hunt Bambi for a living (failure = starvation),
When I was teaching at Clarks HS I was the second highest paid teacher in the school, except for the wrestling coach who'd been there a dozen years and married into the community. I took home $700 a month. That was after I quite my 2nd job as deputy marshal because the marshal was too dangerous to be around when he had a gun in his possession. During the Arab oil embargo propane was costing $600/month, leaving no room for food, barely enough for electricity and gas. etc... I lived out in the country five miles from Clarks and I took my shotgun and went hunting once or twice a week for meat: pheasant, rabbits, squirrels. I took the shotgun and not the .22 because I didn't want to come home and face the wife and kids with an excuse instead of meat.
In today's economic climate there may be many who think they will shoot to eat, but will bypass much available food: worms, bait fish, dull looking insects, rodents, any kind of bird, favoring instead pheasant, squirrel, rabbit, turkey, doves and deer. Four years ago I purchased two pneumatic air rifles, the manually pumping and break barrel kind, along with several thousand rounds of pellets for each. The rifles are scoped and accurately group shots in a 1/2" bull at 30 yards. I can take a lot of really small game. A rat or mouse may not have much meat but a dozen of them will have enough. Nightcrawlers are 78% protein and when they are gutted and boiled in several changes of water the slime coat goes away and the worm is cooked. Deep fat fry them afterwards and salt them and they taste like shoe string potato chips.
When I taught at York College the biology prof and I offered to get fish for the faculty fish fry. We went to Sack's Lake. The biggest fish there were crappie and bluegill, six inches long at the most. They were so hungry we could toss in gold hooks without bait and they bite them. We just yanked them out of the water and onto the bank behind us. Many times the hook fell out and it went immediately back into the water. After 30 minutes we had 200 fish. Each one, when filleted, would give from one teaspoon to one tablespoon of meat per side. 400 spoonfuls of meat made good eating for 25 faculty members. It was a great fry. But, in times of stress I would use a seine instead of a hook and line, and I'd set it at one place in a creek or stream and go back a hundred or more feet and splash my way slowly toward the net.
Pond scum soup is delicious. Tastes like split pea soup. Scoop some green stuff off the top of a pond, with water, and boil it down to 1/3rd. Add water and boil down a couple more times. On the third time the final boil down gives you the soup. You can toss in some previously cooked fish or rodent or pheasant during the final boil. That soup will let you gain weight.
Food is food.
