permanently moving to the woods and back to nature.

[bb07]

I would not want the lifestyle of a hunter/gatherer. A diet of meat and berries is fine in the short term but permanently? No thank you, I like my coffee and tea along with a variety of foods. I also like my creature comforts.
I have no desire to completely escape the modern world, but rather just want to leave it behind whenever I wish, on my terms. For the most part I've been able to do that. And I believe that if people can get away whenever they need to, to rejuvenate, to reground themselves, then their overall outlook on life would be vastly improved.

I have an intense dislike of towns and crowds, so being in the bush is a true pleasure, and I'm fortunate that I am able to do that for a good part of the year. I think the trick is in finding the right balance. But like it or not, money, even if only a small amount, is necessary in today's world, unless one wishes to live like a caveman.
As much as we would like to simply walk away sometimes and leave it all behind, I think it's pretty much pure fantasy. To do it for a few weeks or even months is one thing, but permanently?

A person can live on next to nothing if they really want to, but they will also have nothing. We all have our highs and lows, but given time and a bit of thought, I believe anyone desiring to get away will learn to do so without completely trying to escape the modern world, which with all it's faults is I think still better than living like a wolf, constantly looking for it's next meal.

 

[Llwyd]

I can say with some authority that the modern life is pretty good.

In 1973 I was born and my first real memories are from 75. We lived in a small house with no electricity a wood fired cook stove and water heater. Until we hand dug a septic system we crapped in a bucket and filled baths with a kettle. In 78 we got electricity and indoor plumbing by 1980 we were reasonably up to normal. All this while other men walked on the moon and the space shuttle flew sts1 on its maiden voyage.

My first job was age 4 moving bales of hay by rolling them away from the tractor and carrying firewood to be piled on the truck then stacking it in the wood shed later. We ate fish we caught and animals my family hunted and made jams from berries we picked. We had a huge garden to tend and only went to the grocery store about once a month for things like flour and sugar.

We raised chickens and turkeys and I learned never to name you pets. Killing 20 turkeys and cleaning them is a great way to end your childhood. They are easier to get at the store.

At school all my friends loved summer vacation but I hated it. It meant work and lots of it. I thought school was the vacation.

Looking back I remember our first microwave like it was magic and I thought we must be rich when we got our first color tv and vcr.

I was 27 before I started living a modern life as most would define it. I do look back with fondness but a lot of people even my own age cannot understand how we lived like that.

My grandfather still thinks that the repeating rifle is a pretty cool new invention and thinks I had it pretty easy with the new fangled hay balers, chainsaws and ringer washing machines they brought in in the 50's.



I like to go back to the bush but I sure like my gortex fabric and lightweight gear. I also like to grab a bacon cheeseburger as soon as I return.

 

[petrochemicals]

hilarious !

Also cavemen who did everything had a lot lower life expectancy. They had young deaths, not early ones. Whose up for some thumbscrews? (carved from wood)

Closest thing is this bloke

www.ben-law.co.uk/

bye the bye, west midlands REGION, not the county

edit:
just 1000 years ago

infant mortality 9 in 10
low fertility, natural protection.
1 in 3 people live to over 20
few reach over 45, only the landed gentry,( old bearded men where a mysterious rarity)
This would soon reduce the population by 6 billion plus !

 

[rg598]

There was a study that came out a year or so ago, on a specific group/small town near the coast that was largely considered hunter/gatherer. Based on study of the bone composition, they determined that they had a good diet. Similarly, studies have been done on current hunter/gatherer communities, which indicate that people in such communities have more free time. Of course, we are talking about communities here, some of them rather sizable. As other have mentioned, a person alone in the woods will have to work non stop just to fend off starvation and death. That also does not take into account all of the other communities that have been less successful and have died out.

There are two things that I want to toss into the equation. The first is that when we read books about people who have hunted for a living, like the one discussed earlier in this post, where the guy survived on squirrels and rabbit, that is not actual wilderness living. Just like gathering grain from someone's farm is not foraging, hunting rabbits that have become an agricultural pest and feed on produce from cultivated areas, is not exactly wilderness hunting. Next to my apartment I see squirrels all the time. I even see them all the time in the city. Near orchards and farms they are a constant presence. However, I can count on my fingers the number of squirrels and rabbits I have seen in the actual woods over the dozen years or so I have been backpacking. It's just not the same thing.

The other thing is that even if a person can theoretically make it for any period of time in a true wilderness self sustaining living situation, that person will be just as dependent on luck as he would on skills or resources to survive. When you are living day to day, a single injury, or a bad week or month of hunting will end your ability to feed yourself. In a larger group, you have a safety net, where people can care for you, and the risk of failing in a hunt is spread out between the different members of the group. When you are alone, one bad season will put an end to everything.

Of course, we then have the more realistic problems like how to actually hunt. If hunting with a rifle, you will need thousands of rounds of ammunition. Where are they coming from? Then we have the question of, whether it is actually living in a sustainable manner if you have to just stock up on a huge amount of gear and resources before you start. Then it just seems like long term camping.

 

[Llwyd]

In 25 years of hunting I have used about 40 rounds. My cousin is a year older and hunts every allowable species not just the little stuff I do. He has gone through about twice that. We have strict bag limits however.

 

[British Red]

In 25 years of hunting I have used about 40 rounds.

I'm guessing you don't do much pigeon shooting?

 

[Llwyd]

Pigeons live in cities here and we do not have wood pigeons.

 

[British Red]

Ahhhh - that explains the round count...you can do 100 cartridges in a days pigeon shooting easily

 

[rg598]

In 25 years of hunting I have used about 40 rounds. My cousin is a year older and hunts every allowable species not just the little stuff I do. He has gone through about twice that. We have strict bag limits however.

That's because you follow regulations and I presume you hunt large game. If, like the guy in the book in question here, you have to live on squirrel or rabbit (which apparently is not regulated in the UK), even assuming one shot one kill, you will need a lot of rounds to keep yourself fed.

 

[mrcharly]

Sounds familiar.
Born in '67, moved to Australia. Had running water by the time I was 6 but you couldn't drink it - drinking water from a rainwater tank, brought in by bucket. Ditto water for clothes.
Moved to a new house and had lovely water from a tap - a windmill brought it up out of a well to a tank. When it worked.
Had electricity by late 70s - some of the time.
We named the pet lambs, calves; then ate them. No fish, but ducks a-plenty.
After school I chopped wood. Hot water and cooking came from wood-burning stove. Weekends I worked on the farm. School holidays I worked on the farm.

I can say with some authority that the modern life is pretty good.

In 1973 I was born and my first real memories are from 75. We lived in a small house with no electricity a wood fired cook stove and water heater. Until we hand dug a septic system we crapped in a bucket and filled baths with a kettle. In 78 we got electricity and indoor plumbing by 1980 we were reasonably up to normal. All this while other men walked on the moon and the space shuttle flew sts1 on its maiden voyage.

My first job was age 4 moving bales of hay by rolling them away from the tractor and carrying firewood to be piled on the truck then stacking it in the wood shed later. We ate fish we caught and animals my family hunted and made jams from berries we picked. We had a huge garden to tend and only went to the grocery store about once a month for things like flour and sugar.

We raised chickens and turkeys and I learned never to name you pets. Killing 20 turkeys and cleaning them is a great way to end your childhood. They are easier to get at the store.

At school all my friends loved summer vacation but I hated it. It meant work and lots of it. I thought school was the vacation.

Looking back I remember our first microwave like it was magic and I thought we must be rich when we got our first color tv and vcr.

I was 27 before I started living a modern life as most would define it. I do look back with fondness but a lot of people even my own age cannot understand how we lived like that.

My grandfather still thinks that the repeating rifle is a pretty cool new invention and thinks I had it pretty easy with the new fangled hay balers, chainsaws and ringer washing machines they brought in in the 50's.



I like to go back to the bush but I sure like my gortex fabric and lightweight gear. I also like to grab a bacon cheeseburger as soon as I return.

 

[petrochemicals]

Sounds familiar.
Born in '67, moved to Australia. Had running water by the time I was 6 but you couldn't drink it - drinking water from a rainwater tank, brought in by bucket. Ditto water for clothes.

question :

In your opinions how long would the recources last, ie wood, well water, game, if it was not managed, and you did not have acess to transport for bringing things in ?

grey Squirrels are vermin in the uk, and years ago police would pay money for grey squirrel carcasses in an attempt to erradicate them, to let the WEAK AND FEEBLE GIRLY RED SQUIRRELS the chance to repopulate. Its illegal to kill red squirrels at all, destroy there habitat, etc.

 

[tomongoose]

Every one always goes on about surviving off rabbits but with a population density averages 25-37/ha and if you wanted to use them as your main source of food in an active hunter gather life style you would need about 1 a day (assuming a 2 kilo live weight as rabbit is 187 kcal per 100g) so you would need to eat all the rabbits in a 40 acres in a year but that would assume a 100% catch so realistically if you go all primitive I think you would have to trek round several hundred acres trapping non stop. Good luck with that. ( I just googled all the facts and probably have them all wrong )

 

[mrcharly]

question :

In your opinions how long would the recources last, ie wood, well water, game, if it was not managed, and you did not have acess to transport for bringing things in ?

grey Squirrels are vermin in the uk, and years ago police would pay money for grey squirrel carcasses in an attempt to erradicate them, to let the WEAK AND FEEBLE GIRLY RED SQUIRRELS the chance to repopulate. Its illegal to kill red squirrels at all, destroy there habitat, etc.

I think that 'living off the land' is a fantasy and wouldn't work for more than a couple of months.

Living on the farm my parents owned? Well, our own water, enough land to raise sheep and cattle sustainably, about 100acres of woodland + copses of trees for fuel; somewhere like that I think a family could support themselves and have enough surplus food to barter for clothing and other essentials.

 

[Satyr]

This issue is, they live in communities. When you have a division of labor, among a tribe, lets say, you have a better chance at sustainment-hunters, fisherment, farmers, people working on upkeep, etc. When you have only one person doing that-its hard. Les Stroud did it for over a year, in Canada-he had a hard go of it, and said he wouldnt do it again. It was just him & his wife. When its only you, you are, literally, fending off starvation & dehydration, every single day. In a community, you arent, because you have more people doing the same thing, increasing your chances of making good. Even here in the US, the famous mountain men, and the voyageurs, didnt go it alone. They traded among each other, with natives, etc-as well as carrying a LOT of supplies with them, on mule trains. I think, and, this is my personal opinion, that people who want to return to a simpler life, are looking only at the idealistic view of it-the romanticized view. In reality, subsitence living is just that-scratching, day to day, for something to eat-and, again, being alone, or with only 1 or 2 other people, thats not living-thats merely surviving, when you are spending every waking minute hunting/fishing/gathering. Doing it for a weekend is fun-its a break from the realities of life. Doing it every day, is a job-one where, if you fail, you can potentially die.

I agree completely with what you say; lone person living off the land is not possible. I was just pointing out that all the posts of this nature seem to focus on Northern hemisphere or 'Western' countries and scooting off into the wilds - if someone is planning it and are serious why not go the full hog and go somewhere where you cant just throw in towel or use the lack of free space/resources as an excuse. It makes me smile that the same theme appears with each of these threads - the thought of running off to the woods. Are they inspired by watching the programs on the discovery channel? Will there by a rush now on getting back to nature on tropical islands after 'naked and marooned?'

 

[THOaken]

You should visit my website, lets-move-to-the-woods. It's all about primitive living and the ways of ancient man. I'm also in the conceptual phase of a similar project.

http://www.oakenwise.com

Edit: I'm reading things that haven't been discussed in my Primitive Living thread. This is all very much relevant to my project.

 

[Paul Webster]

If you're going back to the way we were, you wouldn't be living in the woods. Where did this daft notion of us 'living in the woods' years ago come from anyway?

I was sure that this whole country was covered in forests thousands of years ago before agriculture cleared the way. I might be wrong though, can't believe everything you see on tv


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