Foraging and hunting for food

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Im currently listening to an audiobook that suggested ancient hunter gatherers 'worked' for <4 hours a day. just made me wonder about how efficient they must have been without the protein and carbo rich foods we get so easily from shops.

Is anyone on here even partly self suffient for food and how much of your time it takes.

. We dont have an allotment (but maybe) on the cards, im puely a novelty forgager(nettle and wild garlic soup, blackberries and occadsional leaves to supplement salads) and ive never hunted.

I would be like to be more sufficient just for that slightly poncy thought of 'being closer to by food' , plus less air miles/damage to environment etc. Might start re reading the food for free book.. . Any other hints or tips for easy win stuff to grow or how to develop foraging skills? Anyone reguarly fish or hunt for food rather than in the UK
Rigid Raider 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

It's a fascinating question. Apart from the odd blackberrying session I don't forage for food as I don't have the time. It's not just a question of time either; it's a question of having the foresight and the planning capacity to prepare at least six months ahead for the lean winter months, grow the carbohydrates and the proteins, harvest, then preserve them for the lean months. The further you go towards the poles the more crucial this becomes. As Jared Diamond notes in his book Collapse, of two settlements the Vikings established on Greenland, the settlement that was a few hundred miles further north failed first thanks to the critical difference in sunlight hours, the Vikings having ignored Inuit protein hunting technology and opted for a pastoral lifestyle, which depends on sunlight to succeed.

My own brother in the USA dreams of becoming a survivalist but I keep telling him that at the age of 54 he is already well past the age where he has sufficient strength and energy to grow crops and animals, let along actually knowing anything about agriculture and animal husbandry!

Obesity is a worrying problem for Western societies and this has happened because industrial food production, which relies on converting shiploads of commodity fat, protein, carbohydrate and sugar into cheap food in the interest of profit, has made it possible for humans to ingest massive amounts of energy while doing absolutely no work at all in exchange.
In reply to Rigid Raider:

The book in question 'sapiens' actually made an interesting point saying that we didnt domesticate wheat but wheat domesticated us. The reason we made settlements and gradually stopped being wanderes and forgagers was the need to be closer to our wheat fields and the increasong amount of pur day needing to be in the field.
 RyanOsborne 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

I think a single person would have to work for much more than 4 hours per day to sustain themselves? I can see how a group could do it though. With one spending 4 hours tending / repairing fishing nets, one spending 4 hours planting crops, and one spending 4 hours harvesting... etc.

Have you watched the reality TV show 'alone' set on Vancouver island? Not really applicable to your aspirations of being more self sufficient, as it's more of a survival thing, but it's really interesting. It shows how much depends on the exact location you're in - naturally ancient hunter / gatherers would have ended up in the best spots.

Also check out Dick Proenekke's Alone in the Wilderness - he was almost completely self sufficient (got occasional deliveries of seeds and stuff) in the Alaskan wilderness. He builds a spectacular hut.
 jimtitt 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

Of course hunting and foraging gave by our standards a poor, uninteresting and very unreliable diet. Interesting that in pre-mechanised farming one third of the land went to feed the working animals, one third to feed the workforce and the last third was "profit".
 richprideaux 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

I've lived that way for limited periods (a fortnight or so) and it's bloody difficult, to the point of being impossible in the U.K. as it stands. It's certainly impossible to do whilst having a job or living in a proper house that needs paying for.

I also run foraging workshops, write about foraging/wild food and have worked as a professional forager for the international restaurant trade. I was even on telly last week on some celebrity narrow boat ting. Look for the large man in a skirt with a basket...

John Lewis-Stempel tried it for a year and it's an interesting read:

http://amzn.to/2mkWMtl

Sapiens is very good, although some of the assumptions made in there are dubious, or at least very location-specific. Hunter-gatherer behaviour would vary greatly depending on where they lived, the resources available and their population levels. There is also a growing movement behind the idea that our modern understanding of a 'healthy diet' with regular food intake is quite flawed and that fasting should be an integral part of our diet.

When I talk about foraging on my courses and on the odd occasion I am allowed onto a stage to speak the one thing I can be sure about getting a reaction from is the 'human timeline' bit where I get people to line up in front of the audience to represent 250,000 years - and then show how close to the 'present' farming was developed. As a species we are built to hunt, forage and live in small communities. Living in cities and having someone bring food to us is a recent experiment, and some would say it's not working...

In reply to RyanOsborne:

> I think a single person would have to work for much more than 4 hours per day to sustain themselves? I can see how a group could do it though.

Thats a fair point.... i suppose the difference between fully self sufficient and seasonal self grown/foraged is quite significant.

There was also that russian family who had lived in the wild/totally isolated for years in the urals before veing discovered
 richprideaux 08 Mar 2017
In reply to RyanOsborne:

, one spending 4 hours planting crops, and one spending 4 hours harvesting... etc.

Also check out Dick Proenekke's Alone in the Wilderness - he was almost completely self sufficient (got occasional deliveries of seeds and stuff) in the Alaskan wilderness. He builds a spectacular hut.

If you're planting crops you aren't foraging, you're farming.

 elliott92 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

Before climbing, my main hobby was bushcraft. I Co owned a forum and we held a lot of meets for members. Through this I met a bunch of interesting people, some of which lived off grid to one degree or another. They all said it was constant work.. But without using the word work. It's more pottering about constantly. But their productivity was amazing.. Nothing got wasted and they had some ingenious uses for things that most of us would throw as waste. It was a lifestyle to them and they always seemed rather content, healthy and happy. When I retire I would love to own a little homestead somewhere remote and live 50 to 70 percent self sustainable
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

> Im currently listening to an audiobook that suggested ancient hunter gatherers 'worked' for <4 hours a day. just made me wonder about how efficient they must have been without the protein and carbo rich foods we get so easily from shops.

Protein would not have been a problem here in the UK when population density was very low and people lived as hunter gatherers. Most people these days are completely urbanised and have no idea how easy it is, with specific local knowledge, even now to get decent edible fish and crabs with very little effort. However, this might not always be legal, so naturally I'm not suggesting you try these things. For example along the Dorset to Cornwall coast in the spring spider crabs come inshore in vast numbers and are easily taken out of pools at low tide. Along the same coast in late summer mackerel will often chase sprats onto certain beaches and you can fill bags with them. Sometimes the mackerel will get stranded, too, as a bonus. In autumn the headwaters of certain rivers become packed with salmon. These days it's mainly a few rivers in Scotland, but hundreds of years ago even the Thames had enormous numbers of that fish. Catching them is very easy by hand, but highly illegal. Along the north Somerset coast you can sometimes extract conger eels from crevices under rocks at the bottom of spring tides, some people even have dogs that can sniff them out. The french do this, too, in the northwest of their country.

Those are just a few examples, there are lots more fishy ones, and I'm sure catching deer, hare, geese, boar and swans wouldn't be difficult, even today, but again not legal. Obviously hunter gatherer groups would have been mobile and moved around to optimise their use of resources such as these, and knowledge handed down through generations would have been vital.
 richprideaux 08 Mar 2017
In reply to wurzelinzummerset:

There's also some evidence to suggest that our ancestors in the U.K. would have first travelled around the coast, pushing inland along the rivers where the food sources are.
 elsewhere 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

"wheat domesticated us" - that is an interesting idea.

I've read that skeletal remains indicate that the adoption of agriculture resulted in poorer health. Probably because you live in a settlement surrounded by your own turds (and everybody else's) plus you eat from fields fertilised by those turds.

Yum, yum!
1
 Offwidth 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

I remember talking to an "orang asli" in the deep jungle in Sarawak, Borneo, through a translator, in the early 2000s and he was saying he spent most of his time hunting and gathering and this had changed a lot in his lifetime. Hunting boar used to be an hour, at that time it took days.
> fertilised by those turds.Yum, yum!


Coming to a restaurant near you
 Bobling 08 Mar 2017
In reply to RyanOsborne:

Wow, I thought I was the only person in the world ever to read that book! The last chapter 'Reflections' is just a beautiful commentary on how divorced we have become from our forefathers.
In reply to Bobling:
> Wow, I thought I was the only person in the world ever to read that book!

Whick one, the Richard Proenneke alone in the wilderness one?

Ive spent today googling rabbiting with air rifle but i might stck to picking blackberries as it looks like too many steps i.e shooting precision, getting land owners permission, dressing of animal etc...

...all of which i cant do/know nowt about
Post edited at 18:31
 arch 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):
I take the odd Rabbit for the pot with my Lurchers. I've got permission on a few farms, and I do a bit of Lamping as well. The dogs enjoy it, (That's what they were bred for) and I like to see them enjoying themselves doing it, and we help the farmer by keeping his Rabbit population under control.

I'm not that good at the skinning, but the meat is edible when I've finished. Used to grow all my own veg on an allotment, before the dogs came along, then just didn't have to time to look after both properly. Pick wild berries and Sloes and make Sloe Gin/Vodka later in the year.
Post edited at 19:23
 summo 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):
Before I scaled up a bit my uk allotment was roughly 180m2. With a small green house. Under an hour per day produced a lot of food. As highlighted above, this is farming not foraging.
For meat it depends on the tools, fishing could be a feast or a famine, shooting it's a question of storage and no getting bored eating the same meat trying cooking something umpteen different ways. I suspect early man was just happy to eat When times were lean or during a very harsh long winter .
Post edited at 19:33
 wintertree 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

I used to be pretty busy at collecting berries and fruit from hedges on footpaths - all sorts of plumbs, apples, cherries and damsons abound. I've had a lull due to a busy few years but hope to get back into it. You can find more variety than in our local greengrocers and freshly ripened on the tree is tastier. Particularly good spoils near old abandoned/gone villages. I find less greengage and walnut trees since moving north.

Bilberries - love them. Alpine strawberrries - location of wild patches are one of my most closely guarded secrets. Hedgerow raspberries galore. I make some rosehip syrup when Mrs Tree has a stinking cold in their season. Greengages can be found here and there. The trick to finding them is to do a lot of local walking in the right seasons (flowering or fruiting depending on the plant)

Beyond berries and fruit I've only ever used fresh nettle leaves to make curries, wild garlic leaves from the local riverbanks, and harvested - slowly - wild peas from some vetch. These are bloody gorgeous raw and cooked.

I believe an awful lot of wild "weeds" are perfectly edible if you know which weeds, which parts and how to prepare. Many are pre-domestication ancestors to our cultivated foods. I hope to explore more - in a quest for flavour rather than survival.

I live in eternal hope of finding and eating a cloudberry.

I learnt a very painful lesson clearing hogweed with infected roots - common, not giant - and now view all carrot family plants with extreme suspicion.

Edit: I keep remembering more things. In California I failed to eat fruit from a Strawberry Tree and I failed to eat a fresh Thimbleberry - both times I used an over abundance of caution due to not knowing what they were and being in the middle of nowhere.
Post edited at 19:54
 Dave the Rave 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

Think roadkill. It's dead, going to waste and you can eat it. I regularly get rabbits, pheasant and squirrel. Go out early any morning and there's plenty.
 JJL 08 Mar 2017
In reply to richprideaux:

> If you're planting crops you aren't foraging, you're farming.

Maybe - but this is where it's all bollocks really, isn't it?

"The Wild Life" is basically a year of living on rabbits as a staple; and he doesn't trap them (well, not often), he shoots them.
So the "rules" of this game are pretty arbitrary - it's ok to own a gun, buy shot and powder, run a car. But not ok to plant some seeds. Plants in field - BAD; plants in hedge - good.
See the point I'm making?

More charitably, the main challenge is winter of course. Even the fungi are the woody ones. Which is why we developed food preservation and cultivated crops.

Wasn't there a TV programme once about being dropped unequipped and naked (I might be imagining that bit) on a smallish, uninhabited island and seeing how long they lasted before calling for help? I'd manage until the first midge bite.
 wintertree 08 Mar 2017
In reply to JJL:

> Wasn't there a TV programme once about being dropped unequipped and naked (I might be imagining that bit) on a smallish, uninhabited island and seeing how long they lasted before calling for help? I'd manage until the first midge bite.

Joanna Lumley did this about 20 years ago. Pretty sure she wasn't naked though. It was called "Girl Friday". She wouldn't catch and eat the fish because she enjoyed swimming with them. Not a good decision.
 richprideaux 08 Mar 2017
In reply to JJL:

In the modern age it is mostly artifice. Of the few efforts to live for a sustained period on wild food, J L-S's was probably the most honest. Starting in November was brave though... I've tried it in early Summer, and quickly wished I was in a Cornish cove with dense woodland behind, not a slightly damp Welsh forest.

We lived through the bulk of our time on this planet (as a species) without cultivated crops though, so we must have got the winter thing nailed quite comfortably.

In reply to richprideaux:

Cool. We live just up the road from J L Stempel's place. Where are you based? My school (I'm deputy, my wife's head) was mentioned in his book and we are big on forest school and out door learning. Would love to do much more on foraging. We've cooked a few nettles but not much more.
 Big Ger 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

We're not planning on becoming self sufficient in any way shape or form, but we are hoping to do a couple of the courses offered here, sometime next year;

http://www.fathen.org/
 Bobling 08 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

> Whick one, the Richard Proenneke alone in the wilderness one?

The Richard Proenneke one. I picked it up in Barnes and Noble in San Francisco and have never hear tell of it anywhere else.

 richprideaux 09 Mar 2017
In reply to blackmountainbiker:

I'm in North East Wales (Ruthin) but I've met him a couple of times and he seems nice enough.

The outdoor schools/LOTC thing is great. I don't do any work with kids anymore but I do train teachers etc sometimes and it's always fun trying to work out things they can do with their students.

Try nettle lasagna - same recipe as spinach lasagna but with nettles. Or Dock pudding (lots of variations). Both are fairly foolproof and make good use of the commonly available things.
 richprideaux 09 Mar 2017
In reply to Bobling:

Ah, if you hang around on green woodworking and bushcrafty forums etc you'll see it mentioned fairly regularly.
 summo 09 Mar 2017
In reply to richprideaux:
> , so we must have got the winter thing nailed quite comfortably.

We've only really lived in the UK 10,000years and it's thought that there were many previous attempts, perhaps as many as 9 or 10. But climate, food, glaciation pushed people back further south in Europe.

Whilst man didn't farm 10,000 years ago perhaps the slow progression towards it had started.

You can see during times like the mini ice ages etc.. that at times it was border line survival. Plus as you know the human density was much lower. There wouldn't have been a whole town of folk all foraging the same forest.

Perhaps we've changed a little and our energy demands, brain etc.. Are greater now than they were arounaround 10 or 50,000 years ago.
Post edited at 06:30
Jim C 09 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):


I'm planning to do a lot of cycle touring/ camping in the future ( a month or so at a time I guess)

I have often saw road kill , pheasant is the most common, as an option.

Anyone any suggestions on cooking it with basic camping cooking facilities , rather than a open fire ( which would be preferable, but not always possible.)
I would not be 'hanging' it, just cooking it that day
 timjones 09 Mar 2017
In reply to Rigid Raider:

> My own brother in the USA dreams of becoming a survivalist but I keep telling him that at the age of 54 he is already well past the age where he has sufficient strength and energy to grow crops and animals,

54 is younger than the average age of UK farmers and if his career hasn't involved too much hard graft he may well be in a better state of health.
 richprideaux 09 Mar 2017
In reply to summo:

> We've only really lived in the UK 10,000years and it's thought that there were many previous attempts, perhaps as many as 9 or 10. But climate, food, glaciation pushed people back further south in Europe.Whilst man didn't farm 10,000 years ago perhaps the slow progression towards it had started. You can see during times like the mini ice ages etc.. that at times it was border line survival. Plus as you know the human density was much lower. There wouldn't have been a whole town of folk all foraging the same forest.Perhaps we've changed a little and our energy demands, brain etc.. Are greater now than they were arounaround 10 or 50,000 years ago.

Well, yes and no.

We returned to the British and Irish peninsula around 15,000 years ago, but the attempts made before that would probably have lasted for a few thousand years at a time. Cold periods would have pushed humans back to the south, but in the later, shorter periods there is evidence to suggest that settlements survived this period, but hunted smaller game and probably just toughed it out. There is also a big difference between winter and a full-on ice age, particularly in densely forested areas.
The earliest evidence of a Homo genus settlement in the U.K. is from around 700,000 B.C., and Homo heidelbergensis was dropping bones for us to find 450,000 years ago. If we're looking at the idea of large, hominid species foraging to survive all year round then obviously it was possible for them to survive quite happily - we just don't know because the things they made, used and ate are almost impossible to detect in an excavation site beyond a certain point.

Farming was developing around 20,000 years ago, but way over in the middle east, and probably didn't reach the U.K. area until 7-5,000 years ago by even the earliest estimates. Before that it was likely that we forest gardeners, modifying the landscape to suit our needs and promote the growth of useful plants, but it's very difficult to say how far back that went.

Paleoanthrobotany is fascinating, but mostly guesswork, experimentation and assumption. We know from core samples that this plant was around 15,000 years ago, we know from speaking to hunter-gatherer cultures around the world that they know how to process it to remove a toxin or make it palatable, and we can analyse it to find a calorific or nutritional value. But we cannot say for certain that our ancestors, 15,000 years ago, ate that plant - we can only say that it's likely.

So much of our common cultural assumptions about our ancestors is based on a Victorian analysis of early remains - 'these guys didn't have wheat and cattle so they must have been savages, eking out an existence and barely able to survive'. But when we visit tribes and cultures elsewhere in the world that live wholly or partially on wild food they seem happy, have a cultural structure, have elaborate religious ceremonies and so on. Why would our ancestors have been any different?

 richprideaux 09 Mar 2017
In reply to Jim C:

Cook it well!

For pheasant the breast is easily removed (stand on the wings, grab the legs and pull up - the breast meat should be displayed without plucking) and can be cooked over most stoves. It dries out easily though so a stew/stock/sauce kind of thing is probably better than grilling or frying.
 RyanOsborne 09 Mar 2017
In reply to Bobling:

> Wow, I thought I was the only person in the world ever to read that book! The last chapter 'Reflections' is just a beautiful commentary on how divorced we have become from our forefathers.

I was actually referring to the film, which is brilliant - all hand shot on a little film camera. I haven't read the book but would like to, my brother said there's a fascinating bit where he thinks he's lost his axe, and spends hours frantically searching his cabin for it.
 robal 09 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

I hunt and grow my own veg, 4 hours a day would be possible but if you were to spend 6 hours a day hunting and then 2 tending to crops you could be self sufficient. the thing is with hunting some times you can be out for 20 minuets and walk home with enough to feed you for a week, others you can be hours with out seeing a thing. Over a week, 4 hours on average a day i think that could be reasonable.

I shoot a mix of duck, goose, pheasant and pigeon. The main problem is the hunting seasons constrain you to hunting vermin (pigeons, rabbits and squirrel) during the summer, rightly so there is no sense in extending the hunting season as you need to allow stuff time to recover, and as such protein wise you would have to change to legumes during these times.

People are disconnected from the food they are eating. I have given freshly shot geese to people and shown them how to prepare it they have been horrified with the plucking, dressing and gutting of the animals. i do think that if you are prepared to eat meat then you should at least dress an animal at least once to get a sense of what you are doing every time you buy a pack of chicken breasts.
 RyanOsborne 09 Mar 2017
In reply to robal:

>People are disconnected from the food they are eating. I have given freshly shot geese to people and shown them how to prepare it they have been horrified with the plucking, dressing and gutting of the animals. i do think that if you are prepared to eat meat then you should at least dress an animal at least once to get a sense of what you are doing every time you buy a pack of chicken breasts.

Absolutely. We've moving onto a sailing boat soon, and will hopefully be able to get all of our protein from fishing. Mostly spearfishing so that we can be 100% selective of species and size. Then we'll prepare it completely ourselves. I think hunting certain (not overstocked) local animals, and fishing for fast breeding and plentiful fish is probably the most sustainable form of food (certainly protein) available.
 wintertree 09 Mar 2017
In reply to richprideaux:

> t dries out easily though so a stew/stock/sauce kind of thing is probably better than grilling or frying.

Dice it into cubes 1 cm on a side and fry with garlic in a searing hot pan for 90 seconds whilst constantly moving it round with a spongler, then stir in a bit of red berry jam. Works a treat for pheasant, duck and pigeon breasts.
Post edited at 11:14
 Ann S 09 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

If you like hedgerow foraging, here's another you can try at this time of year-young hawthorn leaves, which used to be known as 'bread and cheese' by country folk.
 Bimble 09 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):
We are lucky enough to supplement our (reluctantly) bought food with either foraged, hunted, home-reared or home-grown fruit, veg & meat.
The hedgerows on our land (8 acres) supply a surprisingly large amount of fruits in season (blackberries, damsons, sloes, wild strawberries), as well as having apple trees as part of the hedges. We've got a brook running through that provides me with wild brown trout when I get time to chuck a fly at them, and we breed & rear our own flock of Jacobs for lamb meat (chump steaks for dinner tonight). Chickens & ducks provide eggs & duck meat (we ate the cockerel after too many early mornings, so no self-sufficiency in chicken yet!).
The missus grows a fair bit of veg in a few beds out back & in the greenhouse, and fruit bushes in the garden do gooseberries and raspberries.
I provide venison (muntjac mostly) from deer stalking in adjacent land, as well as rabbit, pigeon and pheasant/partridge (when in season).

Doing all this is hard work at times, especially as both of us work full time, but the satisfaction of eating something wild or reared by us is massively enjoyable.
Post edited at 18:53
 aln 09 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

Great thread, excellent contributions from summo and richprideaux. I have the Food for Free book and I've eaten a fair amount of plants from the book. Unfortunately, for me the problem is that while lots of wild plants are edible, i.e not poisonous, lots of them don't taste very good.
Jim C 10 Mar 2017
In reply to wintertree:

> Dice it into cubes 1 cm on a side and fry with garlic in a searing hot pan for 90 seconds whilst constantly moving it round with a spongler, then stir in a bit of red berry jam. Works a treat for pheasant, duck and pigeon breasts.

I had not considered carrying garlic and red berry jam in my bike panniers, but they are now on my list ( small amounts )
 richprideaux 10 Mar 2017
In reply to aln:

Last one - also consider getting a generic wild flower identification book that separates the species by visual characteristic, not alphabetically. It's the one big failing of Food for Free - it just lists everything alphabetically and that's not much use if you're stood in front of a hedgerow wondering what the purple flower is...

I like this one (division by flower colour, but does list some edible things like Wood Sorrel as toxic because they contain a small amount of something dodgy)

http://amzn.to/2m9ylN0
In reply to richprideaux:

You will be pleased to know (i hope) that while googling about hunting rabbits etc your youtube vids about choosing air rifles came up independently of your presence on UKC.
 the sheep 10 Mar 2017
In reply to idiotproof (Buxton MC):

Interesting, whats the weapon of choice? I plumped for a HW97K .22 for a robust yet quality rifle for bunny and pigeon bagging.

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