Preparedness Notes for Tuesday — May 19, 2020

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On May 19, 1796, the first game law was approved in the United States. The law created penalties for hunting or destroying game within Indian Territory. Modern American fish and game laws make “living off the land” nearly impossible, outside of Alaska.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 88 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  7. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

  1. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  2. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  3. A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
  4. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  5. An assortment of products along with a one hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).

Third Prize:

  1. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  2. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  3. Naturally Cozy is donating a “Prepper Pack” Menstrual Kit.  This kit contains 18 pads and it comes vacuum sealed for long term storage or slips easily into a bugout bag.  The value of this kit is $220.
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  5. A transferable $100 purchase credit from Elk Creek Company, toward the purchase of any pre-1899 antique gun. There is no paperwork required for delivery of pre-1899 guns into most states, making them the last bastion of firearms purchasing privacy!

Round 88 ends on May 31st, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.


17 Comments

  1. As a native Oklahoman, having a late 1800s map of Indian Territory prior to statehood on the wall next to my desk, I am confused. What comprised “Indian Territory” in 1796?

      1. Matt, I’m fully aware of the places from which the Indians in our territory came. It was most of the southeastern US at the time. I’m just curious exactly what area was covered by the law in 1796.

    2. Even today in Oklahoma there is Indian land (territory) that you must know. In some towns certain houses are “Indian” and certain parcels of land are “Indian”.
      You need to know them as a hunter and you dang sure better learn them or have a good map as a lawman.

    3. Having just watched some history stuff on that period, it is possible they may have been referring to the Ohio, Michigan area and maybe up toward Fort Detroit and perhaps the whole area west of the Appalachians until the Louisiana Purchase. I think that was still British (to the North), French (to the South) and Indian land back then. I think this was a big, controversial issue.

      I am not sure, but I also think Daniel Boone (and many other frontiersmen) may have been in violation of this law when he made some of his hunting trips to the west.

  2. The land can’t sustain The People living off of it anyway. The Great Depression showed that in Oklahoma with how quick deer, elk and turkey were wiped out.
    30 yrs afterwards there was a small town in western Oklahoma newspaper that the front page was deer tracks discovered outside of town.
    You can’t live off of the Oklahoma allotted 5+ deer, 2 turkeys, unlimited hogs, numerous rabbits, squirrels, quail, dove, fish etc? It’s kinda a yes n no because it’s difficult to obtain these under the current laws and places you would need to travel. It certainly supplements my food annually.
    In SHTF your not going to rely on traditional hunting too much anyway. There’ll be no ATV to the heated stand on a feeder set at 9am. You’ll spot n stalk enroute to check the trot line set at kneehigh baited with corn for turkey and take whatever appears as the menu will change from going after only deer to possum, armadillo etc. you’ll turn down very little if your smart. Then instead of you just taking the backstrap and leaving the rest of the deer like the scum do every year on the ATV you’ll be pulling/packing it out a few miles with your back that’s used to holding up that beer gut while trying to keep watch and make sure no one else takes your work.
    Keep it real and stay safe.

    1. “The land can’t sustain The People living off of it anyway. The Great Depression showed that in Oklahoma with how quick deer, elk and turkey were wiped out.”

      + 1,000,000 internet points.

      And it wasn’t just in Oklahoma. Game populations didn’t return until the 1950s, 1960s, or even in some places the 1970s.

      Anyone who fantasizes about hunting for food in the Post Apocalypse World Order doesn’t realize that there’s only enough wild game in North America to feed 10% of the population for one year. If 90% of the current population dies in year one, what happens in year two?

      And even without the Depression, population growth made it inevitable that some type of fish and game laws would be required to manage wildlife.

      US population 1790: 004 million George Washington is president

      US population 1860: 031 million Abraham Lincoln elected

      US population 1890: 063 million Frontier is closed

      US population 1930: 123 million Great Depression

      US population 1980: 227 million Ronald Reagan elected

      US population 2000: 281 million Y2K

      US population 2020: 333 million ???

      There’s a lot of problems with this country – not just the strain on the environment that the environmentalists used to warn us about, before they joined the open borders crowd – that can probably be explained by population growth.

      Social-economic-political systems – communism, capitalism, democracy, etc. – that may (or may not) have worked when your nearest neighbor was one mile away may not necessarily work when your nearest neighbor is 10 feet away. But that’s a whole ‘nuther topic.

  3. I’ve got a book on Oregon’s fish and game laws from 1914/15. (Was in an old house I bought). It’s about the size of a Louis L’Amour paperback.
    5 deer per year. No more moose hunting. Daily limits were pretty high.
    It’s a really neat piece of history.

  4. Read an interesting book several years ago called “Shadows on the Koyukuk”.

    It was the memoirs of a half white, half native Alaskan. This guy fished, trapped, hunted and largely made his living off the land for a good part of his life starting in the 20s and 30s. And he reported some realities about “living off the land” with no game management.

    He reports in his book that the natives in Alaska in the 1850s were frequently on the edge of starvation. They would hunt out an area and move on to the next. He tells the story of his grandfather or great grandfather having to hang his mother prior to the group moving on during one of the famines at his MOTHER’s direction. She was too old to keep up with the group and told her son that it was his responsibility to kill her so she would not freeze, starve or be torn apart by wolves. He protested and went to the village elder to ask what to do. The elder told him that it was his responsibility and to get on with it. His mother made a noose, threw it over a tree and put it around her own neck. The last thing he did walking away was to grab the rope, pull her up and tie it off.

    His ancestors also hunted down and killed any Inuit people who entered their territory and attempted to hunt.

    The carrying capacity of the land in Alaska is much lower than many other places in North America because it is so far north. But the hunter/gatherer societies were limited in population for a reason. Without agriculture you go through famine on a regular basis just like any other predator. Look at how many wolves and cougar an area can support and that will give you an idea of how many people it can support. Not very many. And wolves and cougar are probably better hunters than man and will eat stuff that men likely will not.

  5. Many years ago I was told a story that I believe happened in the 1940’s. The Army officially was in charge of the legal and judicial system for the eskimos/inuits (not 100% sure which) in Alaska. An incident happened where the chief killed one of his tribal men because he had sexual relations with the chief’s wife. Shot him twice in the chest with a 30-06. There was a trial along the lines of a court martial where the chief explained what he did. It seems that the dead man had a bottle of whiskey and offerred some to the chief’s wife presumably hoping to use the alcohol as a pretext to having sex with her. It worked as he planned. But the chief explained that the man knew and everyone knew that under tribal law the chief would kill him. In other words the man was knowingly committing suicide. The courts martial judge was faced with a dilemma. If he found the chief guilty and the chief was punished the entire tribe would rise up against the Army with disastrous results. And by the native law that the tribe lived under the chief was within his rights. So the judge made the only decision possible. He ruled that the man had committed suicide. The only suicide in history where the man was shot twice in the chest by a high powered rifle.

      1. It was supposed to be a true story told to me in the early 60’s by an old Master Sargent who heard it when he was stationed in Alaska in the early 50’s

        1. Thanks oneGuy.

          It was bugging me all day and night… finally hit me this morning why it sounded familiar. It’s how Clint Eastwood killed himself in Grand Torino, his greatest movie ever IMO. Suicide by a gang of punks.

  6. My father and uncle were young men during the later part of the Depression in the deep South. They told many stories about hunting for food, the bear were gone, deer were almost nonexistent, squirrels were rare with only rabbits and cats being found in decent enough numbers to hunt. It’s their telling that once skinned rabbit and cat are nearly indistinguishable from one another, rabbits went home for supper, cats were traded (as rabbits) for .22 ammo or other valuable consideration. They had a game warden around but, as they tell it, there wasn’t any man foolish enough to tell another man with a gun that “the law” said his kids needed to go hungry. Mostly they say he just kept vagrants and other folk that “Weren’t from here” from hunting in their County.

    They also confirm that the deer population never truly recovered and that only after they returned from WWII did they begin to see deer again with any regularity.

    1. Yes that is the way it was in most parts of the country as told to me by a neighbor who was there. Game Wardens who insisted on enforcing the law were seriously threatened. Only the best ‘hunters’ could find game in NW Montana during those times. The woods are currently crowed with big game. Interest in hunting has already become more ‘interesting’. The saying around here for the last century seems to be making a come back, “if it is brown, it is down”. This is local code talk for you know what…

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