How sustainable is hunting?

In my husband and my quest to live a sustainable, zero-impact life, we've made the inevitable switch to an organic, non-processed diet. The problem being that organic, hormone/antibiotic-free, grass-fed meat is EXPENSIVE and we're saving up for college and a wedding and we can't afford it. Our current solution is to just eat as little of it as possible, and vegetarianism is an easy switch for me, but he's less than willing to go meatless. So we were considering hunting. A good-sized buck would last us a long time, we would have the option to use every single part of the animal. Only one animal would die for us, and we wouldn't have to worry about the moral implications of factory farms.

If you have some insight into this, it would be much appreciated. I'm not seeing a downside, and that usually means a big one is about to slap me in the face.

 

Around here hundreds of deer and elk are killed every year in traffic. Cars seem to be their only natural predators so their numbers are booming, even with a healthy hunting community. The only downside will be gutting it.

 

The only reason I'm considering this is that I won't have to gut it myself. My grandfather-in-law knows someone. If I had to gut it, I'd probably burst into tears.

 

But you could kill it?

 

no it will not.. If you had a kill that was 180lb, field gut is now 140lb, take home meat.. 100lbs if that.. ( also factor in kill damage) where shot was taken. a bad shot can take out meat, even a worse shot in a hind, could puncture a bladder and piss all you meat up..

do you know what your doing?.

I dont think youll be killing 200lb bucks all the time, mid size deers are more prevalent .. say 4points and doe's / get management tags and you can harvest 10/20 or more deers. youll have chops all the time..... More jerky too ..

you need to take a hunting class to obtain a license in some states.

 

how are you going to manage this in the field.. you can not drag a deer in the woods alone, unless you had a quad or something. they are not permitted on state game lands either. (gutting removes least 20/30lbs)

 

I would not be the one going hunting, it would be my husband, and his grandfather, and knowing them a dozen guys from the neighborhood. Just like I couldn't gut them I also couldn't kill them, but he won't be without help. I suppose past gutting I'm more talking about dressing. Pulling the animal apart into pieces and dividing it for use.

And 100 lbs. of meat would last us a very long time. We only eat 8 ounces per week, and while I realize that meat, even when frozen, can only last a finite amount of time, that's still very much for us.

 

removing fur in one easy step.. leave hang for 24/48hrs . allowing blood to drain or else it will taste Irony..

after this , no different than chopping up a chicken..

 

I'm going to put this out at a tangent since your message body seemed to differ from your message heading.

How sustainable is hunting?

Adopting sensible practices it can be very sustainable - man has been hunting for millenia without things falling out of balance. Indeed, it is modern day agriculture (both arable and pastoral) that has ultimately ravaged the landscape and allowed populations to boom further increasing the problem.

Rather than using just the meat you could also make use of the other by products. Animal furs are far warmer than their synthetic cousins - ask any resident of Siberia!

 

Welcome to the circle of life! Hunting is a sustainable activity, just practice conservation, which in your case seems to not be an issue. Road kill is the easiest attainable meat, and keeps that animals sacrifice from going to waste. Good luck, and success in your new learning adventure.

 

It's strange to me, how gagety hunting has gotten. I bought a used compound bow, having no prior knowlege or experience....I found out I need a sight for it, all types of sound dampeners, all types of this and that. Nonsense.

Practicing without a sight, I found that iut was fairly tricky, but not impossible...

Recently I recieved, for free a recurve bow. Apparently they feel a lot more natural than a compound bow, if you want to shoot instintively (without a sight).


My plan is to get to the point where I can hit bullseye on the target consistantly 10 times in a row (I'm at about 9 outa 10 currently) then move onto small game. Getting good at target practice will reduce any chances of cruel, slow animal deaths. Once I am competant at skinning, gutting and butchers rabbit and squirel, then I'll be able to move on to deer, confident that nothing will go to waste.

 

We harvest deer in the fall/winter during the hunting seasons they last us awhile and we get some decent stock but orison is right you also have to account for disease within the deer population and recently in our area they natural gas industry the deer are potentially drinking contaminated water and its an iffy situation... we used to raise our own pasture fed cows two or three a year or so and pigs that would get us through too but thats been awhile...

But from the comment about the whole neighborhood will likely be with them... that could be a hint towards unsustainable practices... if you get people out there that are willing to shoot anything that moves including young'ns that arent much bigger than a dog thats incredibly detrimental... Try to hold out for the bigger let the little ones grow and reproduce they will hopefully be bigger next year etc etc...

 

my husband and i get all our meat from hunting. we get one mid-sized cow elk per year and live off it the entire year. i'm trying to get to where i can tan the hides for use, as well. keep to being honest, don't kill more than you need and reduce how much meat you eat and a single small animal can likely keep you in dinners for a year. supplement with some goose, duck and fish if you like and you'll be set. make sure you have your hunter's permit.