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Comment by johndotsun | Hacker News Reader

Saying Americans have become complacent and lazy because they don't know how to catch, clean, and cook a rabbit is like saying that Americans have become complacent and lazy because they don't know how to steer a covered wagon across the plains.

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Yeah except being able to catch, clean and cook your food is still a valuable skill. However I would say there are more Americans who can do that than Germans... It's hard as hell to get a hunting license in Germany.

Is being able to catch, clean, and cook a wild animal really a valuable skill for most people in the western world? If you enjoy it, fine, but for most of us, the skills that earn us money are going to be much more valuable.

Not everything is about money. Hunting is a character-building expetience. I.E. I was taught to do it with certain respects paid to safety, the animal, and nature--so it teaches responsibility, respect, and other valuable qualities. It is also fun, stress-reducing, and especially if you like meat, very satisfying. Plus, you get good quality (free range, wild caught, organic I suppose) food.

Finally, if we experience some type of catastrophoc event: total war, nuclear winter, natural disaster, I will still be eating.

I suppose it's useful if you're really into wild camping. Realistically how often would the average person, even someone living in a rural state, need to catch, clean and cook their own food? How many decades has it been since a significant portion of the population has needed that skill? Probably several generations at least. I bet less than a fraction of a percent of the population lives in a situation such that they don't procure most of their food through purchases of the products of agriculture or animal husbandry. A town has to get very small and very remote before periodic trips to the grocery store become so onerous that it's actually more efficient to set snares or sit in a tree for days on end waiting for a deer to wander by.

I suspect that any scenario in which hunting/trapping becomes a valuable skill for a significant portion of the population is also a situation where knowing how to operate an animal drawn vehicle is also a useful skill.

Agreed. This whole "you might need it to survive" stuff is such a total fantasy, it's as realistic as "you might need to learn klingon to survive on a bird of prey some day".

This fiction about civilization collapsing, but then surviving on your wits and hunting skill, is the stuff of YA novels.

The moment it really matters- every day you walk away from and the day after.

I assure you if it became profitable to do so, many of us would quickly master the art of rabbit catching. Many wouldn't, and that's fine.

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