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Safety & Legal Notice: Hunting regulations vary by state and region. This article discusses emergency survival scenarios. Always follow local game laws during normal circumstances. In a genuine survival emergency, preservation of human life takes legal priority, but you will need to justify your actions afterward.
I rolled my ankle in the Gila Wilderness on day three. Came down a scree field wrong and felt the pop. Knew immediately it wasn’t going to improve with walking. The satellite communicator had already died that morning — screen went blank, no amount of button pressing brought it back.
I had two packets of ramen, a Clif bar, and some trail mix I’d already been eating too fast. The trailhead was about twenty miles northeast. With a bad ankle, that’s four days minimum, probably five.
Day three’s food supply wasn’t going to last five days.
So I set snares that evening. Not because I’d planned on it — I’d been hunting recreationally for years but had never done it out of necessity. I had snare wire in my kit mostly out of habit. Turned out to be the most useful thing I packed.
Sport Hunting vs. Survival Hunting — Two Completely Different Games
A throbbing ankle and an empty stomach have a way of clarifying things. Most of what I knew about recreational deer hunting was borderline useless out there.
Sport hunting is about selectivity. You’re waiting for the right buck. The right shot. The ethical distance. You’ve got a $900 rifle with a scope that cost more than your first car, you’ve got calls and attractants and trail cameras and a heated blind that smells like coffee.
Survival hunting is about calories. Period. The trophy, the photos, the score — none of it registers when you’re genuinely hungry. What registers is protein, and how fast you can get it.
My buddy Dave — retired Army, two tours in Afghanistan — told me once that the biggest mental shift isn’t tactical. It’s emotional. “You spend years hunting for sport and you develop all these rules in your head,” he said. “Then you get actually hungry and every single one of those rules becomes negotiable.” He wasn’t wrong.
In a survival context, your priorities flip completely.
The calorie math changes everything — a rabbit takes maybe fifteen minutes to clean and cook, while a deer takes hours of butchering work. When you’re already depleted, that energy expenditure matters more than the size of your meal.
Chasing a deer across broken terrain with a bad ankle or in unfamiliar territory can get you hurt worse. A snare works while you rest, which is exactly what I needed that week in the Gila. And if you’re in a situation where you don’t want to broadcast your location — and there are scenarios where you wouldn’t — a firearm becomes a liability. Snares and traps are silent.
There’s also the ammunition question. You might have ten rounds. You might have three. I had seven, and I kept doing the math in my head every time I looked at them. Miss twice and you’re down to five. Miss five times and you’re out of options.
Think Small Game, Not Deer
In a survival situation, targeting deer is almost always the wrong choice. Deer require a capable weapon, accurate shooting under stress, and hours of processing work. Two rabbits caught with snares while you sleep provide equal calories with a fraction of the energy output. Small game is how people actually survive — not the glamour shot.
Start Small — Literally
Deer and elk are the instinct. They’re wrong. Stop. Unless a whitetail walks directly in front of you and stands still — and even then — you need to think smaller.
Squirrels. Rabbits. Groundhogs. Birds. These are your survival staples, and there’s a reason every wilderness survival instructor on the planet says the same thing: small game is how you stay alive.
Here’s why. Rabbits are everywhere. And I mean everywhere. East of the Mississippi, cottontails are so thick in some areas you can barely walk through a briar patch without flushing one. Cottontails run the same trails every day. You’ll find their brush piles, you’ll know their feeding windows — dawn and dusk, reliable as a clock. My neighbor Larry back in Ohio caught rabbits in his backyard with a cardboard box propped up on a stick. He was not joking. I checked.
Squirrels are even easier in some ways. They’re loud. They’re visible. They’re territorial, meaning if you see one in a tree, there are probably six more within a hundred yards. A well-thrown rock can take one down, and I’ve personally seen it done twice — once by a twelve-year-old kid at a summer survival camp who had better aim than most adults I know.
Compare that to deer. You need to scout. You need to be quiet. You need to be downwind. You need a weapon capable of an ethical kill at distance. You need to process 80-plus pounds of meat before it spoils. In a genuine emergency, that’s a terrible allocation of limited energy.
One rabbit is roughly 500-600 calories. Two rabbits a day and you’re functioning. Not thriving, but functioning. And you can catch two rabbits with snares while you sleep. Try that with a ten-point buck.
Trapping and Snaring — Your Best Survival Bet
I’ll tell you something that took me way too long to accept: in a survival situation, traps and snares will outperform a firearm nine times out of ten. Not because firearms aren’t effective — they are. But a trap works 24 hours a day without getting tired, without missing, and without touching your ammo supply.
For the simple snare, take a piece of wire — 20 to 24 gauge works — or a length of paracord inner strand. Make a loop about four inches in diameter for rabbits, two inches for squirrels. Tie it to a stake or an overhanging branch about four inches off the ground across an obvious game trail.
That’s it. That’s the whole trap.
I set seven snares on evening five in the Gila. Used inner strands from my paracord — always carry more paracord than you think you need, by the way. Checked them at dawn. Two had rabbits. Day five went from “this is getting serious” to “I ate breakfast.” The relief was physical. Like a weight coming off my chest.
Location matters as much as the snare itself. Look for game trails — narrow paths through brush where the vegetation is worn down. Near water sources. Along fence lines if you’re near any kind of agricultural land. The junction where two trails meet is gold. Animals are creatures of habit. They walk the same paths every single day.
The deadfall trap is a heavier setup but deadly effective when done right. A flat rock propped up on a trigger stick, with bait underneath — when the animal bumps the trigger, the rock drops. My friend Teresa, who teaches primitive skills workshops in the Appalachians, showed me a figure-four trigger that’s almost impossible to mess up once you’ve done it three or four times. The key is weight. You need a rock that’s at least five times the weight of your target animal.
One thing I learned the hard way: set as many traps and snares as you can make. Ten is a minimum. Fifteen or twenty is better. Your success rate per snare might be 10-15 percent on any given night, which sounds discouraging until you do the math — if you’ve got fifteen snares out, you’re probably eating in the morning.
Set at Least Ten Snares — Not Three
A single snare has a 10-15% chance of catching game on any given night. That’s not discouraging — it’s math. Set fifteen snares across active trails and you’re statistically likely to eat in the morning. Set three snares and you probably won’t. Volume is the strategy.
Improvised Weapons — When You Don’t Have a Rifle
Not every survival situation starts with a hunting rifle in your hands. Maybe you’re a hiker, not a hunter. Maybe you lost your gear in a river crossing. Maybe you just didn’t bring a firearm.
A throwing stick sounds primitive because it is — and it works. Grab a dense, straight stick about two feet long and about as thick as your wrist. Hardwood only: oak, hickory, maple. Throw it sidearm at rabbits, grouse, or other small game at close range. Effective distance is maybe ten to fifteen feet. Indigenous peoples across every continent used them for thousands of years for the same reason — they require nothing but a forest floor to find your ammunition.
A sharpened stick isn’t going to kill a deer — be honest with yourself about that. But a hardened spear point, carved from a straight branch and fire-hardened in coals until the tip is dark and glassy, can pin a rabbit, frog, or fish to the ground. For fish, add two or three additional prongs lashed on with cordage and you’ve got a fishing gig. My buddy Marcus took three bluegill out of a creek in north Georgia with a gig he made from a sapling and some bank line in about twenty minutes.
Don’t dismiss a sling. David and Goliath wasn’t fiction in terms of the weapon’s actual capability — a piece of fabric or leather with two cords can hurl a stone with genuinely lethal force. The learning curve is steep, and plan on a few hundred practice throws before you’re hitting anything consistently. But if you’re in a long-term situation, the investment pays off. Ammunition is everywhere you look on the ground.
Bolas are three rocks wrapped in cloth or leather, tied to cords of equal length and connected at a center point, thrown at the legs of running game or flying birds. I’ve never personally taken anything with bolas, but I watched a guy in Patagonia drop a running hare with one at about twenty yards and I have never forgotten it.
Field Dressing Without Proper Tools
You’ve caught something. Now you need to process it. And you might not have your good knife with you.
If you have any kind of blade — pocket knife, multitool, even a razor blade from a first aid kit — you can field dress small game. For a detailed walkthrough on larger animals, check our field dressing guide, but the basics for small game are simpler than you’d think.
Rabbits and squirrels are easier to dress than most people expect. Pinch the skin at the middle of the back, make a small cut — just through the skin, not into the muscle — get your fingers in there and pull in opposite directions. The skin peels off like a wet t-shirt. It’s almost disturbingly easy on a fresh rabbit. Then open the belly from sternum to pelvis, scoop out the organs, and you’re done. Takes maybe three minutes once you’ve done it twice.
If you have no knife at all — and I’ve been there — a sharp rock works. Flint, chert, obsidian, even a piece of broken glass or a sharp edge from an aluminum can. Knap a piece of flint by striking it against another rock at an angle — you’re looking for a flake with a sharp edge, not a pretty arrowhead. That flake will cut skin and sinew well enough to dress a rabbit.
Teresa told me about a student in one of her courses who dressed a rabbit with a piece of broken beer bottle he found near a campsite. “Not elegant,” she said. “But the rabbit didn’t care.”
Hygiene matters even in an emergency — especially in an emergency. If you have water, wash your hands before and after handling game. Intestinal parasites from wild game can cause diarrhea that will dehydrate you faster than not eating at all. If you can’t wash, at least scrape your hands with sand or dry leaves before touching food you’ll be putting in your mouth.
Cooking Wild Game in the Field
Do not eat wild game raw. I know survival shows make it look badass. It’s not. It’s a fast track to parasitic infection that will incapacitate you when you can least afford it.
If you can start a fire — and building a fire should be one of your first priorities in any survival situation — cook everything thoroughly. Internal temperature of 165°F kills most parasites and bacteria. You don’t have a thermometer, obviously, so the rule is simple: if it’s not gray all the way through, it’s not done.
For spit roasting, skewer the meat on a green (living) stick — dead wood will burn through. Prop it over coals, not flames. Flames char the outside while the inside stays raw. Coals cook evenly. Rotate the spit every few minutes. A whole rabbit takes about 40 minutes over good coals.
Rock boiling is worth knowing. If you have a container that holds water — even a hollowed log or a depression in a rock — you can boil water by dropping fire-heated stones into it. This makes broth from bones and scraps that would otherwise be wasted. That broth is loaded with minerals and calories. Don’t throw away the bones. Boil them twice. Then crack them and eat the marrow.
If you’ve got more meat than you can eat immediately — unlikely with small game, but possible with a deer — smoking buys you time. Build a small rack: four sticks in the ground, crosspieces on top, thin strips of meat laid over them. A slow, smoky fire underneath. Green wood — hickory, oak, apple — produces the best smoke. Hot smoke for 6-8 hours at minimum. This isn’t full preservation, but it’ll buy you an extra two or three days.
Never Eat Wild Game Raw
Raw wild game can carry trichinella, tapeworms, toxoplasma, and other parasites that cause severe illness. A parasitic infection that causes diarrhea and vomiting in a survival situation can dehydrate and incapacitate you faster than going hungry. Cook all wild game until the meat is gray all the way through — no pink, no exceptions.
Preserving Meat Without Refrigeration
If you manage to take larger game — or you’ve had a particularly good run with snares — you need to think about preservation immediately. The clock starts the moment the animal dies.
Jerky is the most practical option for most people. Cut the meat into strips no thicker than a quarter inch — thinner is better. Lay them on a smoking rack or drape them over a line of cordage between two trees in direct sunlight and wind. In hot, dry conditions, sun-dried jerky can be ready in one to two days. In humid conditions, you need smoke.
Salt helps enormously if you have it. A heavy salt rub on thin strips before drying pulls moisture out faster and inhibits bacterial growth. Even a small amount of salt from a survival kit or a seasoning packet can make a difference.
Pemmican is the gold standard of primitive meat preservation — dried jerky ground into powder, mixed with rendered fat, optionally with dried berries. It can last months. Indigenous peoples across North America used it as a primary travel food for centuries, and the fat content gives you caloric density that plain jerky can’t match.
If you’re in cold weather, nature is your refrigerator. Hang meat high — at least ten feet up — to keep it from predators, and let the cold do the work. Below 40°F, meat lasts days. Below freezing, it lasts weeks.
In a warm climate, your only options are drying, smoking, or eating it fast. An emergency shelter with good airflow in a shaded spot can serve as a makeshift meat cache if you hang the game and keep flies off it with a light covering of cloth or leaves.
Legal Considerations — The Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s where things get complicated.
In a genuine life-or-death emergency, every state has some form of “necessity” defense that may apply to taking game without a license or out of season. The key word is “genuine.” A bad camping trip where you forgot to pack enough food probably doesn’t qualify. A broken leg in a remote wilderness with no communication device probably does.
But — and this is important — you will likely have to justify your actions after the fact. Game wardens have heard every excuse imaginable. If you took a deer out of season and you were three miles from a paved road with a working cell phone in your pocket, good luck explaining that one.
My recommendation: if rescue is likely within 48-72 hours, focus on plant identification, water purification, and rationing what food you have. The legal headache of an illegal kill isn’t worth it when you’re going to be evacuated in two days.
If you’re genuinely looking at a week or more with no rescue in sight — lost in remote wilderness, major disaster, grid-down scenario — feed yourself. Worry about the paperwork later. No prosecutor in the country is going to go after someone who took a rabbit to survive.
Document everything you can. If you have a phone with any battery left, photograph the situation. Note the date, location, and circumstances. This helps enormously if questions come up later.
The Mental Shift
That week in the Gila changed how I think about hunting completely. I still hunt for sport — I enjoy it, I won’t pretend otherwise. I still sit in my stand on opening morning with coffee and a good rifle and wait for a buck to show up.
But I also carry snare wire in my pack now. Every pack. Every trip. I practice primitive fire-starting not because it’s cool — though it is — but because the night I sat next to a fire I’d made with a bow drill, eating rabbit I’d caught with a piece of paracord, I understood something about self-reliance that you can’t learn from a book.
The skills overlap. Field dressing is field dressing whether you’re in a luxury hunting lease or a survival camp. Knife skills matter everywhere. Fire craft. Shelter building. Land navigation.
If you’re already a hunter, you’re halfway there. Learn trapping. Learn primitive methods. Learn to process and preserve game with nothing but a knife and a fire. Those skills are the bridge between “I hunt for fun” and “I can feed myself no matter what.”
And if you’re not a hunter — if you’ve never held a rifle or set a snare — start somewhere. Take a hunter education course. Learn to identify game trails. Practice snare-setting in your backyard. Build a deadfall trap in your local woods just to see if you can.
Because the time to learn this stuff is now. Not when you’re sitting in the dirt with a swollen ankle and an empty stomach, wondering if that squirrel on the branch above you is fast enough to dodge a thrown rock.
It’s not. But your aim better be good.