Urban Hunting: Part 1

Being that the majority of the population lives in some sort of urban area, food procurement in that environment is not a subject thought about very often. When we talk about hunting we tend to think of being in the wilderness with a high powered rifle or shotgun and wearing camouflage. In a grid down situation food will be in short supply and the shelves of grocery stores, convenient stores, and restaurants will be depleted.
Just an FYI, our country does not have enough natural food to support our existence. Cattle, turkeys, chicken, and fish are grown and 100's of thousands are slaughtered everyday and consumed with little waste to support our civilization. Lets think about that a second, it takes this amount of animals and farming to produce we eat daily. If the grid goes down and they stop producing food the remaining surplus will dry up fast.

What if your locked in to your city and procuring food in the wild is not an option. Can you hunt for protein in an urban setting? Not only can it be done, it can be done very easily. Most small game that are in cities are desensitized to being around us. They are exposed and are some what domesticated. Think about squirrels in a park how they may scurry away somewhat when we try to get close. Squirrels in the wild will get far more distant when approached. This type of domestication can be beneficial.

In this article we are going to talk about the primary rifle for Urban Hunting, the air rifle. Air rifles are often thought of as childrens toys but they can procure small game just as well as a .22 rifle. They do not have the range of a .22 caliber rifle. But as we discussed above you do not need that type of distance for urban hunting because your able to get closer to urban prey.

A major benefit to the pellet rifle is that its extremely quiet. It won't give away your position like a rifle would. This could help you to remain undetected from looters or someone wanting to take whats yours or the food you've recently obtained.

Ammo has been a major concern amongst many gun owners in the past few months. It's been hard to find and has become increasingly expensive. Pellets are cheap, always in supply, and hundreds can be carried on your person without weighing you down. Also eliminates the use of our .22 ammo when hunting small game. There is a wide variety of pellet rounds on the market. From hollow points to high velocity. I've attached some links below.

I've used a pellet rifle to take down birds, cats, and squirrels. With today's high tech pellet rifles, I've heard of others taking down even larger animals (like foxes).

I'd suggest looking into a pellet rifle for your Urban Hunting rifle and I've attached some links to a few models below. Over the course of the next few weeks we will go over some other Urban Hunting Techniques.