How to Survive a Food Shortage (Emergency Food Tips)

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[00:00:58] Visit Fishingbooker.com and book your trip today. Fishingbooker. Fishing trips made easy. Well, all right. Welcome back to the Survival and Basic Badass Podcast, Kevin and Chuck.

[00:01:21] Today, well, we're going to talk about food when the power goes out, right? So things, you know, things can get hairy. And so I kind of wanted to get back to the basics. We just did an episode on, you know, how to turn the lights on when the power's out. Then we did how to find and store water. And now, you know, back to the basics. Let's talk about food, right?

[00:01:48] Because food turns out like foundation of life kind of thing. You know, it's one of those big ones, right? Like water and air. You know, you need those. So we're going to break down to it about, one, you know, what you should be doing for your basics. But two, like, what do you do when it like gets cold outside and it's wintertime? We're going to cover it all. But make sure, you know, this is your kind of thing. You like and subscribe. We always appreciate that.

[00:02:17] Yeah, let's jump right into it. So just real quick, Kevin, you know, we always talk about a two-week food storage should be the norm for everybody. I mean, obviously, you know, people are like, oh, we need a year of food storage. And that's great. And we want you to get there. But, like, everybody should kind of have two weeks worth of food. Whether you're a prepper or not. Yeah. Or is that even doable? Or what do you do in a normal pantry and without your long-term food storage or whatever? What do you do?

[00:02:47] Yeah, well, I think a lot of most people should at least have, you know, a selection of canned foods. You know, just basic stock of stuff that you use regularly. You know, canned vegetables. Yeah. One of the ones that I think a lot of people don't pick up because it seems gross is potted meat, right? So they call it down south. You know, canned meats. Canned tuna fish. Canned chicken. Those are great things. I know people had spam recipes for you in the past.

[00:03:17] Yeah, I was talking trash about spam and I got all sorts of hate mail over it. Mm-hmm. But, yeah, I'm not a fan. Not a fan of spam. But, I mean, anything like that. Anything, you know, canned. Stuff that you would normally use. Spam isn't on that list. But, you know. Now it's not on your list. Who doesn't like a tuna fish sandwich? You know, chicken salad sandwich. Who doesn't like that? I mean, that should be stuff. Yeah, commies.

[00:03:45] That should be stuff that you have in your cabinet regardless. Canned vegetables. I know I've got a stockpile for years on canned corn and canned green beans. I draw the line of canned asparagus. That just seems – I haven't eaten it. I don't know. But it just seems gross. Oh, my wife just bought a ton of asparagus plants like already – Already growing? Yeah, growing. But like they came like dried, you know, over the – you know what I mean?

[00:04:13] Where they're just like dry roots and you just drop them in. And so, yeah, we're excited about that. Like, dude, like hundreds of – yeah. No, we got like rows, like a 30-foot row of asparagus. So we're not messing around anymore. But anyway, so one of the big things with that is you want to have stuff that you're actually – your family wants to eat, right? Right.

[00:04:37] So that's where they talk about, you know, buy things in redundancy like when it's on sale or when they have the buy one, get one or whatever like that. You just buy the extra of your normal staples. You know, it's cool that people want to eat fresh all the time and that's how it should be. You know, I love that life. But, you know, it's – not everybody can go to the grocery store every three days. And obviously, if you have a big garden, then you don't have to worry. You got two weeks in the garden.

[00:05:07] You know, we could talk about that a little bit. But, you know, buy things that you're going to eat. And like Kevin said, you could add a pancake mix to that would be a big, you know, extender. I mean, honestly, you can buy the big bag for $10 at Sam's Club. That's going to be two weeks of breakfast right there, you know? Right. Oatmeal is another one that stores well. You know what I mean? You get the big containers of the oatmeal. Absolutely.

[00:05:32] If you do the crappy corn syrup syrup, that stuff's like nothing. I mean, it's like $3 for the gallon jug or whatever at Sam's Club. That's no big deal. Again, we all want to be healthy. I get that. And you find a way to incorporate these things. You know, it just takes a little more outside the box to have long-term healthy options and maybe just a little bit more money. You know, that's how it comes down to.

[00:06:01] Everything is time, money, and, you know, like that. Yeah. You know, dried beans, dried rice, those are all great things that you can just stick it in a container and forget about it. Yeah. Honestly, a lot of those carry a long time. You know, but even having an extra loaf of bread in the freezer or something, you know, every time. Maybe being able to bake bread, right? Right.

[00:06:23] Maybe have the flour and the stuff where you're like, hey, I'll be able to bake three loaves of bread if things, you know, go south. And then that'll extend our time, right? That way you're getting nice, fresh, healthy, good stuff. Right. And yet it's still something. And if you store flour properly, you can store it for a long time. Same with sugar. So let's get into it. So when people think survival and off-grid, they're not thinking, oh, I have a pantry full of food.

[00:06:52] You guys were hoping for, well, what do I do when the power is not coming back on, right? Right. It's been two weeks. Two weeks is great, but. And now I got a big problem, right? As preppers and survivalists, that's the big, like, the scary question. Yeah. And the truth is, if you're listening to a prepper podcast, you probably already have two weeks of food. You know, that's not your issue. Right. So let's jump into it. Yeah. What do we do, Kevin?

[00:07:20] How am I going outside my house and finding food? Yeah. Well, one of the big ones that I think is overlooked by a lot of preppers is foraging. And foraging can be tricky. You know, if you, you can't just like learn, you know, basic foraging, you know, on the fly, you know? And every place is different too.

[00:07:45] You know, if you live in Alabama, it's going to be completely different type of foraging than in Minnesota or, you know, Spain. Or Ireland, you know? Absolutely. So one of the big things, a lot of the local areas offer classes and tours you can do. And it might not be like that local, right? Like they might not have a guy who does a class in your town, but you probably have one in the next county or something like that.

[00:08:15] Now, Kevin's in New York and New York City, where people don't really think of foraging, to be honest. They might think of dumpster diving. That's kind of like foraging. It is. You don't think of, yeah, it's the city version. But there's this guy, Wild Man Steve Brill. He actually runs classes and you can find his website and he gives tours. I checked, he's still doing it. Yeah.

[00:08:41] And there are tours scheduled right now that you can sign up for in New York, where he takes you to Central Park. They had one in Long Island he had coming up. And they go around Central Park and they basically put together a meal. But I understand. We maybe don't all have time for, you know, hey, I can't go do a foraging class. Although I got to say, that's kind of a cool thing to do, especially if you do it local to you.

[00:09:07] Now, he offers an app that you can put on your phone and you just go through like by name and he shows you a picture, what it looks like, how to cook it and that kind of thing. There's a bunch of apps. There's ones where you can just take a picture of any plant and it tells you if it's edible. That's not him. But, you know, there's things out there that you can do a bunch of cool apps that you can put on your phone.

[00:09:37] And it might be a good idea. And I would say buy some paper books because, you know, the really crazy preppers, the ones who think that there might be a cyber attack or an EMP, they might tell you that maybe your phone goes away. Right. Maybe you don't have access to your apps. So just checking that, you know, you might want to keep a hard paper book too.

[00:09:59] And actually, if you actually learn stuff, start going out and picking out some of these plants out of your backyard and eating them and learn to recognize them. I just like add one or two to my repertoire, you know, each year. Like I'll be like, oh, that one. And then I'll just like pick up and eat them whenever I see them and be like, oh yeah, that's one of my. And you hope that the dog wasn't out peeing on it earlier. Right. But, you know, a little flavor, right? A little zest. A little zest keeps things exciting. Yeah.

[00:10:29] Well, I mean, one of the good things about, you know, doing some foraging, getting started now is that if you accidentally eat something awful and make yourself sick, you can still go to the hospital. You know what I mean? Yeah. The truth is that there's very few things that you can poison yourself with by eating in your yard that you can't get straightened out with, you know, with a doctor visit. You won't always have a doctor visit.

[00:10:57] Better to get sick now than, you know, after the power goes out. Kevin, I prefer not to get sick at all. I'm just saying. I do that shit to me myself all the time. Drink questionable water. I seem to recall a video where you sprayed yourself with homemade pepper spray. Yeah. Yeah. It was not. It wasn't great. So, yeah, you make some questionable choices. I know. All right.

[00:11:23] So the next step would be maybe a garden, maybe growing some stuff. Now, you're a big gardener, right? Yeah. I am a big fan of gardening, homegrown. Now, one of the things, though, is having the garden set up. You don't want to do the power goes out and, oh, miraculously, it happens right in the beginning spring. Yes. That's the best. All right. Great. So now you can go plant your seeds. Where? You're going to dig up your lawn?

[00:11:52] I would dig up my lawn. Does your grass, does your lawn have decent soil for growing stuff that's not grass? I mean, there's a lot of variables there. You know what I mean? If you're already doing a small garden, you can make a bigger garden pretty easily. Yes. You know, you can switch over and upscale. You have the seeds ready. You have even the raised beds. You have the potting soil, maybe. You have stuff set aside. You have your compost bin going. You're ready to go.

[00:12:23] You can upscale that garden, you know, especially if you have a basic experience growing some tomatoes, growing some lettuces, growing some vegetables, zucchinis, and squash. But you want to get started on something like that now. At least if you have the land to do it, you know? If you're living in an apartment complex, it might be a little bit trickier. But we also did a show on guerrilla gardening, you know, where you sneak in other people's property and grow your vegetables and stuff in their property.

[00:12:52] Definitely a good way to do it is the guerrilla gardening because then you don't have to. You know, remember we talked about like potatoes along the sidewalk, like you have the secret hidden. You guys know I like Rick Austin. The secret garden of survival. Secret garden of survival. He's awesome. And also you might know him as the host of Prepper Camp. He also has the secret greenhouse of survival.

[00:13:18] Now, I've actually read through and a very big fan of the secret garden of survival. I've purchased the secret greenhouse of survival, but I haven't read all the way through it yet. I have to dig deeper into that one and find out if that's really going to be the trick. But I do know that I am a big fan and he's got some great gardening ideas on that. Now, there's a lot of things like Rick Austin's books. He's got some great stuff. He really does.

[00:13:47] He basically has it where it kind of takes care of itself, which is nice. Like, you know, he's got they had him on. He was actually on Doomsday Preppers back in the day. And they have him going out with like five gallon buckets and just filling them with fruit and vegetables. And if you can and preserve, you can have abundance for all year long. But this takes time and set up.

[00:14:14] And his cool thing is you don't even recognize it as a garden. You know, like you look at it and it's just like, oh, that guy's yard. Somebody comes in and takes this guy's food storage and it doesn't matter. He's going to the backyard. He's still going to live. Right. He's got it worked out. The cool thing, too, there's a lot of plants, a lot of root vegetables, a lot of lettuces and things that will really carry on into the colder weather into the fall. Yeah. Carrots and potatoes are great for that sort of stuff.

[00:14:44] You can dig them up almost any time of the year. And you're good to get into the ground. You know, sometimes you get frozen down there pretty, pretty good. But no, absolutely. Absolutely. So the next thing I would say, so we have gardening, we have foraging. Kevin, what do we do when it starts to get cold out, though? What happens with my garden? There's no garden, nothing coming up anymore.

[00:15:12] It's too late in the year. I guess we could extend it with the greenhouse, right? Yeah. And you can do cold frames. Again, those things let you start early and they let you end late. But then it kind of runs out. Right. And what do we do? Right. And if you have to build a greenhouse on the fly, you can do it with some clear plastic and some PVC pipes and whatever you've got around. You can make a little greenhouse, you know. My plan is to make it. It's going to look like trash, but you know what I mean?

[00:15:42] Right. Who cares? My plan is to make a cold frame out of the car. Just use the windshield and kind of line your vegetables up on the dashboard. Up along the dashboard. That's how I imagine it. That's how it is in my mind's eye. All right. So anyway, so what do we do when it gets cold and those things aren't growing out of the ground? Or what happens when things go bad in the wintertime? Right. Right. All right.

[00:16:11] So number one, the first thing, everyone's like, well, I'm going to go hunting. Are you going to go hunting, Kevin? Yes. Everybody's going to go hunting. Everyone is going to. Everyone that owns a gun, even people that have never hunted in their lives are going to go hunting. During the Great Depression, 80% of the white-tailed deer were gone, just disappeared. That's crazy. Just poaching and hunting. Because the thing is, in a situation like that, you're not worried about repopulation.

[00:16:40] You're not concerned about, well, I only get eight point bucks and above. Nobody gives a shit about that. That's not your rule. No. You shoot a little baby. You shoot anything. And everyone will be doing that. It just takes one buck. You can have one buck with like 30 does out there. And he's like, I got it covered. Don't worry about it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, population will bounce back eventually, but it's not going to be easy to find after the first maybe month.

[00:17:09] Because you don't have 30 does at that point. And that's the problem. I was going to make a reference to rural communities and what people do, how it only takes one buck to, you know. But anyway, moving right along. So we're hunting. But I think if you think outside the box a little bit and you're like, hey, squirrels and rabbits, right? Everyone thinks deer. I'm going to go get deer. Right.

[00:17:37] But now when we add squirrels and rabbits, maybe raccoon or something, possum, I don't know. I don't possum. People actually, if you mix the possum with the deer, you can kind of like really stretch it a little bit and it adds that fat and nice stuff. Maybe possum and rabbit we get together. I don't really know what the best option is. You got to watch some Duck Dynasty maybe for the best recipes on that.

[00:18:05] I know they have books on squirrels and whatever. Yeah. Raccoons are tricky, man. It's, I mean, it's really a lot of trash and I haven't eaten raccoon. People eat rats. I don't want to end on it. Rats are the big one in the city, you know. It's sad. But I mean, raccoons, you want to boil that and then dump the water out before you start cooking it. Better you than me. That's what I would tell you. But all right. So moving right along. The, so hunting is big.

[00:18:34] The more unconventional you're willing to go, I think the more you're going to be able to reef and yield on that. Yeah. And I would recommend having, having, you know, birdshot for your shotgun. You know, 22 is great for hunting rabbit. Birdshot might be better for hunting squirrel and things like that though. All right. When there's hole or learn how to aim. I mean, I recommend some time at the range, you know, recommend some time at the range.

[00:19:01] Uh, I'm reading some prepper book now and the girl's like making headshots with her slingshot on a squirrel. And I'm like, Oh, I'm not sure that's really, I mean, that girl practiced apparently. They didn't say that, but I'm telling you, she's making, and I know I've seen people do it, but I mean, you really got to ask the same person who's doing the bow and arrow and shooting it with their toes and that's that guy. Right.

[00:19:29] Um, so the next thing that's going to put you a step ahead and again, everything, it's kind of like business ideas. The more outside the box you think the better, the less people are trying it. So the more it's going to be open to you. So the next level I think is trapping and trapping turns out like snares are freaking awesome.

[00:19:53] Now snares are illegal for trapping most of the time, but I feel like it's cause they work. They're like, Oh, well it's an unfair advantage. Um, I think they also make the argument that it's maybe a little inhumane cause they're like, Oh, my head's being choked out. It kind of sucks. Cause people imagine their head being choked out. Right. Kind of suck. But I feel like if you held my leg in a trap and left me there for 20 hours and I knew

[00:20:21] I was going to die, I'd be unhappy too. It's not just the choking out. Um, one of the big ones for squirrels is they tie a snare and just let it hang over the branch. What you want to look for is trees that are active with squirrels. You don't want to just pick, Oh, there's a tree squirrel's going to go in it. That's what it works. It's not really, you want to look where the squirrels are going. Now, obviously it's going to be something with acorns or things like that.

[00:20:48] Things that squirrels are excited about, but I got to say, I've seen people catch six squirrels in one tree. Like they just keep, you can get them with the, uh, and there is a lot of squirrels. Do you think, Oh, I have two squirrels in my backyard, but you probably have more than that. There's a lot. There's a lot. There's a lot. My, my wife goes out every morning and throws peanuts for the squirrels. Yeah.

[00:21:17] And once word got out every morning, I go outside. There's like 10 squirrels just in the front yard, like watching the front door, waiting, waiting for her to come throw some peanuts. So, I mean, that's all they're already, already primed it. To show up every morning. And I think one of the things I had read was they were saying that, that basically when a squirrel gets taken out, the other one is coming for a stash. Like they know about it.

[00:21:43] You know, like they know, Oh, that guy's been storing them over there and they're just coming to steal it. So if you catch the one guy, somebody else is moving in and so on. And that keeps like fulfilling. So that's, that's something. Another thing with traps, there's, there's a bunch of books out there on trapping. And I would say trapping is a skill you learn. We did do an episode on that. That was actually in New York.

[00:22:09] One of the bigger things that I always got annoyed that like New York makes you do an archery class for hunting. They make you do a rifle class. They make you do a trapping class. They're all separate classes for your permit to, or licensed to hunt. Right. Um, but they never taught you anything. Like all the classes were like, don't shoot somebody. Don't shoot somebody. Don't shoot. Which is good.

[00:22:35] I mean, that's important, but they also, it would be cool if you were like, Hey, you need to keep your mouth shut when you're out with the deer. You need to not put on the cologne or smoke the cigar while you're out hunting the deer. It's weird though. Cause you watch those movies with the fifties and stuff and they're chugging beer and smoking cigars. And I don't know how they do it, but I haven't been able to do that. Um, I actually haven't tried smoking a cigar while I'm hunting, but maybe I should, maybe

[00:23:05] you should give it a go. It'll be enjoyable. I don't know. You know, I don't know what I'll find, but with that, what my point is, is it's experience. You realize, like, I gotta say when I started hunting, I found I had to be further back from the animal because I'm too fidgety and noisy. And so I just had to learn to be a better shot. Right. So that I can be far back that he's not going to hear me or smell me, uh, learning things

[00:23:34] about being downwind or upwind. You know, those things matter a lot and you have to, uh, you know, be aware of what's going on there. So maybe start trapping, get into it now while things are good. And then you'll be ready when things go bad. That's how that works. Again, there's books on everything. Yeah. One of my favorites. Yeah. Ragnar's 10 best traps is awesome.

[00:24:02] I know that was available on Amazon. That's where I bought it. Uh, his are less conventional, like more outside the box. Um, he also has one on man trapping. I'm just saying that might be something you're into, uh, but they have a lot of cool things. A lot of them are snares and deadfalls. Um, but also you would do yourself a lot of good if you went and bought a lot of foot

[00:24:30] traps over at, you know, Gander or Dix or whatever, most places, there's no issue going and buying those. If you don't have a trap or permit or whatever, they don't care. Most of them, I don't know every state, you know, California, it's probably, they probably don't even sell that shit. They'd be like, no, now that's wrong. But, um, I, I don't know what y'all do out in California, but, uh, there's things like that.

[00:24:56] Another thing that people never think about in my mind is fish. Right. One fishing is awesome, but two fish trapping is awesome. So you guys have seen those minnow traps that are like made out of chicken wire where it like has a cone that funnels in. And so they have, they can go in, it starts at a big hole and then it becomes a little

[00:25:23] hole and then they're trapped in the inside. Um, you could do that on a bigger level with, you know, in a street, right? They take rocks that used to be a big Indian thing where they would take rocks and make like a big V on a, a flowing river. And they would like funnel them into one section. So like water is still passing through, but the fish are the bigger things are funneled

[00:25:52] in and ended up in like a small pool where then they can go either drain the pool out or they can smash a rock on them, whatever Kevin does. Now, again, all these trapping things, snares, a lot of these, they're called a weir. I believe it's the trap where it's a V and you put it in there, but, um, they, uh, most

[00:26:17] of those are illegal all the time, but they're not illegal when the world ends. Right. I'm just saying if the government isn't coming to help you, they're probably not coming to yell at you about your trap. Yeah. A lot of people, I think a lot of people in survival situations overlook fishing, especially if you don't have like a pond or a lake right on your, right on your property, you don't even think about it. But, um, I think that the, you know, you might be able to fish a little bit longer than you're able to hunt.

[00:26:44] You might be able to find fish longer than you're able to find, you know, white tail deer. Um, absolutely. But, uh, so I wanted to also talk about, um, uh, some of the long-term food storage. I know a lot of you guys have, uh, have gotten some of the different stuff and there's a lot of different companies that you can check out. Um, emergency essentials is an interesting one.

[00:27:11] They, they do like a fruit and veggie kit where it's all like dried fruits and vegetables. Um, so there, there's like a, what is it? 283 servings for 235 bucks. That's, you know, uh, for Patriot three month supply of food is, uh, 697. Um, ready wise, they have a three month supply for $545. Uh, my Patriot supply is another, um, another one.

[00:27:40] And, uh, they have, they have deals. All these companies have deals all the time. They have deals all the time. Uh, my Patriot supply was three months, uh, 2000 calories a day for 497. I gotta say that's pretty cool. Cause if you figure that's three people for a month, you, you've knocked out your, you know, for your most families, you've knocked out your two week food supply. I mean, honestly, Hey, if you have a family of six, 497, you got your two week food supply,

[00:28:10] right? Right. So my, my dog is whining. I don't understand. So, yeah, but I mean, regardless with all these things, do a little bit of research. Cause some of these companies will say it's a six month supply, but that's a thousand calories a day. Like you're already at half rations. Um, some of them just taste like straight shit, you know, be honest with you. Some of them are fucking awful. And, uh, you might want to, you might want to like do a little bit of research.

[00:28:37] You don't want to be in cardboard for six months at, at half calories, you know? No, absolutely. And when you see those six months supply, that's for one person. That's not, you know, that's not your whole family. Right. Yeah. Oh, we have a year of food supply. I bought a year, Kevin. For me. You guys are on your own. Yeah. But that's the thing I will say. I mean, I know I've been a big proponent of this for a long time is buying a big bag of

[00:29:07] rice keeps bellies full. Right. Um, it's not protein, but you don't have your kids crying that they're starving to death when you have 50 pound bag of rice and a 50 pound bag of rice. It's pretty cheap and goes a long way. And I gotta say, if you, when you look at like the 30 year shelf life food storage, you're bang for the buck.

[00:29:33] You're actually can do really good going and buying the pancake mix at Sam's club and throwing it out every two years and for all the calories. And then it goes, you know, past that. So just think about that. You could maybe do good, but if you're like a set it and forget it kind of guy, then that's where the longterm becomes huge. Right. Right. I did put a link in the, in the show notes.

[00:30:02] That's going to get you guys, you know, discounts and, and good things and, and help support the show, that kind of stuff. But you know, you need to, uh, you, you need to plan ahead. This is the stuff you buy beforehand. You know, the foraging books are something that you buy before the lights go out. Right. Um, you know, going and getting familiar with what's in your yard.

[00:30:27] And honestly, sometimes when I'm out cutting the lawn, I'm like, Hey, there's something useful over here. And I start leaving a bigger area and you let that one thing thrive, you know, in your property. Right. Um, you know, and then they end up escalating. Like somebody I think must've planted raspberries, blackberries, something in on my property. And when I got there, there was like a bush and I just kept like cutting around it with

[00:30:57] the lawnmower instead of running it over. Like I would normally do, you know, it took my wife yelling at me a few times. But I mean, you got to trim it every once in a while. You know what I mean? But after I learned the technique of driving outside, you know, cause I'm like, it's all gotta be the same height, you know? Right. Right. She'll tell you how, how I think. And, uh, she tells everyone.

[00:31:20] And, uh, but you need to, uh, when you start letting it grow now, I have like 50 bushes and it's like a 20 by 20, you know, section of, of berry bushes. And it was just when I left it alone. Three raspberry bushes about 10, 15 years ago. And now I've got a huge, you know, a huge section of the yard is raspberries. Fruit and nut trees are so huge. Like game changers on your property.

[00:31:49] If you're in the South, think nut trees. I don't, I don't know how well they do all in the North and stuff, but we can throw pecan trees and, and things like that. And I mean, if you realize the calories that you get out of nuts, it's amazing. And you can really, you know, they're so calorie dense and protein and you can really up your stuff. But if you learn things like, Hey, I have black walnuts. Hey, I can boil that or acorns. Hey, I can, you know, figure out how to get that.

[00:32:17] That that's not something you want to figure out after the lights go out. Right. Right. If you have, I have a bunch of oak trees on my, on my property and, and acorns taste terrible. Yes. If you, you know, if you treat them properly though, they're not bad. You can make flour out of them. You can make a lot of stuff out of them. Right. But I mean, it's, it, one of the things that you should really do is go around your property and identify the plants and the, and the trees that you have on your property already.

[00:32:47] And think about what you might want to add, you know, plant an apple tree, plant a couple of apple trees. I mean, if I was in New York, like Kevin, there would be a lot of apple trees on my property. Cause that's something, you know, actually my property that I left in New York, I think I had six apple trees. Ask me how many apples I ate out of my tree in the entire seven years. Squirrels man. Squirrels get them before they're running. Squirrels man. All the time. I would say one of the secrets of the pros is to plant garlic around the base of your fruit trees.

[00:33:17] That really deters the deer. Right. Not so much the squirrels. Squirrels don't give a shit. Squirrels didn't give a shit. Those, you just got to get out there with the gun, start popping heads. That's it. Kevin, that's horrible. But just make sure that you're eating the squirrels when you're shooting them in that. But maybe that's the thing though, right? Maybe your garden, you're like, oh, that damn rabbit in my garden all the time. Well, turns out that rabbit could be dinner.

[00:33:48] And we didn't even touch on livestock. Kevin, livestock are a whole other game changer, but obviously it depends where you live and what you can do. Now you guys have heard me push and I do practice what I preach with rabbits. I have a lot of rabbits and there's a lot of rabbits in my freezer. And that's kind of cool. That's a great meat source that's cheap and easy.

[00:34:13] I had bought a book like feeding meat rabbits for free or something like that. And it was about all the different things growing in your yard. I got to say, if you have pet animals like that, I said pets, but if I think with your pets too, if you can find out what these animals eat that grows around where you are and start incorporating that, you know, like, like doc, we use that, that like bitter doc, they call it.

[00:34:42] My rabbits love that. Right. We have sweet gum trees everywhere. I can't get rid of them. Like they're the ones that drop these like little piney balls that are crazy, but I can throw in branches and my rabbits are like, yes. And you know, they lay off the feed cause they're down for eating all the other stuff. Right. And you can make it where they're either free or almost free to raise.

[00:35:10] And that's the thing, like same thing with chickens and free range and that kind of stuff. Yeah. And that is, that would be a, another, you know, thing to start, start ahead of time. Chickens are great. Eggs are a great source of protein. And like you said, if you have them out, if you let them free roam, they can do most of their, you know, most of their foraging on their own. Exactly. Very low food. I've got a, uh, a fox in the neighborhood that's been snatching up everybody's chickens,

[00:35:40] but mine are safe. Mine are safe. My, my wife has like a murder of crows that live in the yard. And every time they start squawking, she goes out there and chases the fox off again. Well, that's it. You just show it up on top of it. Right. Yeah. And can I recommend a thermal scope? Maybe not in New York, but the rest in free America and free America, you can do anything you want. Yeah. You know, you can do it, whatever you like, but, uh, yeah, I don't know. I don't even know if that's right.

[00:36:10] I'm sure there's certain times you can shoot foxes or something. I would never do it. I just, I read in a movie, um, read about it in a book, but read about it in a book and saw it in a movie, something. Uh, one of the things like, so the rabbits, I know with mine, my biggest thing is, is butchering takes time. Right. Yeah. So it is, it is a thing. Uh, you know, I watch these videos and people are like, yeah, I just shake the guts. They come right out of the rabbit. I don't know about any of that.

[00:36:39] Um, mine it's, it takes a minute. Yeah. It takes more. So butchering the effort on mine, I would say I could have three times the amount of meat in my freezer, uh, at a minimum of what I do if I was more on top of it and faster, but I'm still butchering a lot of rabbits and doing. And, and like I said, now that I'm supplementing their feed with, uh, with the different, um,

[00:37:07] you know, stuff that's growing in the yard, it makes it a lot cheaper and a lot easier to do. Uh, so that's something to be aware of. I do find it tricky to find people who sell rabbits that aren't the same people I bought rabbits from before and trying to bring in new life and fresh whatever. So they're not all inbred and whatever. I don't know how much that's a big deal.

[00:37:32] I know they talk about illness and stuff like that comes with too much inbreeding or whatever, but you know, that that's a thing, but, uh, we do good with it. I like them. Uh, thoughts. You're there. I think that's, that's about all we got for, uh, today. So the easy thing, remember the easy out is just buy some long-term food storage. My Patriot supply sponsor of the show, put it in the show notes, got a link for you, but

[00:38:00] otherwise I would say stay safe and we will talk to you guys next week.