Can Large Game Sustain Your Family in a SHTF Scenario?

Is large game hunting sustainable post SHTF?

Like most people with a mind for preparedness, I tend to spend quite a bit of time thinking about the many different situations that we may someday have to face. Sometimes to get a bit more clarity I reach out to friends and family to get their perspective on how best to tackle a problem that may arise from a survival scenario. It never fails however, that when the topic comes to food storage, somebody says something to the effect of; “I stock more ammo than food, I can always hunt more food.” Some of you may know somebody with the same mindset, others may be that person, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I didn’t ask the big question: In a WROL situation, will we “always” be able to hunt our own food?

It’s hard to say exactly what would happen in a SHTF world. Nobody can say with 100% certainty what exactly will happen or what challenges we will face, and since we can’t know the future we are left to examine the past. In the late 1800’s North America’s deer population was taking a sharp dive to extinction. In fact, by 1890 there was only an estimated population of 300,000 white tail deer left in the United States. The lack of any regulation or conservation efforts created an environment where hunters had annihilated a species that was estimated to have been nearly 45 million in pre-colonial days. It was truly a world “without the rule of law” in regard to game management.

Could Post SHTF hunting lead to the extinction of large game in North America?

Now to put this into perspective, in 1890 the US population was under 63 million people, today we number a staggering 327 million citizens. Although over 100 years of conservation and regulations have reestablished the deer population to near record numbers at around 30 million, I still fear that venison could not be a sustainable food source if our nation’s supply chain were interrupted. Americans are accustomed to eating 222 lbs of red meat and poultry on average every year, and a typical 170 lb buck only yields around 55 lbs of usable meat. For those of you that don’t want to do the math, I’ll happily do it for you. Every species of deer combined would only provide enough Meat to feed the entire US population for 12 days!

I’m not trying to imply that deer will be driven to extinction exactly 12 days after some form of social collapse, there are many different factors that make that unrealistic. According to a 2018 survey, only 43% of American’s report that they even live in a household with a firearm. It’s even farfetched to assume that all 43% of our well armed population will be out setting up hunting blinds and declaring all-out war on Bambi and his family in the midst of whatever unknown chaos the world has been thrown into. However it’s very important to understand a few key points of this animal’s biology.

1. The gestation period for a new fawn is 200 days for a white-tailed deer

2. Twins are possible but single births have a better survival rate

3. Bucks don’t reach a mature weight for 2 ½ years

If even 1% of our population decided that they were going to attempt to satisfy their entire craving for animal protein by hunting large game, they would still be harvesting around 13 million deer annually. Without getting into an extensive conversation about herd management, I think that most would agree that harvesting 40% of an entire species population is a bit beyond devastating. And considering that the relatively long gestation period and typical singleton births, their numbers won’t be able to rebound as fast as our need to continue hunting them. As harvesting at that rate continues we would eventually find ourselves in a situation where it more likely to encounter juvenile sized game and, in order to compensate for the lower body weight, the total harvest number will need to increase. This escalation would likely continue until we have near extinction level numbers and it is no longer feasible to feed even that small number of our population with this game animal.

I know the next thought on many readers' minds will be “deer are not the only large game animal in North America,” and you’re correct. Texas and many other southern states have an abundant amount of feral pigs. It’s estimated that they number around 6 million total feral pigs nationwide and 2.6 million in Texas alone. And while feral pigs are in 46 of our 50 states if you look at a map of population density, you will notice that the densest areas are extremely regional. In fact that map looks astoundingly similar to a map of US growing zones. If you live anywhere below zone 6 it’s very unlikely that this would be an abundant game source unless we have some catastrophic level of climate shift.

Then we have “but there are other large game animals in my area of the country.” Sure the northern states have moose and elk, Mountainous areas have a host of different species of bear, south eastern states have a large population of alligators, there’s even a few areas where wild bison have protected herds. If I were to dive into the litany of other regional large game animals this would turn into something that looks similar to a college textbook and not a brief blog post. However, if you live in an area with an abundance of other game species, I encourage you to run the numbers yourself. I imagine that you will come to a similar conclusion to mine; large game simply will not feed a population of hungry americans.

Without a doubt however, the most abundant large game species in the United States isn’t wild game, it’s domesticated cattle. As of 2019 the US is home to almost 95 million head of cattle, and the cattle industry produced 27.5 billion pounds of beef. Even our entire beef industry is only enough to satisfy about 4.5 months of our protein needs though. The vast majority of all cattle are grain fed, grain feeding cows is a more efficient way of getting body weight up quickly. A typical grain fed cow could weigh up to 1400 lbs at 15-22 months. However, any event that interferes with a feedlot’s ability to get grain to these cattle would force small farms to switch to a different method. Grass fed cattle aren’t fed any supplemental grains and are left to graze a pasture and gain weight in a more natural way. A typical grass fed cow only weighs up to 1200 lbs within 20-26 months though. That is a 14% decrease in body weight and up to 25% increase in production time. That could take our annual production to less than 19 billion lbs and supply our current population with only 3 months of animal protein. All of this is without taking into account the near certain increase in mortality rate that would come after a long term loss of access to antibiotics and other medications that help prop up the cattle population.

Obviously there are many more factors that are likely to contribute to, not only the population of game animals, but the population of human beings left on the planet in the wake of whatever disaster may strike. And while there will always be more questions than answers, we likely won’t have any concrete answers until the day actually comes. The only thing we can do until then is continue to ask the questions, do the research, and each draw our own conclusions. The conclusion that I have come to is that large game alone is not enough to sustainably feed the United States.

So, the rational next question would be: “how sustainable are smaller game animals” and to read my opinion of the matter, check out: Small Game Hunting: Feeding Your Family in a SHTF Scenario