Retreat / Hunting Camp / Bugout properties

Discussion in 'General Survival and Preparedness' started by Finster, Dec 31, 2013.


?
  1. Bugout to a predetermined location(s) and ride it out defending what we can.

    22.7%
  2. Bugin, homeis the castle and we will defend it to the last.

    77.3%
  3. Hit the road jack, stay mobile and live off our wits and the land.

    9.1%
  4. Other, put your head between your knees and KYAG

    4.5%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. Finster

    Finster Simplify, I'd say more but this says it all.

    I am considering purchasing some land, not sure how much I need but am thinking 10 acres or more for a sustainability perspective. I want a pond and some game, deer and medium and small game.

    How much do you think is enough, or bare minimum?
    Do you have a similar place now or are you hoping to get one?

    What features do you think important, shelter, water and privacy seem primary to me, how would you experts prioritize the rest.
     
  2. kellory

    kellory An unemployed Jester, is nobody's fool. Banned

    a hundred acres is not enough, if you will be hunting it regularly. The game will move on to less pressured lands. I have 9 acres, and I hunt deer, and squirrels there. I am introducing rabbits from in town, and transported. Game density is not as high, as you suppose. if you intend to live off of what you hunt.
    You have only two choices, in my opinion, with hunting smaller lots. 1) sniper shots, with as little pressure on the game as possible (undisturbed) or 2) hit it hard, take as much as you can in the shortest amount of time, and the greatest effort, because the game will catch on pretty quickly, and you will see very little after that for some time to come.
     
  3. Dont

    Dont Just another old gray Jarhead Monkey

    I live there! All your questions are valid, however there are more. And it all depends on what region you are planning to purchase land in and how hard you KNOW you are willing to work on that land.. Also, how do's your spouce/partner feel about moving off to the hills... How close are you willing to tolerate people residing near you? Are you willing to except others views and NOT try to change how things are.. Need to list all the parameters that you are cosidering..
     
    Yard Dart and BTPost like this.
  4. cdnboy66

    cdnboy66 Monkey++

    just a suggestion to one part of the equation,
    wherever you want to be, be a little distance away from a village/town, and make sure that town has an established "farmers market" in place
    this will likely stay and be the "market/meeting place" if the feces hits the fan
    the trading of crops and veggies preserves and all kinds of things will become a mainstay that you want to participate in.
     
    chelloveck, Yard Dart and kellory like this.
  5. Mindgrinder

    Mindgrinder Karma Pirate Ninja|RIP 12-25-2017

    1000 x 1 oz silver coins.
    2 years worth of food for your whole family.
    365 empty quart mason jars, water bather and american pressure cooker.
    Water filter and bleach just in case.
    You'll get more out of a good river than you ever will a pond.
    Potatoes, garlic, onion bulbs, kale and strawberry seeds for all your fishing holes.
    Arms and ammo to defend it.
     
    Yard Dart likes this.
  6. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    Here in the west you can easily hunt land that backs up to Forestry land (fed) or DNR (state) land any time of the year (within the law) with minimal property allowing you to essentially hunt 100's of acres or more depending on where you are...10 acres in my plan is good though more land allows for better control of the land around you better in a defensive posture.

    I currently plan a bug in with a neighborhood defense plan (suburbia), but I also have a plan for movement to our BOL which is a way's away, as well as another plan to survive on the move for a certain duration. I think if you ignore any one of those to some degree... you will have holes in your plan that may get you in the end. It is great to have a bug-in defensive plan...or a BOL to retreat to, but if you do not have a plan to go mobile due to whatever circumstance, you are leaving yourself to the whims of what may happen at your AO... sometimes it is best to BO and retreat than to fight an overwhelming force or negotiate a circumstance such as nuke fallout that is untenable.... opinions vary on each but...that is just my thought or two.
     
  7. cdnboy66

    cdnboy66 Monkey++

    oh, and it probably doesn't need to be said, but redundancy is the mantra..

    WATER WATER WATER. If you have a source of well or spring water that is sufficient, life is good.
     
    Yard Dart, kellory and Dawg23 like this.
  8. kellory

    kellory An unemployed Jester, is nobody's fool. Banned

    and running water is a power source.
     
    cdnboy66 likes this.
  9. Dont

    Dont Just another old gray Jarhead Monkey

    Potable water... Best if it is well water for the drinking...
     
  10. ditch witch

    ditch witch I do stupid crap, so you don't have to

    This is a subject I've run around in my head a million times for years.

    Access to cleanable water is a priority, mostly because it's so hard to obtain. Where I live surface water is practically non-existent, and everyone knows where the lakes that still have water in them are. To situate a BOL near one is suicide IMO. Not to mention those lakes will look like the Ganges after the unwashed hoard descends upon them.

    To drill a well to hit the Ogalala here, I'm looking at 300-500 feet down. That means either I buy property with an existing well on it, or I expect to shell out 5-8k to get one dug and the pumps in place.

    Size of acreage. I can sustain a handful of people on five acres... but in addition to the lack of ground water, this region lacks for cover. You simply can't hide five acres here unless you go into the canyons. Even ten acres is small. My last place was 20, and I could stand on my porch on one end and see my goats escaping through the fence on the other. I could plant cottonwoods to hide it, but out here everyone knows trees mean water. It would only attract them to me.

    For me, a retreat that will be of any real use will need to be a considerable distance from here. Three hours to the nearest location I've found in OK. Five hours to the best spot in NM, six to Colorado. With that in mind, our situation determines that our best option is to dig in where we are. Small town less than 1000 residents, hunters, ranchers and LEO mostly. We have some close friends of like mind living in a large city a little over an hour away so for now we're their BOL. We have an extra bedroom and room to pull a couple small RVs inside the fence if we need to. At least it will add to our numbers.

    Eventually I want us to relocate somewhere more suitable for sustainable living, somewhere that water isn't a surprise and trees get taller than me and summer doesn't mean two months of it still being 101F at 2 am, but for now it's bug in and bar the doors.
     
    Finster likes this.
  11. Dont

    Dont Just another old gray Jarhead Monkey

    That east slope prairie is pretty barren.. The wife grew up in west nebraska and I lived a time in east wyoming.. But , with the water aside, you can dig in or like you say situate yourself in a canyon..
    Where I am now, a person may have to run a well one to two hundred feet and still only get five gallons a min. out of it. I am fortunate that I have a well at seventy five feet that puts out thirty five gallons a min.. I have enough tree's that a person can stare at these hills all day and still not see a building, nor driving up the trails.. Down side is a much shorter growing season, and there is little to no game up here after the first of december..
     
  12. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    Stop shooting everything that moves on your property.... ;)
     
  13. Dont

    Dont Just another old gray Jarhead Monkey

    Just the upright critters... Four legged ones have enough sense to get out of the hills before the snow gets to deep..
     
    Finster, ditch witch and Yard Dart like this.
  14. Finster

    Finster Simplify, I'd say more but this says it all.

    I live in coastal SC, and I'd want it to be 1-3 hours from home. I won't move there permanently unless the shit actually hit the fan, or at least it smells like it has. Three grown kids, and the wife would visit but not often. I'm disabled, and use a wheelchair so rugged mountains are out of the question. I can and do work hard and don't mind it, that said I won't be able to till fields all day. I have modified my own atvs and utv with hand controls etc. my current home is nice but neighorboodie so I can't do any preps here, and the wife mock San dis non-supportive of the prepper lifestyle. Money isn't tight, nor am I rolling (no pun intended) in excesses cash. Most of my preps are stored in a rental storage unit, along with my utv and trailer.

    I want a place I can hunt in the present and have that as the bugout position and summer retreat from the "low country summer" which can be brutal if you don't love humidity. I was thinking about something in the 20-30 acre range, in the midlands of SC. Only 1/2 tank of gas away, and close enough to check on more than 1x month.

    In my ideal scenario, I'll have a small cabin, outhouse, summer kitchen, barn/shed of some kind and a hidden or hurried storage container for secure storage and potential bunker. I'd plant some fruit trees and feed plots for game, and hunt only a little to put some game in the pot and keep my skills sharp. I might keep a few chickens for eggs and meat while I'm there and then harvest them all before leaving for any length of time... As far as farming nothing more than a greenhouse or two and possibly a herb garden. I might "setup for" goats and sheep without actually stocking them until it gets closer to to danger time.
     
  15. Finster

    Finster Simplify, I'd say more but this says it all.

    Good points, thanks. Around here water is literally everywhere, and drilling wells isn't a problem but I will move that issue higher up the priority list and ensure I have adequate potable water before inking a deal.

    My grandfather had bought a farm for similar reasons just before the riots in the sixtys, we had a garden and horses, it was mostly recreational but turned out to be a perfect BOL 1.5 hrs from home. It's where I learned virtually all my outdoor skills, hunting, fishing and field craft. I also learned about farming and horses, so I feel like I have the base knowledge to know what I'm getting into, how hard it can be for someone in my circumstances etc. I also want to provide some of that experience for my kids and theirs when they come along.
     
  16. natshare

    natshare Monkey+++

    This is why I'm looking at relocating, once I retire, to somewhere in eastern Kentucky or Tennessee. Plenty of forested land still there, with moving water sources, and some of it even backs up to US Forest land.....which, as has been pointed out already, effective expands your hunting grounds if the SHTF. Added bonus, the land isn't horribly expensive, the cost of living isn't high, and if you're outside the cities, the people are probably a whole lot more down to earth and trustworthy.

    And hey, if a trespasser happens to disappear, it's unlikely anyone will notice. Or care. ;)
     
    Finster, kellory and Yard Dart like this.
  17. Finster

    Finster Simplify, I'd say more but this says it all.

    Excellent points, all very useful and similar to what I have been searching for.

    Don't forget to pre-dig a few holes on the other side of the fence... JIC p.s. don't dig-em too deep that will slow decomp.
     
  18. monkeyman

    monkeyman Monkey+++ Moderator Emeritus Founding Member

    One thing to consider in about land backed up to public lands is that many who don't have their own locations already plan to and more would decide to go out and just move into public lands. Think of the homeless in the cities, most cliché thing is sleeping on the park bench. No one owns that land therefore it will be considered up for grabs post SHTF and you will be doing a lot more defending than if just off the beaten path and surrounded by private land. At least that's my thoughts on it knowing how much trouble some of the folks around here that back up to public lands have with trespassers especialy around deer season.
     
    Finster, ditch witch and kellory like this.
  19. Dont

    Dont Just another old gray Jarhead Monkey

    Something else to consider is access in to the property, as in how many roads lead in to that area.. My area has 2 roads in that originate about a mile apart, yet one runs into the other .. One I can monitor traffic on, the other I am unable to. So, if the bad guys where to wonder out my way there is the possibility that they could quite close before I am aware of them..
     
    Finster likes this.
  20. kellory

    kellory An unemployed Jester, is nobody's fool. Banned

    Driveway monitors. Could also do portable web cameras. They are about the size of a large cigar. Trail buzzers. They are for deer hunters to monitor trails out of sight of the hunter. (Break a light beam, and reciever buzzes). All battery driven, or solar panel. Can't do links properly by phone.
     
    Finster likes this.
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