Hunting and gathering inside a city is possible. I asked a couple from rural Kenya wherever tribal taboos prohibited their eating dogs, cats, and rats in a survival situation. “No,” she responded, “we can eat those animals even outside of survival. It’s critters with scales, like fish, snakes, and even chicken that are taboo.”
Their prohibitions were not nearly so severe as those found among Muslims, but they could—nevertheless—lead to some nastiness. She quickly assured me that she often ate fish. “Grandma still won’t eat them,” she said, “but I have no problem. Thankfully these taboos are in retreat.”
FOOD FROM LAKES AND PONDS
City or country, it has always been my recommendation based on long experience and observation in dozens of countries around the world that the first, best place for survivors to look for a meal is in bodies of water lying near at hand. Swamps, ponds, rivers, lakes, and even lagoons lying within cities all have potential. There are fish of several kinds, clucks, geese. herons, frogs, crayfish, turtles, and perhaps even muskrats and beaver.
Fish
We have a much more profound concept here than most city survivors realize. I returned to Cuba, where I had spent some of my youth, in the spring of 1994 and again in 1996. Some of the Cubans I met were hungry even for a small chunk of meat or fish. Many were thin to the point of malnourishment from lack of protein. At the same time I noticed that the rivers and lakes were overrun with lunker largemouth bass. Seems nobody had fished for them for 30 years or more. These bass could easily have been trapped or even taken using sport-hunting techniques to some extent. Maybe the locals’ apathy was due to their ingrained dependence on the government. Other than begging, no Cuban I net seemed willing to seize an opportunity to feed himself or herself by taking personal responsibility.
In many instances sport-hunting and fishing techniques violate the basic Rule of Survival Thermodynamics. Remember, this iron rule says a survivor cannot ever put more energy into a survival project than is taken out in the form of food, fuel, and fiber. It’s the same for sport fishing unless the fish are so abundant that one is caught on virtually every cast.
Even if there is uncertainty about whether fish live in a pond, river, or lake, it will cost little to check the water out by construction and deployment of a fish trap. Sometimes, but certainly not always, it is possible to sit quietly in a hidden position near a body of water to observe evidence of fish firsthand. They may be seen rising to the surface for bugs, roiling around in shallow places, creating underwater ripples, or even swimming about.
Fish traps are giant cylinders made of chicken wire or, in a few cases, wooden slats or hardware cloth. One end of the cylinder is covered with a chicken-wire door. A long, thin, tapered cone of chicken wire is inserted in the other end. Fish attracted by bait inside the trap swim into the cone. Once they clear the funnel at its narrow end inside the trap, they are had. Fish are insufficiently smart to figure their way back out again.
Use mesh with 1- to 2-inch openings to build fish traps. Larger mesh sorts smaller fish out, allowing them to escape and fatten up. When survivors are very hungry or do not control the pond, they may elect to construct their fish traps of ½-inch chicken wire so that every edible morsel is retained. Very small, fine-meshed traps of this basic design are used to catch 2-inch minnows and 4-inch crayfish.
In times past, we were able to purchase 6-foot-wide chicken wire. This item seems to have gone the way of dinosaurs. With practical limits of weight and portability, bigger fish traps are better. The initial cylinder forming the body of the trap should be at least 3 feet in diameter and 6 feet long.
About 9 running feet of chicken wire or mesh is needed to form a cylindrical tube 3 feet in diameter. If it is only 4-foot-wide wire, purchase and constrict a second tube of 2, 3-even 4-feet that is securely sewn with thin wire end to end. Any length cylinder can be made by combining two or three.
At its widest, the entrance cone should attach smoothly to the 3-foot-diameter cylinder body. Quickly taper the cone down to about 3 or 4 inches inside the cylinder, depending on size of fish targeted. The small end of the cone should be capable of being bent and adjusted as needed. This wire cone should extend into the trap about two-thirds the trap’s length. Use heavy-gauge #9 wire to strengthen and support the trap as required. This wire can be deployed as hoops around the outside of the cylinder, or the ends, or as supports in the core.
Again, using chicken wire, construct an end for the tube. This flat piece should fit reasonably tightly, keeping the catch inside while still allowing easy access to clean out interred fish. I have caught as much as 30 pounds of fish in a single trap over a 3-day period in traps like these.
Never assume that any pond is cleaned out of fish. During colder periods, fish eat little and move very sluggishly. They may reject any bait till next week when the weather and the water warm slightly. Ideally, bait should be a small can of cat or dog food punctured hundreds of times. Old fish heads, cat guts, fish entrails, and whatever else come to hand to which fish might be attracted can be used. Often I use old roadkills.
Little fish and crayfish swipe soft or fragile small baits out of the trap. This argues in favor of a smaller mesh trap or large, solid baits. Set the trap in a deep hole in a river, or out 12 to 15 feet into a lake.
Exercise caution setting these traps out, even when enemy observation is unlikely. Supposed friends may appropriate the trap’s largesse for themselves. Often I throw these fish traps out without retrieving lines attached. This is a more secure system. Retrieval for checking, emptying, and rebaiting is done with a single grappling hook on a line. Without this gear, it is impossible to check these traps even if you know exactly where they are. Attaching a neutral-colored piece of poly line is not as safe regarding detection by the enemy but will make it easier to haul in your catch. Attach this line out of sight. to a root or branch a foot or more under water. But don’t check your traps too often; continually hooking and hauling in the trap is destructive.
Turtles
These basic-style fish traps modified slightly to a 4- or 6-inch cone opening can also be used to catch turtles. Where they are found, turtles are good food for city survivors. They are often found in great numbers in swamps where there are few or no fish. Catching turtles in traps is a bit tricky. Improperly set traps will drown and waste turtles. One end of the trap has to be up on the bank an inch or two out of the water to provide them a place to breathe. Exposed ends of turtle traps can be hidden a bit with reeds and grass, but hiding is not as easy as fish traps that are 6 feet under the water.
Solid, old, smelly roadkills make excellent bait for turtle traps.
Turtles are dressed for cooking by cutting the bottom shell away from the critter through the soft underbelly hinge. This exposes neck, leg, backbone, and tail meat. Turtle muscle continues to twitch even in the fry-pan an hour after butchering.
Scooter or box turtles have solid shells which, in most cases, must be sawed away. Not much meat on these guys, but enough for a pot of excellent soup.