to end-time events. Gardening seeds will more than
likely become a good bartering item (just speculation). The benefit of
seed swaps is you can introduce new genetics to your crops, ultimately
making them hardier. You can also trade extra seeds for items that you
may need, or for the services of someone, such as a blacksmith or
carpenter. My belief is that bartering will become the way of
paying, if/when we have an apocalyptic type event (grid goes down,
economic collapse).
On to the tasty critters. Hunting and trapping are also important to
keeping protein on the table. The 12 gauge shot gun will kill most
everything in the eastern woodlands, if not the U.S.A. My preference is
my H&R single-shot. A break-action single-shot shotgun is the most
versatile type of shotgun on the market, in my opinion. My H&R can
shoot 12 gauge obviously, but it can also shoot 20 gauge, 410, 45 long
colt, 9mm and many more. All you need is an adaptor to drop in the
barrel and the ammo to shoot. The single-shot break-action style
shotgun can also be used as a muzzleloader if necessary. Say you are
out running your trap line and you see a deer. With a .22 adaptor you
can use the same shotgun for dispatching animals on the trap line as
hunting deer. Take out the adaptor and drop in a slug.
As far as trapping goes, conibears are fairly simple to use, as long as
you know how to bait them for your target animal. I wouldn't use
anything bigger than a 220 conibear. A 220 will break fingers if you
get them caught. A 330 or larger will break limbs, which is not good in
a long term survival/self-reliance situation. Foothold style traps can
be equally simple; long spring is better than coil spring, but are much
harder to find. With foothold traps, you'll have to have a way to
dispatch the animal. Snares are ok for 72-hour survival scenarios, but
they single use items. If an opossum or raccoon gets caught in one, the
snare will be trashed 99% of the time. Box traps are very nice.
Remember: live food never spoils. If you catch something in a box trap,
you can feed it and give it water until you are ready to dispatch it
and make supper.
Something that may be useful knowledge is that primitive trapping is
currently illegal in almost every state. In a long-term, wide-spread
disaster, no one is going to care about the legality.
Raising your own food source is something worth considering. Rabbits,
chickens, and other small animals can be kept with little space and can
be fairly inexpensive when weighing the benefits.
Food will only last as long as it stays unspoiled. Finding ways to
preserve food off the grid will be knowledge worth having. Smoking,
drying, salt-curing, freezing (depending on the time of year) and
canning can all be done off the grid. It'll be up to you on which one
you choose based on your resources. I would prefer smoking or drying.
Drying can be done via the sun as it was by the Native Americans. It
requires very little, if any, resources. You just have to keep the meat
dry, even from dew. Canning is probably my least favorite way of
preserving food. It requires the most resources. You need to build a
big enough fire to boil water for an extended period of time and the
lids for the most part are single use.
God Bless and stay vigilant.
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