Living like a hunter-gatherer (job market, safe neighborhoods, schools)

[arctichomesteader]

It's not impossible but you need to follow the rules on the public lands (stay away from national parks at all costs, not to be confused with national forests) and with the hunting/trapping. AK does have low income hunting licenses for residents at a discount last I knew. Honestly 1 marten should cover your licenses and then some. AK doesn't have the same laws as Maine on landowners hunting without license and free trespass on unposted land. Different culture.

Honestly, why not try it for at least a while in Maine and see how it goes for a month or so? Did you hear the story of that hermit who spent years alone there? Only in jail because he was robbing camps. Get in the UT's in Northern Maine and you can disappear. I'm just north of Bangor at the moment and it's amazing how quick things turn to wilderness here and I'm not even that far out. Get up somewhere near Fort Kent and you can find places way out there. Land's as cheap in ME as AK.

[lmk228]

OP, did you ever make it?

~a fellow dreamer

[RayinAK]

Originally Posted by akpls

There's no shortage of things to die from in the Alaska bush!

Specially for a "beaver" in trapper & bear country

[Veniceman]

Originally Posted by MisfitBanana

Sorry, but I don't think those in charge of immigration in other countries will think, "Well, he won't make us any money, but he'll definitely gather our unwanted cattails! Let him in!"

Basically, in another country, you'll come off as a vagrant - someone who may not disturb people most of the time, but eventually (health care crisis) will expect to use the country's resources without contributing to their bottom line. And you may think that you'll have all your emergencies covered, but when you severely break your leg and have to be put up for a month while you recover (unable to split your wood, gather food, or even walk at all), and you have extremely minimal savings from living like a "wild human," then you WILL be relying on the country's good will to provide for you.

Going to Alaska seems far more likely than trying to get a residency visa in another country.

As for hunting regulations - I don't know anything but what I've read in these forums, but I did find this website: http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/re...fs/general.pdf

AMEN TO EVERYTHING YOU SAID! The Bolivians and Russians have enough problems with their own people. Also, OP doesn't realize how remote and far away these places are. Alaska is big and expensive to get to but Siberia is even worse. It's thousands of miles away from Moscow and nobody speaks Emglish there. Getting a Visa is difficult and they will definitely not want anyone who has few resources coming into their country to live. They've got enough poor people already. OP needs to stay where he is and pay into our social security system. At least he will get taken care of when a calamity occurs and also when he gets old. It never ceases to amaze me how short sighted some people can be.

[Parnassia]

Guess we'll never know. The OP hasn't logged in for about 5 years!

[ABQConvict]

I know this thread is old, but I hear people talking up Alaska as a way to get into primitive lifestyles that far surpass the complexity of even off-grid, so I submit this to any new folks reading this thread with the same idea:

In terms of sheer calories available, year round, and a climate that somewhat mitigates the chances of dying in ways other than starvation (exposure/hypothermia) for a solo, or even small group, survivalist with no outside sources of calories or materials, I would say that for a neophyte hunter-gatherer, Alaska would be a bad place to do it. One can live off grid in Alaska and even provide a decent chunk of calories from hunting and maybe a few calories growing some sort of staple crop plus meat animals (which would not be orthodox Hunter/Gatherer) but long term unassisted survival would be difficult even for an expert in the sub-type of Alaskan environment (what works in the panhandle will not work in the interior will not work on the North Slope) that he or she is tring to survive in without a whole community of experts sharing the duties and risks of survival.

In Alaska, you have a very short growing season, including for forageable foods, and while there are some massive calorie sinks like bears, moose, and aquatic mammals, they are distributed widely, not deeply across the land. Indigenous groups that survived there did so because of an accumulated knowledge of thousands of years of living in the north Pacific/Arctic environment since before their ancestors crossed from Asia, and more importantly, the group dynamic of resource gathering/hunting. Any one hunter could have a bad year, or string of bad years, but if one or two in the group take down a moose, a walrus, a seal, everyone eats. As a lone hunter, you can reasonably expect to die the first year unless you have sacks of grain and meat jerky, and that is not a part of the hunting/gathering lifestyle.

If you really want to try a true hunting/gathering lifestyle, unassisted by outside calorie sources, it may be doable in the US, however.

Florida provides opportunities for hunting deer, wild boar and other large game, fishing fresh and marine fish species year round, and several species of plants and fruiting trees that provide calorie sources and gardening opportunities year round.

You might want to check out Rob Greenfield. He "successfully" survived on only self-obtained (gardened/foraged/roadkill) foods for a year in a suburb of Orlando, Florida while living in a 10x10 shed made of scavenged materials. In addition to a garden, he harvested hundreds of pounds of wild yams, picked fruit from trees year round, and either hunted or scavenged deer. He also attempted fishing but said he didn't get a good caloric return, though he was inland so didn't have access to bigger marine species. He claimed his biggest problems were an overall lack of protein and fat, and that was with, if I recall correctly, harvesting several deer (some of which may have been roadkill, and thus maybe some of it was unharvestable).

He didn't live entirely off grid (his shed was in a backyard, but he only had an extension cord and he subsisted entirely on collected rainwater. His experience was not completely H/G either, since he did a lot of gardening, but it had a lot to do with sustainable calorie acquisition which is really the heart of the Hunter/Gatherer lifestyle.

It has been a few months since I watched some of his videos, so I don't remember all the details, but I really reccommend learning about his experience providing all his own calories by himself in an environment that made it easy. And even then I would only consider him marginally successful since he said he lost weight. And he didn't start with any spare weight to lose.

Anyway, good luck and don't turn out like that guy who died in the schoolbus.

"For one year I grew and foraged 100% of my food.
Every. Single. Bite.
No grocery stores, no restaurants, not even a drink at a bar.
Nature has been my garden, my pantry and my pharmacy."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX4kq4QfYRA

[bortstc37]

There's a reason that Alaska Native peoples have always lived in villages/groups. It takes a lot of people working together to make it work. People wanting to come up and be man vs. wilderness (or small family vs. wilderness) are in for a rude awakening--not to mention that few of them have the skills, knowledge, or experience required.

[blueherons]

Originally Posted by ABQConvict

If you really want to try a true hunting/gathering lifestyle, unassisted by outside calorie sources, it may be doable in the US, however.

Florida provides opportunities for hunting deer, wild boar and other large game, fishing fresh and marine fish species year round, and several species of plants and fruiting trees that provide calorie sources and gardening opportunities year round.

]

Don't forget alligators and we pay by the foot for boa constrictors.

[Music_Man]

And how much are the foreign lizards worth?

[gouligann]

These threads crack me up. Once in a while I click on the "Alaska" forum just to read these queries. I shake my head at some of them lol.

I feel sorry for you regulars on here with all the citified dreamers wanting to live in remote Alaska asking the same questions over and over. I've been to Alaska once on a holiday and I love it! People like to dream, but living up there in the wilds? Um, no thank you.

I guess some people fantasize about Alaska as the last frontier and think they're up for the challenge. I wonder how many people that post on here actually do move up there? And actually build in remote areas? And thrive? And survive lol?


I live in an area of northern Ontario where there is lots of uninhabited land, heavily forested and lots of lakes.

We have brutal winters and our summers are probably similar to Alaska. Can be warm, but seldom hot for any length of time. Mosquitoes and blackflies are thick enough some years to drive you insane. We have lots of black bears, the occasional cougar, lynx, bobcats, wolves, coyotes, moose and deer.

Anyways, your state is lovely and I want to go back for another holiday. We found the people we interacted with very nice and friendly.
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Just throwing it out there if anyone is interested, there is a group in Ontario that are buying land and selling shares to people wanting to live off grid. Might be an idea to test run before setting off for Alaska?

Note: I'm not affiliated with this group, in fact I signed a petition to block a group of them wanting to purchase land near our cottage.

Boreal Forest Medieval Villages – Affordable off-grid communities in Ontario, Canada. Join our next adventure.

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/borealvillages/