Living Off the Land

Woodtrekker has a lengthy, but important article on how much food you would have to hunt/gather to actually live off the land. To sum up, living off the land is not realistic. There is a reason that you should store food and rely on agriculture.

He assumes that an active person would need 3,300 calaries per day (note: you can almost halve this if you are sedentary). Because few plants can provide enough calaries without making a person sick, most of these calaries would have to come from meat. He also produced a neat table to summarize how many animals you would have to kill and eat to meet your requirements:

		Meat
Type of Animal	oz of Meat/Animal	cal/oz of Meat	Total cal/Animal	Animals/Day
Squirrel	2.8	47	132	25 (16)
Rabbit	16.8	47	790	4 (3)
Salmon	96	60	5,760	0.57
Clams	0.25	40	10	320
Raccoon	160	72	11,520	0.29
Turkey	160	45	7,200	0.46
Deer	1,120	53	59,360	0.056 (0.05)
Black Bear	1,600	43	68,800	0.047

And for plants:

	Plants
Type of Plant	cal/oz of Plant Material	Pounds Per Day Needed
Cattail Root (Rhizome)	8	26.5
Parsnips	23	9
Blueberries	16	13
Lingonberries	5	41
Acorns (processed)	110	2
Burdock Root	20	10*

He goes on to discuss other considerations, including the "opportunity cost" of hunting/gathering, legal considerations, etc. Read the whole thing.

(H/t The Woodpile Report).