Only the Players Change

Written by Wild Bill on The Prepper Journal.

Pat Henry knew five (5) years ago. His anger directed at the Supreme Court and the power these nine (9) justices hold over every one of us in their execution of interpreting the constitution. It could have been when Justice Roberts cast the unexpected swing vote that labeled Obamacare a tax and that Congress was within its right to levy taxes. That shook many of us to the core as this was a major blow to the Republic and a validation that imposed totalitarian rule was indeed sanctioned by the American left and now stamped as approved by the branch of government specifically put in place to protect us from such acts.

Fast forward 5 years.

While status quo has been replaced by the swamp, while agenda’s are now masked by fake news, where the roots of facts can be directly traced to slanted or manufactured opinions as opposed to the other way around, the political shifts of the political “parties” are something that preppers can not afford to follow, keep up with, understand. Survival demands it.

Our “representatives”, for lack of a more defining term, have long since turned in their campaign promises for cash from and sworn obedience to the donor class. While the media and pundits claim they have drifted farther apart, and I can see their point, the drift has been in the same direction. It isn’t exclusively a Democrat or Republicans thing, the smaller parties have followed the trend as well.

The “Republican” Koch brothers are only different from the open border socialists in their ultimate goal. While the former seeks an uneducated and cheap labor force the latter seeks an uneducated and easily controlled voter block. Each to prop up their elitist positions, to keep them in power. Only Americans lose in either of their scenarios.

Sociologists have long predicted and philosophers have long pondered that it is a natural progression of democracies to morph into socialist forms of rule (Greece, Spain). Try finding an unbiased article on the subject with a Silicon Valley search engine. Alas a trip to a real library, replete with physical books, or picking the brain of a true scholar is required to find works such as The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayak. Of course once you know the author and title you can find relative works of interest within these same search engines. However their algorithms are designed to promote the items they want presented as news or information. Google always gives me the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN as the lead on any news item I search.

As preppers we plan and we plan based on the information we can obtain and filter through the lens of our life experience and common sense.

Have the News and the Truth Divorced?

I honestly do not know when reporting facts became optional, expedient to agenda. It is not new, it has been going on for decades if not throughout history. History, after all, is written by the victors. Perhaps the speed of the world has made it so omnipresent in our lives. I can send a text to a friend in Malaysia in little more than a heartbeat. Have we become so accustomed to the speed of information that the constant bombardment of new information is expected? Depended upon? Demanded?

And of course accurate news is still reported, every day. Not everything you see, hear or read is skewed and twisted for an agenda, a political gain. Not the lesser things. I still believe most weather forecasters, working in a difficult science and basing projections on constantly changing models. Local news mostly trips over getting the facts for local news, but I believe their efforts sincere. However, when it comes major news stories most of the locals are simply reading the feeds from the main stream media, which includes not only the alphabets (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and NBC) but the main stream services  Reuters and AP, the BBC and their ilk. I have visited 68 foreign countries and if English is not the native language their English-language newspapers and English-language internet services are all built with the materials from those news services. The world is poisoned by the American media.

So, for preppers, reading the news anymore is akin to solving math problems with the wrong numbers. Like it or not we have to work with the information we get.

Socialism’s Rebirth

Of course socialism is envied by the younger generation. That is always where it has been seeded. It was droned into their skulls all through the latter stages of their education process and it is, after all, the easy way out. Competing is hard. Competing takes real work, dedication and effort. You have to be able to deal with failure and criticism and setbacks and those are scary. They are stressful. There is disappointment in not getting a participation trophy. The only real safe spaces are the ones we build and defend ourself and again that takes work, they can fail. But this is really only the portion of the generation that the media pushes to support its agenda. High schools and colleges and our military and our younger workforce are full of people who believe in themselves and their individual abilities. Of people who step up when the occasion presents itself.

As preppers we are people who make the effort because we know the stakes. Like Pat Henry 5 years ago it has been a long time since I have voted a party line as opposed to an individuals. Want proof that it never works, look at Arizona, the two Republican Senators could not be more left of center, more open-borders globalist. At least California can say they knew what they were getting in their two Senators, sadly.

But that dynamic changed on November 8, 2016 and the separation of the parties has widened to a chasm. One that grows with every passing day, every event of note. Civilized debate ended on that day. Listening became subjecting yourself to being lectured and any praise immediately put you on an enemies list, subjected you to verbal and even physical abuse. Look at the stupidity circling the Mayor of Somerville (where?) and Samuel Adams Brewing. Another example of a politically corrupt big fish in a small pond throwing a fit – over a compliment. I really do wonder if America has become too fractured to survive.

But, step back and what is the reality? A childish mayor being blown out of proportion by, wait for it, the media. The stupidity is just one of the endless examples we are bombarded with constantly.

Looking at what Pat wrote 5 years ago, looking at the swamp today I believe we are faced with Sophie’s Choice in November. I will admit that I am a fan of the non-politician in the White House. I am a deplorable in my belief of America and it’s founding principals and I will tend to vote against the left as they have become more and more unhinged in their opposition. I will never vote for guaranteed higher taxes, open borders, the abolishment of ICE, the limiting of free speech, infringement of my rights under the 2nd Amendment, taxpayer-funded abortions, and universal health care as a method to socialize medicine and limit free markets and impose oppression on peoples labors, just to name a few. One reason is I frankly do not know how to PREPARE for these changes. Do you?

Tuesday November 6th, 2018 is a very important day.

Be safe out there but get out there.

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Hurricane Lane: Cat 4 to Sweep the Hawaiian Islands

Written by Wild Bill on The Prepper Journal.

This is why we prep.

Hurricane Lane is packing 155 mph sustained winds, with gusts clocked at 185 mpg and is expected to sweep the southern shores of all the major Hawaiian Islands. It will be a Category 3 storm as it starts it move across the southern parts of the six (6) major islands before it moves off to the west/northwest.

The Weather Channel video shows the projected path, apologies for the long commercial at the start.

For those in the effected area or anywhere hurricanes are a possibility here are the relevant posts on hurricane preparedness from The Prepper Journal:

Hurricane Survival Guide

 

Crisis at Work: Hurricane and Emergency Preparedness for Small Businesses

Life after a disaster: Lessons from a Hurricane and a Tornado

There are many related posts on the site as well. Simply search through the categories.

Prime Locations for Post-Disaster Salvage

Follow these basic safety precautions: Be Ready and Use Common Sense

Late August and September are the peak periods for both Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes in the northern hemisphere, with ocean temps reaching their highest, able to fuel these storms, though the 2018 season has been relatively quiet to date.

The most remote island chain in the world, furthest from a continental land mass, and with a population of 1.4 million people, Hawaii has been through this before with the last major storm being Iniki in September of 1992. I visited the island of Kauai in 1996 and stayed at the Hyatt Resort on Poipu Beach, where the eye of Iniki had come ashore. The lobby bar showed the films of the resort being destroyed every day at 6 pm. Interesting to watch the film over Hurricanes (the cocktail) while looking outside and seeing the rebuilt resort, almost exactly as it was in the film, being washed away. Kauai, the western most of the larger islands to visit seems to always be the place where these storm do the most damage. Nicknamed “The Garden Island” it is where most Hawaiians have vacation homes.

Be safe.

 

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7+ Ways To Use A Sunflower For Survival

Learn how sunflowers can be used for food, managing illness, and for making items that may be difficult to manufacture from other resources.

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Hunting Season is Just 10 Day Away

Written by Wild Bill on The Prepper Journal.

With some school systems still on the 9/3 year, mixed with the year-round school systems, with summer temps still in full swing and fall harvest not yet started it is hard to believe that the Fall hunting seasons start in just ten (10) days.

Early dove season starts September 1 nationally. Waterfowl seasons vary by area (state) but run generally from September to January, and deer and turkey archery seasons generally runs from September 15th to December 15th.

And there are seasons for rabbits and hares, fur bearing animals such as badgers, beavers, fox, mink, muskrat, nutria, opossum, otter, raccoon, ring-tailed cat and yes, even skunks. And even some “non-game” animals have seasons.

Then of course there is deer and elk and turkey seasons for rifle, with a separate season for black powder, usually starting in October. Of these waterfowl and elk are my favorites because of the excellent meat each provides.

So as preppers planning to stock our freezers for the coming winter it might be time to close all the blinds, turn the AC on “freeze”, build a fire in the fireplace and start to do some planning.

Before the Planning Let’s Get our Head on Straight

Hunters are some of the best conservationist on the planet. Anyone who has contributed to PETA should stop reading this post now and go back to the Marvel Comics page. If you look at your states Fish and Game Departments, the people who manage wildlife, you will find, mostly, people dedicated to maintaining a balance between predators and wildlife. People who understand the areas they manage and what those areas can support as far as herd sizes and populations of predators and how they are integral in the management of wildlife. They also know the important role hunters play in the whole scheme of things and they are hunters best lobbyists when it comes to setting hunting rules. While digging for my fishing license, or passing a warden with a tagged turkey I have met some of the most dedicated of public servants.

Hunting is a tool in their arsenal to manage and maintain the herd size and health of wildlife. Constantly dealing with mans encroachment on wild areas is a thankless job. Dealing with poachers who hunt out of season it can also be a dangerous and heartbreaking job. Some poach because they are lazy and don’t care about the law while others do it because they are hungry. Life is complicated.

Now Let’s Do Some Planning

While sitting by the blazing fire, burning kilowatts to get “in the mood” or being later into Fall with cool days and crisp nights we first need to take a practical view of “hunting” as preppers. You have all heard the stories and many have lived them as well that after a weekend duck hunt, when you do the math, that duck you are enjoying for dinner on Sunday night cost just about $88 a bite. While I love elk it means a trip with all the expenses to Colorado or north, with the increased fees for an out-of-state tag, travel, meals, and on and on. The same for pheasant. On the other hand I have quail almost always foraging in my yard, though the city frowns on hunting in my yard or that of a neighbors. But open areas are less than a 30 minute drive. So while I fully encourage hunting for that desired trophy that provides meat as well as a challenge, I look at most preppers as being more practical in their goals.

What to Wear?

It is all about fashion. With camo coming in all colors of the rainbow now, your fashion choices can be both impractical and functional. CHECK your states hunting regulations as some places demand blaze or hunter orange and for good reason.

Just a cap or a hat in hunter orange is NOT sufficient (except for bow hunting during some archery seasons.) If you are hunting deer, antelope, mountain sheep or elk using a firearm, including black powder, or bow hunting during overlapping firearm deer seasons you are required to wear at least 400 inches of what is called Hunters Orange on your head, back and chest. And for good reason, but, again, with governments involved at all levels check the locations guidelines.

It is generally believed that deer and other trophy American mammals see Hunter Orange as brown or gray. But it is known that they see blue wavelengths better than humans and those would be present in clothing washed in a detergent that contains brighteners, so avoid these as well as the detergents or laundry addatives that contain perfumes.

When NOT to Go

I am a firm believer that if you live in or plan to hunt in Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Texas or any state north and east of New York City you stay home and hide on opening day for deer season. This allows the crazies, amateurs, or the “here, hold my beer” crowd to clear out. It may “scatter the herd” for subsequent hunters but I will take that over playing possible target on day one.

When to Break in New Gear

Now would be good to break in any new gear. While it may not be fashionable pool side or at the beach, the time to break in new boots, and other clothing items is before you are in the field. And not just for comfort but for sound. Find out you have a squeak in a boot at home, or that your arms make sounds when moving against the side of your jacket before you are in the field. The same for all your gear and carried ammo. What sounds like just a little clang to you sounds like alarm bells to wildlife.

The same with sighting in new rifles and checking the sights on your tried and true favorite weapon. Simple things like changes of our posture can affect our accuracy and we should have those dealt with before we head out the door for any hunt.

Common Sense

As with any outdoor adventure follow the common sense rules:

• Tell someone you can depend on the details of your hunt; when and where you are going, how long you will be gone and the names of everyone going with you and their contact information. If you can have that person take a picture of you with their phone
• STICK to your plan
• Yes, take your phone and a radio to use to contact people, to keep track of weather, and to update your contact person should a change in plans arise or something worse
• If no one in your party has a field medical kit and/or does not know how to use the items in it don’t go – use the time instead to get the right training, then go
• Take BOB. Always have a knife you are skilled with, fire starter, signaling whistle, mirror and emergency shelter, not to mention water and some portable foods
• Pack out everything you packed in
• Have the right bags to harvest and carry away the meat you are expecting to bring home
• You aren’t Rambo just yet so use a second shot to finish a kill if the first was not perfect; finish the job

Remember Where You Are

Every hunting trip is a survival trip, a chance to test your skills, your awareness and your ability to support you and yours off the land. Make every one memorable by doing your best to bring success to your endeavor. That friend that loves to party may be better left to other devices while you take on the serious business of hunting live animals with real guns and real bullets with the singular purpose of putting food on your table and in your freezer. If at all possible share your bounty with others less fortunate. Most professional meat shops who will process your kill know of local families or facilities like half-way houses, orphanages and long-term care homes that will be more than thankful for the professionally processed donation.

In Alaska you can obtain a proxy permit to hunt for a disabled person, to get to hunt for them and put meat on their table and in their freezers. On tagged animals it give the hunter a second opportunity to hunt and harvest that animal for someone in need. This may be true elsewhere, again, know before you go.

One last suggestion. Use hunting as a teaching tool with your of-age children. You will be surprised at how they respond. While dining at a neighbors home on venison the host told my children, who he did not know well, that we were eating beef. I corrected him right then and there not to be discourteous, but to teach my children, which he understood.

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Truth-Checking Chickens – Broody Hens v. Sandbaggers

Written by R. Ann Parris on The Prepper Journal.

Editors Note: Another article on chickens from R. Ann Parris to The Prepper Journal. If you have information for Preppers that you would like to share then enter into the Prepper Writing Contest with a chance to win one of three Amazon Gift Cards with the top prize being a $300 card to purchase your own prepping supplies!

The faithful chicken is a common choice for preppers and homesteaders. Once the bird bug bites, talk regularly turns to breeding and natural rearing, the dual frustrations that can be a broody bird, and the back-and-forth debate about whether we’ve “bred out broodiness”.

The genetics we choose – and allow – is important. Our husbandry practices, common wants from birds, and changing society has affected poultry’s traits, some of which would have immediately gotten birds a glass-jar coop even in pretty recent decades.

One of those now-inherited traits is clutch abandonment by the fake-broody bird. There’s also an age factor that affects our livestock’s brood-rearing reputations, none so much as chickens. In other cases, we set our birds up for failure with their brooder boxes and our keeper practices.

Understanding the genetic selection and dynamics at play will help increase our successes as we move into breeding our birds.

Standard reminder: I don’t actually like chickens (but do fully appreciate their well-earned place in backyard and big-spread production). I have no problem whatsoever buying that particular species butcher-paper blankets for trips to Polar Camp. However, they are living creatures that deserve respectful treatment in life and death. Know what you’re getting into with multiple-source research, start small-scale to avoid overpopulations problems if you can’t actual kill and butcher something you raised, and be prepared to put ill and injured animals out of their misery rather than prolonging their suffering for hours, days, and weeks.

Broodiness

A broody hen is one that’s ready to sit a nest. Some hens want nothing else from an early age, but mostly it’s mature hens and typically the desire peaks and ebbs by breed, season and individual.

Breeding-In Traits

We’ve repeatedly selected even dual-purpose homestead and long-storied heritage breeds for a focus on laying, not necessarily raising young. It makes sense if you think about it, backyards to big operations, now and all the way back in history.

“A chicken in every pot” was a promise of prosperity, not sustenance. We eat way, way more chicken meat in the last 5-6 decades than ever before. Worldwide, it’s always been eggs that make our chickens such effective, efficient livestock.

For most of modern history, keepers big and small have only needed a small fraction of hens to raise chicks for some meat-grow-outs and adding young-blood laying rates to the flock.

We don’t want all of them to stubbornly insist on raising a family.

While that hen raises her clutch, we’re losing her productivity for a month – up to a quarter or third of the year if she’s inclined to keep nannying for 12+ weeks. Hens also regularly lose some condition while they’re sitting and-or throughout the span they’re raising a clutch. Recovery time adds to lost egg production.

Mail-order chicks and affordable incubators and brooders means we don’t even need a hen to raise new birds now. That makes a broody-prone hen even less desirable for many.

Skewing the Bell Curve

Most hens don’t successfully go broody until they’re 3+ years old. The best mothers tend to be secure, upper-echelon birds hitting 4-6 years old.

However, due to laying drop-offs of 10-15% per year, many keepers *ahem* transition their laying hens after the second or third production year. So the average age of most birds out there is pretty young. That skews some of the general expectations, like broodiness.

Even allowing for altered averages, there’s still a hefty percentage of hens that betray just how much we’ve affected broodiness in our chickens.

Fakers & Schitzo Sitters – 20-50%

If you have 10-20 hens 3+ years old, at some point 2-5 if not 8-12 of them are probably going to cost you either eggs or aggravation with fake-outs or schitzo-sitting.

That’s a pretty huge failure rate. We wouldn’t accept it for ammo, canning-jar lids, batteries, milking teats/animals, emails, garden plants, or tires. Our great-greats and grandparents wouldn’t have accepted it from hens. But we just shrug it off now, far too commonly.

So what are they, exactly?

Faking is when a hen starts accruing her eggs and then breaks off, abandoning the partial clutch. It’s also when, after she’s counted and is pleased with her number, after she starts to actively sit without further laying, she abandons the clutch partway through incubation.

She’s signaled that she’s broody, but she’s not really.

(Days Five and Twelve are way better than the Steel-Tent-bound hen that gets to Day Seventeen-Eighteen before changing her mind about motherhood.)

Maybe she just isn’t actually ready (first 1-2 times, a young hen 9-months to 2-3 years old) and will come around in time. Maybe she had good cause. Mostly, though, she’s faking, and we’re losing days/weeks of her production and possibly that clutch because of it.

*Older birds aren’t making an egg every 24-36 hours like when they were young. Aging hens also take “weekends/holidays” (temporary breaks in laying), longer and more frequently as they go. That’s not faking or schitzo. That’s just bodily function slowing, just like us. Make sure she’s not being wrongfully accused, but also crunch her feed-waste-destruction versus her value – including potential broodiness.

Especially for smaller flocks, fakers need to be discounted when they show the broody cues. If she’s young, sure, give it 1-2 years and let her try again if you like, but if it’s a 4-6 y/o, persistent, and insistent … the Big Steel Tent isn’t unreasonable.

Then there’s the hen that seems to be sitting her clutch with dedication, but somewhere in there, she’s heading off for normal daily activities, nest ignored for hours or even days at a time.

*Sitting hens need food and water readily available; they usually can’t forage enough and maintain the clutch.

If she’s pushing stubborn broody behavior for 5-14 days, takes her vacay, then pulls the broody card again, and again, or defends her box but leaves it for hours or the day, Schitzo Sitter needs a glass-jar coop.

Fakers and schitzo’s regularly aren’t worth it in normal “today” soft times.

Unless you’re mid-crisis, down to just a few hens, and need every egg and chance to make more birds that you can get (weighed against providing litter and feed/forage for repeat freeloaders), fakers and schitzos are even less worth the aggravations *later*.

We for-sure don’t want to keep their eggs for the next generation, further perpetuating that failure rate.

Due Diligence

There’s some chance a hen had a good reason to abandon her partial or full clutch. Once she’s sitting in a box 24/7, a canny hen might have started seeing something (activity, a previously unnoticed drip, drafts) that she didn’t while she was popping in and out, and is cutting her losses early. Usually, it’s one of four things if she’s not a faker.

1 – Too much human interest and handling. We have to get in there some, but we do not need to get in there even daily once she’s sitting.

*Even if she’s going to be a surrogate, don’t bug her daily. Match her laying cycle when adding eggs. We can maintain interaction by delivering goodies (while the layers are elsewhere or distracted – chickens are smart and vicious).

2- Insufficient laying boxes or a popular/preferred laying box, with other hens forcing in to lay.

*It’s the very rare hen that can manage a full incubation cycle on an active community laying box; she’ll almost 100% need a nursery/brooding pen for the chicks if she does.

3 – Even with sufficient boxes, a more-dominant broody-prone bird may be harassing her, trying to take the clutch for herself.

4 – By the time you have 10-20 hens, chances are good that one of them is a broomstick-riding … uhm, Character. The Character doesn’t even want the clutch or box. She’s just being a Character.

In my world, it’s the problem bird that visits lovely Camp Kettle.

If a bird is abandoning partial or full clutches, she’s usually a faker. However, relocating and immediately resuming laying with broody cues intact is also a warning sign about box activity/placements, wanna-mothers, or Characters, so we have to do some watching.

Breed Expectations

We haven’t completely bred broodiness out of chickens, but we have selected for less of it, especially from high-production breeds.

From backyards to big operations, we also aren’t removing some of the birds/traits from the genepool. Allowing behaviors that wouldn’t have been tolerated in a Renaissance through 1950s farmhouse also changes the capability of our birds, with dedicated, reliable broodiness high on the list of affected traits.

Average age may skew a breed’s broodiness rating, but use general breed reviews to set your expectations. It’ll get you pretty close.

If you want hens laying and sitting lots of nests to raise out for meat, “high/yes, very broody prone” works.

If you’re mostly after the eggs and maybe a replacement clutch or two every so often, “high” is likely to be a problem.

“High” usually means one way or another, you’ll fight broodiness often. Especially if descriptions mention “persistence”, possibly often enough to impact the eggs-per-week or eggs-per-year numbers listed somewhere nearby that rating (stressors reduce laying).

“High” also tends to mean you’re going to be dealing with cranky hens less willing to quietly let you take their eggs, more likely to find places other than the box to lay, and more likely to get huffy with each other.

“Low/not prone” is not always the answer, though. It’s really not the answer if you’re only going to have one breed and <3-5 keeper hens per person/dog.

“Low” means you’re going to have fewer birds willing and able, they’ll be willing less often, and you’ll usually be further into the old, slow-laying ages before hens truly go broody.

Mostly, if you’re mostly looking for eggs but you do want hens to periodically raise a clutch or serve as a surrogate, aim for the middle-road “occasional”-average listings.

Many sources only give a yes-no broodiness rating, so read the reviews and consider contacting the suppliers to ask for recommendations.

There are a ton of aspects that go into breeding and flocks, some of which you can find here http://www.theprepperjournal.com/2016/11/22/dont-know-can-hurt-us-livestock-edition/.

Make sure reliable broodiness is one of the factors that gets weighed when picking breeds, as well as deciding which hens to keep or kettle.

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