Hi everyone, nice to see the UK group growing.
I'm very pleased to say that I bought myself a lovely Air Arms rifle at the weekend! (Did you look ito that any further rosesandtea?) I'm very impressed with the accuracy and power, a very far cry from my old BSA Meteor. I'm still zeroing it in and experimenting with different pellets and different ranges. I think that you have to be very confident of your ability to cleanly kill an animal before you have any right to go shooting at it.
As an interesting aside, and this is the same for everything we talk about in homesteading and survivalism, you can only learn these things by doing them today. If and when that big event comes along and we have to live on our wits and our supplies we need to have these skills in place. It's too late to learn when it's already happened!
This is kind of obvious but have any of you actually tried to get close enough to a rabbit to shoot it with an air rifle - even a powerful one? That's about 40 yards for most practical purposes. It isn't easy, I've just started to try it myself - it takes practice and fieldcraft, something I'm intent on learning. Any advice gratefully received!
Tomgoods comment on archery is a good one too but it illustrates the point even better. If you're going to kill something like a deer with a bow, even at 30 yards, you need to be able to consistently shoot arrows in a 4" grouping from that distance and as TomGood rightly points out - that takes a lot of practice! (I've never managed to get this close to wild deer yet)
I'm practicing archery too by the way, are any of the rest of you archers? I'm making life harder for myself by learning to shoot instinctively with a re-curve. To be able to kill game with it, it will take a lot more tracking, stalking and shooting practice.
By the way, does anyone know where to buy broadhead arrows in the UK - and are they legal? I know it's illegal to shoot game with a bow in the UK but I subscribe to the idea that you should practice with the kit you're going to use, so I'd like to practice with broadheads.
I totally agree that the really big difference between the US and the UK is the issue of gun ownership, I think it's a perfect time to buy a good second hand air rifle and/or a shotgun.
When it comes to defense I think the crossbow is a pretty good idea too, it has a high intimidation factor. Although I don't want to be alarmist, I saw a TV programme recently following SO19 the Met Police armed response unit - it is staggering how many guns are taken off the streets every month in London alone. There are people in the UK who DO have firearms and they are not the ones who play by Queensbury rules. I highly reccommend the Later day saints "LDS Preparedness Manual" - especially read the section towards the end (P184) where there is an article about the events that went on during and after hurricane Katrina.
http://www.green-trust.org/freebooks/Preparedness.pdf I'm interested in learning about how to defend a home effectively even without a gun - anyone got any links or ideas - I can't help thinking that the best defence policy is not to be where those kind of people are. That leads me to another thought about the UK and it's over-population, do any of you have any thoughts on bug-out locations in the UK.
I'm pleased to say I've also got some new chickens last week (the last lot became a fox's dinner) and we're looking forward to some fresh eggs in the next 3 or 4 weeks.
Also, got the garden under control and can't wait to start getting the first produce for this year.
Interesting discusion about the main threats in the UK, I think our biggest risk comes from our very dense population and our inadequate infrastructure. If a serious event occurred and people needed to move out I think the roads would be jammed instantly. It's bad enough on a normal evening on the M25, if a lot of people were trying to escape an area like London or Birmingham, it would be instant chaos - and not the place to be.
An associated issue is that (as tomgood also points out) we import a lot of food. The road haulage association figures say that over 25% of road traffic in the UK is food transport. All the big stores now rely on just-in-time delivery. Have you been into a large supermarket around 8pm? All the main staple foods, milk, bread, meat are almost sold out - that's the way they want it.
There are any number of scenarios that could interupt the food supply chain and even more that would cause panic buying. How many people in the UK store any food? I reckon most will be lucky to have a weeks worth. Then what? Do you want to be among the crowds fighting for bread at Tescos? Nah - me neither, but I suppose that's why we're into this website! For me it's a good reason not to live in a city (which I don't).
I remember when I was a kid in the 70's we had scheduled power blackouts and petrol rationing, we kept food, candles and gas stoves constantly at the ready - not many do that these days (present company excepted). If something like that was announced today the shops would be swamped and everything would be gone overnight. And do you remember the tanker driver's strike in about 1998? These things do happen.
There is limited information about local emergency threats here
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/ukresilience.aspx and there is a link to your local area on the right hand side of the website.
Sorry for the rather rambling post - just wanted to say hi and "yes I agree!" - Oh and yes, the John Seymour books are inspiring.
Cheers all - Jon
