[andy]

12 ga is THE gun for suvival in woods for 4 years. NO combat is mentioned. One clown "thinks" he wants a flintlock. Another "thinks" he wants a 308 bolt action cause "all the small game can be trapped". Yeah, with WHAT traps? You have to do this with ONE gun, and ALL gear must be in a carryable on foot. Others are closer to the mark, but think ALL ya need is a .22. Well, there's times when you get a good shot at a deer, or whatever, WAY beyond the range of a .22's ability to brain one. 4 years aint shit, dude. Sure, you bring some gill nets, some snares, trotlines, and sure you rig up some box traps, etc. Sure, you want .22lr capability, but you ALSO want rapidfire and the ability to take bigger critters to longer ranges. I've taken many scores of critters with fast repeat shots, after the first shot missed, or only wounded them. Sure, you want to use snares, etc, but why not have the ability to shoot a small critter whenever you see one? Why not have the ability to take a deer at 150m, or brain a moose or bear to 100m? Doesn't cost you anything to have that potential.

Also, the ease of take down and cleaning of a military autorifle is worth a lot, longterm in the field. So are night sights and a suppressor. Animals dont flee when you fire a suppressed 22 auto, using subsonic ammo at or near them. The sonic crack of a suppressed 223 aint all that alarming, either. Since There's no combat mentioned, I'd just trade 2 of my 30 rd mags of 223 for another 250 rds of .22lr. 450 total .22l'rs would easily get me thru 4 years of foraging. Because no combat is in the offing, you could have garden produce within a few months. Because you wouldn't have to hide all day, you could easily build or gather whatever you needed.

Since there's no combat, you can go with a folding stock and a CarBon 15. Saving the extra 2 lbs means that the can and the .22 unit add up to no more wt than the 1022's 5.5 lbs. Compared to a 10 lb muzzleloader, the regular AR and .22 save you many lbs of wt.

Since no combat is at issue, you can have a good tube tent, sleeping bag and cover, another set of clothes, lots of nice stuff. When you don't have to run and gun, it's feasible to carry 70 lbs of stuff. Since you're just going to drop 40 or more of those lbs at a "base camp" sort of set up. Once you've jerked the meat of several deer, dogs, etc, no need to keep the 223 parts or ammo with you. No need of 4 lbs of body armor, either. It'd be a piece of cake to last 4 years with 70 lbs of gear, when nobody's hunting you.

The idiot with the flintlock would soon find OUT how sloppy a system it is. It draws moisture thru the flashhole, and ruins the main charge in damp weather. Then you have to use a worm to TRY to pull the bullet, dump the worthless powder. He'd have LOTS of fun trying to keep down the corrosion. 140 gr ball, 50 grs of powder is pretty wasted on a squirrel, too. LOSE some animals over the cloud of smoke you create, and you'd soon grow to HATE that muzzleloader. Just lugging around the 12 lbs of crap that you need to make one workable is enough to get a real bile build up towards it. I'd take a xbow any day, over foraging with a flintlock.

 

[andy]

make a LOT of noise, carry HOW MANY rds of 12 ga, and for WHAT? less range than the .22 AR conversion unit (scoped) by FAR. 10 shells to the lb, instead of the .22's 135 rds to the lb= STUPID. All animals and birds stop moving sometime, and you are getting most of your food from plants, over half of the flesh food from fish, reptiles, amphibians. So the shotgun is getting lugged around for pretty much no reason at all.

 

[andy]

4 years aint shit.; Take a dozen deer or big dogs, and you'd be ok on the flesh food, along with the traps, snares, gill nets, trotlines, and what the .22 unit could harvest. With the scope and can, the 22 unit can take rabbits to 75, rather easily. since a miss doesn't alarm them. Since no combat is specified, you can use the Barnes X hp for deer, and 1 in 12 rifling. That means that the .22 unit will group 2" at 25 yds. WAY more range than the shotgun has on small game, using birdshot. A canned .22 will let you take SEVERAL ducks or geese, sitting on the water or in a field, if you get clean kills, before the others take off. Why scare that deer or dog that's on the other side of this hill, here, just because you want to shoot a squirrel, hmm?

 

[Garand]

Yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn!!!!!!!!

 

[andy]

clowns "think" that they'd need 2000 rds of 22, for 4 lousy YEARS? You MUST get half of your food from plant sources, long term, or you get bad sick, and you dont NEED more than about 1/4 lb of flesh food per day. 90 lbs-300 lbs of flesh food a year, and most of it fish, and you need 500 rds of 22 to get it? Must be figuring on living on sparrows, or shooting minnows, I guess. Hell, a FEW deer or big dogs, beaver, wild turkey, geese, ducks, etc, and you are good to go. Why would you need more than 100 rds a year, TOPS, of 22, and 10 rds of 223, just for food? Hell, half of that would be plenty, even WITHOUT the trapping of game, just nets and trotlines for fish. Why are people so stupid about GROWING food, KEEPING animals alive, penned or tied up, if not domesticated? Sheesh, what twits.

 

[andy]

There's LOTS more important stuff to carry than just ammo, when there's no defensive aspect to the issue. Like warm clothing bug netting, spare pair of boots, medical gear, etc.

 

[Garand]

Give us a detailed list of the kit, that you have packed AT THIS MOMENT and we will discuss the pros and cons of each others selection!

 

[andy]

should say that the .22 unit groups 2" at 50m, instead of 25m

 

[Garand]

WANNABE!!!

 

[Wylycoyte]

Let's see....

all reports say that the Carbon 15 sucks, tube tents suck, and you never bothered to mention why you need at least 50% plant sources for your diet. If you're talking about getting adequate vitamin C, a few cups of the right kind of herb tea will do that. Dandelions are, well, dandy for that, too.

Some of the rest is good info...gill nets and trotlines are major food producers in the right spots, as are traps and snares.

 

[mrostov]

You can live quite well with only a minimal plant intake proided that you're eating fresh, wild meat. Rare to medium rare cooked (not pig), wild, red meat with fat is one of the only foods that humans can live almost solely off of for extended periods of time. The internal organs of such animals (what the Indians would eat first) are usually VERY high in vitamins. Just be careful about eating the liver of predators. Also cook the meat from predators and omnivores, such as wild pigs, much more than you would an herbivore.

You only 'need 1/2 of your diet' as plants when you're eating large amounts of super lean meat such as rabbit.

What WILL kill you is the incapacitation during a survival situation caused by shock to your system from eating too many wild plants when your system isn't used to such a diet. You also won't be able to gather enough plants to fill your belly, either.

Wild plants tend to be very high in certain herbal compounds that domesticated plants lack.

BTW, a VERY good source of vitamin C is a quick cup of pine needle tea.

 

[Wylycoyte]

You also won't be able to gather enough plants to fill your belly, either.

Ain't that the truth. Some of the root vegetable plants like burdock are pretty nice, and cattail, but there are a lot of plants that don't yield much besides fiber and vitamins. Fruits and berries are great, but seasonal. If its off-season, you're hurtin'.

Vitamin C actually seems pretty easy to get, honestly. There are a lot of plant sources for it. All it takes is some know-how.

 

[andy]

u don't know jack. It's actually VERY easy to live off of wild plants, as has been proven many times by Euel Gibbons and thousands just like him. Hunting is what aint going to fill your belly, dumbasses.

 

[Piemaster]

u don't know jack. It's actually VERY easy to live off of wild plants, as has been proven many times by Euel Gibbons and thousands just like him. Hunting is what aint going to fill your belly, dumbasses.

You mean Euell Gibbons right?

How available is wild plant food in Pagosa/Durango CO in Jan, Feb, March, of any year?

 

[Wylycoyte]

u don't know jack. It's actually VERY easy to live off of wild plants, as has been proven many times by Euel Gibbons and thousands just like him. Hunting is what aint going to fill your belly, dumbasses.

Euell Gibbons was a forager who readily ate animal, fish and plant sources, using store bought ingredients like flour and corn meal to flesh out the meal. If you'd like to discuss exactly what he wrote in his books, we can do that, since I have almost all of them and even accompanied someone to do research on a book about Euell to Maine as part of a survival trip.

Also, I believe I mentioned trapping, whether for fish or game, as a good way to go as opposed to fishing and hunting.

Dumbass. :nyah:

 

[mrostov]

u don't know jack. It's actually VERY easy to live off of wild plants, as has been proven many times by Euel Gibbons and thousands just like him. Hunting is what aint going to fill your belly, dumbasses.

That contradicts everything that those who've actually lived off the land have found out.

Vegetarians can usually only live well by farming/gardening, and even then vegetarians are all too often weak, sickly people compared to hunters and those who manage and harvest stock animals.

How many vegetarian Indians were there? NONE.

You try living off of wild plants and, even if you can find enough, the diet will do a real number on you since your system is NOT used to it.

These types of foods also take a lot of practice and usually a lot of work in order to properly gather and prepare. Many of these foods take more calories than they give unless you're doing it on a small community level.

ALL of the SUCCESSFUL wandering hunter gatherers were hunters/trappers first and foremost.

Wild plant skills take a LOT of practice. This is practice which you are unwilling to do. You won't even go backpacking.

Of course, you're probably also going on your extremely bad math and inability to use a map, figuring that if there are 'x' number of people in the USA, then they'll kill off all of the game since they all will be hunting.

Hint: It doesn't work like that.

You think you're gonna just run out into the boonies and survive because you have a wild plant book you're stoned. Your death will be quite miserable.

 

[Garand]

And here I was under the impression that he was just going to shoot the old, retired people in the area, just praying that they were smarter than him for preparing stock piles he could loot. The only thing he hasn't figured out yet, that if these people are smart enough to stockpile, they are smart enough to learn how to defend it.

Just because there are 1 million AR's (the actual number doesn't really matter) in north america, doesn't mean that people are proficient with them.

 

[andy]

bs. That's all. It's a BORING diet, because what usually has to take place, expecially for the winter, is you end up eating flour made from pine inner bark or cattail roots, acorns, pine-nuts, camus-tubers, drinking teas made with pine needles and so on. The rest of the year is when you get the berries and various greens. Hey, dummies. Plants can't MOVE. Where and when you found them last year, they will still be there this year, too, barring a fire, flood, or some sort of overgrazing or fungus. So plants have ALWAYS been a lot more of everybody's diet, everywhere they grow, than flesh food ever was.

 

[mrostov]

bs. That's all. It's a BORING diet, because what usually has to take place, expecially for the winter, is you end up eating flour made from pine inner bark or cattail roots, acorns, pine-nuts, camus-tubers, drinking teas made with pine needles and so on. The rest of the year is when you get the berries and various greens. Hey, dummies. Plants can't MOVE. Where and when you found them last year, they will still be there this year, too, barring a fire, flood, or some sort of overgrazing or fungus. So plants have ALWAYS been a lot more of everybody's diet, everywhere they grow, than flesh food ever was.

Yeah, you've never tried it, that's obvious.

 

[Garand]

There are places in Canada where there only wild edibles for 6-10 weeks a year, if you don't hunt and fish, your dead. Its that simple dipstick!