How many acres would a person need to go feral?
 

I was thinking the other day about cattle, and what a pasture must look like to them. When you're a rancher and you open the gate for your cattle, they're essentially walking into a field of pizza, right? Their food is just lying there on the ground for them to take, and it's food that they really like. I guess more accurately, they're walking into a field that's mixed with pizza and broccoli and the occasional cookie, but that's fine.

So that got me thinking about how cool it would be as a human to experience this, and I suddenly realized - wow! That's how it was for humans for 99 percent of our history. We got our food by walking around and finding it. Sometimes it was on a bush or in a root and sometimes we had to kill it, but the truth is that for most of our history, the world was a big buffet and we wandered through it with a fork, a spear, and an atlatl.

So that got me thinking again. Could a person do that now? We talk about living "off the grid", but that's kind of a fiction. People living off the grid are still importing goods from civilization. They're buying canned goods and shotgun shells and Netflix videos. They're using agricultural techniques that were developed in Mesopotamia and optimized in Kansas.

So instead of that corrupt modern version of "living off the grid", let's go with a purist approach. You've got XX acres of land, and after a polite ramp up period to get it ready, you're going to be a hunter/gatherer. No growing crops allowed. You're going to wander the woods and valleys and plains, and you're going to hunt creatures and pick berries from wild bushes, and drink from streams. You'll only make clothing and tools and cups and netflix videos using local sources and materials. Nothing enters or leaves your property, ever.

How many acres of land would a person need to do this? I'm considering it as my next career.

Buying up land with all those diamonds?

Hobo on the range

It very much matters where you're located. Some areas like desert or western mountain ranges would require much more land that other woodland areas with abundant rivers and wildlife.

I work from home and I've gone feral within a space of 2270 sq. ft. And it feels like it's getting smaller every day.

Send help.

10 square miles for a lifetime

:LOL:

Ever watch "Live Below Zero"? A few of those folks in Alaska are quite far off the grid.

Depends on how long your ramp up period is and what is allowed within that period. If you have time to plant fruit/nut trees, berries etc., establish native species of birds, fish, bees and mammals and have a beginning seed source it should be an acheiveable goal.

If you don't have a reliable fresh water supply you will die no matter your acreage.

Interesting fact: the term "caveman" is actually a misnomer. They didn't live in caves. Well, not for extended periods of time. They were actually migrant and followed the seasons and the food. So, you may need quite a long stretch from North to South. The no planting/farming is quite a restriction. So you'd have to leave to go follow herd of buffalo/cattle etc. I imagine.

40,000 acres? I'm an "ask for your desired outcome" type person.

If set up camp next to a feedlot, I think you need about a hundred square feet.

You will need to rob and pillage your neighbors.

Probably a moot point because we are soft bitches compared to the hard assed bastards that could live that way, and even then life span was like 30 years.

Even back then they relied on a pack of compadres to stay alive. So if you’re talking about living alone by yourself that’s a tough ask.

Maybe it would be possible on like an island of Hawaii or a massive land base of some super prime fruit bearing area.

Side question, you ever thought how Hard it is to klll anything with your bear hands? It’s a tough out man. Especially without shoes. Think about trying to face or cat in a death match. Cat weighs what? 4 pounds you outweigh it by a factor of 40 and it’s going to be a hell of a long row to hoe to kill that little bastard.

Life is hard man.

I know some apartment dwellers that are feral...

Limited agriculture with orchards and berries has probably been happening for a very long time.. either purposefully, or by accident, by bringing back fruits and nuts to where the group was at that time.

Also, land was teeming with food before it was stripped clean by humans over the last centuries. Even the US was described as rich in animal life and birds when it was first colonized by Europeans. They described bird migrations that would fill the entire sky for days and huge numbers of wild turkeys, deer, etc..

Doing that on today's land is much more difficult.

Yeah, if you want to get ready for that, you might want to try eating some maggot infested meat first. Once you get used to that, you just might stand a chance.

I take it from your description you are talking about being turned out into the wilderness completely naked, with no tools, weapons, or anything.
The odds of making past the first week or two are slim to none. You better be pretty good at flint knapping and hunting if you expect to last past that.

An interesting discussion might be what skills you would need to survive in that fashion on a 1000 acres.

But if he had “bear” hands, it might be easier...

Agreed. There was a reason being banished was almost always a death sentence. Humans are good at a lot of things, but we’re definitely pack animals. We have no fur, no natural armor, and no natural weapons and our vision and sense of smell are poor compared to the competition. We just aren’t designed to survive as individuals.

How big are my talons in this scenario?

LOL.. yep.. what very particular set of skills would be necessary...

I wish to buy a castle with a moat. I will then buy piranhas & crocodiles. Hire security that will dress as knights. My kingdom will become its own sovereign nation known as BWillistan.

Up where I live I think a guy could do quite well on a section, especially if it has a waterway of some sort on it.

This thread got me thinking... how do you buy netflix videos if you're off the grid?

Bitcoin

Does feral include a youtube pre-feral crash course?

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL...Sm8AlZyD3nQdBA

Dude sets out to see how much civilization he can create out of manipulation of the immediate environment.

Nothing there but the board shorts for modesty and the GoPro for documentation.

Plant, stone, fire and earth. Whaddaya got?

One hundred acres of woods

My pops grew up on this

Anyone else watch "Naked and Afraid"? It's eye-opening how much even somewhat reasonably trained humans suck at surviving without all the amenities of life.

Basically, two people (one male and one female) get dropped off somewhere, and get to bring ONE thing each (often a fire-starter, or a fishing net, or whatever) and a knife. That's it. No clothes, no blanket, NOTHING.

The challenge is to survive 21 days. The number of tap outs, due to injuries or the miserable conditions (cold, lack of food, whatever) is pretty high, but what is universally true is NOBODY truly thrives. EVERYONE loses alot of weight (usually 10% or more of total pre-challenge weight) and it's clear that if it was a, whatever, 50 days challenge, pretty much nobody would make it.

And sometimes the conditions are full of food -- at least in theory. People even complain -- we're in a RAIN FOREST. We can hear creatures everywhere. There's all kinds of plants. Why are we starving? Why can't we catch anything?

Ask Bob Dole. He's basically living in the woods outside Texarkana.

I admit that I would need some training. I went camping once, but I'd probably need more than that.

The start of the NFL season can't come soon enough.....

If you were feral, you wouldn't even know when it started.

Speaking of seasons, I wonder if the required acreage would need to be large enough that a person could migrate to different areas that have different plants to harvest over the course of the year. That would mean a pretty big territory.

Are you saying coconuts migrate?

I'm thinking tinyevel is right. You'd want a big north-south corridor, maybe with an ocean on one end to harvest crabs or other all-weather animals. And then you'd follow the blooms each year.

Or how in the hell do you order pizza if your phone is dead.

I may be mistaken, but humans had to Migrate prior to developing agricultural cultivation, correct? It would need to be immense if agriculture were prohibited.

Central Park

Yeah, it’s eye opening how hard of a life that hunter-gatherer existence would be.

A small room on a freighter to Vietnam has been known to make a man go feral.

Yeah I watch Naked and Afraid quite a bit, and here is the burning question about that show... why do we get to see the chicks ass, but not her boobies?

I'm trying to go feral on a more local level, but when I tried to shoot a turkey with a bow & arrow, they kicked me out of the grocery store.

Serious question about no agriculture limitations
 

Suppose you were to find a crop worthy plant or meat suitable critter already growing or living on said acreage. Would you be able to propagate native flora and raise native fauna?

I'm thinking a Robinson Crusoe scenario. Say you want to cage a few squirrels or bunnies, or plant a few apple trees? What if you came across, let's say, a medicinal plant (wink, wink, nod, nod), would it be okay to start a pharmacological grow? Asking for a friend.

Many families used to live and survive off 40 acres.

Per my self-imposed rule, you couldn't domesticate anything, plant or animal. So the best you could do is throw seeds on the ground near the plant that you just ate. I'm talking true hunter-gatherer.

The closest example I could think of that is actually documented is Alexander Selkirk who was the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe. He actually lived on an island in the pacific for over 4 years. Pretty impressive and a great story if your into that sort of thing. However, previous ships had left goats behind so he captured and eventually tamed a few.

Interestingly, I think it would be far easier and you’d be more successful in a place where fish were plentiful. Probably one of many reaasons people have always lived near water. It’s really hard catching animals on land but you spend far fewer calories harvesting sea life.

I read an article a while back that postulated that large coastal clams fueled much of the early expansion of hominids north along the African coast. Apparently they were calorie-rich and plentiful, and it's easy to hunt clams.

Do we get to drag bitches to our parcel of land to breed with? You know, like the cavemen did?
I'd want no less than 80 acres if I was living here in the midwest. That would do it from a lumber standpoint, food standpoint, etc.

This is actually not a fact. Plenty of clans of early hominids lived in and around caves. They may have migrated from cave to cave, but they clearly lived in them long term, painted pictures, and lived and ate there. Some caves have fire pit layers indicating that people lived there for hundreds of years.

Is it more or less than the number of acres it takes to make someone go furry? :hmmm:

I guess I define feral in a manner incompatible with restrictions on conduct.
If I'm going to go out and fend for myself, I'm going to make the optimum use of everything in my domain.
Who's gonna stop me from farming?
Who's gonna stop me from domesticating wildlife? There certainly isn't anyone there to save my ass if I try to domesticate something that doesn't have my interests at heart.

Rules connote a connection to some civilization out there monitoring and enforcing them.
That's not feral.

Wimps.

The Irish used to feed a family on less than 5 acres.

Set aside enough for one dairy cow and grow potatoes on the rest.

Most of this doesn't fit Rainman's rules. If you was strictly hunting/gathering then you would need a long migration route to move with the seasons. Realistically speaking you would either be walking north or south depending in the season. Moving 10-15 miles a day with the stop and eat until bust when you stumble onto a good food source succh as a ripe berry patch or fresh killed meat. You would have to be almost always on the move.

That's right. Their little clam legs can only run so fast.

Dependent upon where you are maybe. Here in Michigan, you could sustain year-around off of what you find in the wild and really no migration is required. Plenty of wild plants, berries, roots, and fungi in addition to the wildlife. So much of it people don't see as edible either. Cattail, burdock, chicken of the woods fungus, chaga, etc. Tons of plants in the summer... ramps, garlic, asparagus, fire weed, milk weed, fiddlehead ferns, lambs quarters, dandelion, chickory, etc. You have a plethora of nuts to store... Beach nuts, black walnuts, butternuts, acorns, etc... You can eat the inner bark of birch trees, poplars, willows, cedars and all conifers (except yew). Tap maples and sycamore for sap to make syrup. Sure, winter is a bitch, but alot of the roots, tree fungi, lichens, and so forth are still available to you plus you hopefully would make a nut store. Obviously you have plenty of sources of meat to try to for. The Natives didn't travel thousands of miles chasing herds so you wouldn't have to either.

It makes sense, really. You would be most successful if you had a reliable, stationary, nutritious food source. Those clams are going to be there for you almost anytime you need them. If you are spending all of your time running around hunting big, fast, potentially dangerous animals your chance for injury and failure rate is going to be higher. You would have a shorter life expectancy and probably less time available for finding females (clam hunting of a different sort!) and supporting offspring.

How ironic for this to be posted by "stumppy"! :)