Survival Hunting Includes Spear Fishing, Bow Hunting, Trapping and Snares

Learning efficient survival hunting methods will make your long-term survival prospects infinitely better. However, hunting in a post-apocalyptic landscape does not necessarily mean using a gun and, in fact, rifles and handguns have many disadvantages when hunting.

The sound of the bullets will scare off other prey, as well as attracting attention to you. The mechanical parts can jam and rust, and you have the use of the gun only while you have ammunition.

Survival Hunting Skills

Hunting comes in two main forms. You use long-term traps and snares, which you set up and leave, returning every day or two to check. You can also choose immediate-reward hunting where you actively pursue and hunt down the game.

Immediate-Reward Hunting

Fortunately, a large amount of American wildlife around the country is edible and provides a good amount of meat, but you will still need to hunt quietly. To help you do this, you may want to learn the following immediate-reward survival hunting skills:

• Bow and arrow — You can get almost as much force behind an arrow from a well-strung bow as you can from a small caliber pistol. A good bow will allow you to fire accurately over a hundred yards without startling the animal and any arrows that miss can be picked up and reused. You will need to work on your upper body strength to allow you to shoot farther and hold the archer’s pose for longer.


• Fishing — If hunting animals through the woods is not your thing, learning to fish properly will give you a long-term source of protein and fat. You do not necessarily need to spend hundreds of dollars ahead of time on the best equipment, but several hundred feet of fishing line will be invaluable as without it you will be hard pressed to hold onto the bigger fish. Fishing also requires a lot of bait so you may find you need to source some worms or maggots for when the time comes.

Wait-and-See Hunting

Some people find the idea of tracking and actively killing animals unattractive, so it is also worth learning some wait-and-see survival hunting methods. These involve devices that you set up in known locations and go back to check on periodically to see if any animals have been caught. The two best wait-and-see methods are:

• Snares — Using wire, you create a loop, usually placing it in a known animal path, usually for rabbits and other small animals. When the animal comes down the path and the head slips into the loop, the forward movement tightens the loop ensuring a solid catch.


• Snap traps — These typically large metal jaws are spring-loaded to clamp shut when anything disturbs them. You can get hold of them from any hunting store, in a variety of sizes depending on what sort of animals live in the wild near to your home. The jaws tend to be sharp enough to cause a fatal injury to the animal, so in most cases you will not have to worry about having to apply the final blow.

• Traps — Traps are a much more sustainable way of catching prey as they can use a variety of different materials. For example, a stick and a basket with some food underneath will suffice to catch small prey, while a looped rope tied to a bent plant or tree will catch larger prey by the legs. Each of these can be re-used once you have removed the animal from the trap.

Many people dismiss the idea of learning survival hunting techniques ahead of time as barbaric or something that makes them very uncomfortable. However, you should learn to track animal spoors, to make the final kill and to skin and prepare the carcass so it does not come as a surprise or a shock to you when the time comes.

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