My rifle will likely be a .22 because you can carry a lot more .22 ammo than any other kind. And you can bring down deer with a .22 if you get the right shot. I'd hope to have a large caliber pistol for those times when a .22 just won't do though. I'd like to have my old Stevens 15-A because it is as simple as a firearm gets and that means it will work more reliably than any other firearm. For my "just in case" handgun I'd like to keep my S&W 629 revolver. It's big enough for anything around these parts and it will likely keep working when most semi-autos have gave up the ghost from hard living. It's a stainless revolver that shoots .44 magnum shells. That will stop those hungry bears from taking your food and trust me, they will try to take your food. They do that now here at my house. Every time I cook out a bear shows up trying to scare me off so it can have my dinner.
Small animals can be killed with traps as easily as with a rifle. Maybe more so. A good rock fall trap can produce a lot of food. Nothing is needed but rocks and sticks. And you can set up hundreds of them. So can a fish trap. If you have a decent stream in the area you'll likely find far more food from a fishtrap than from hunting. And then there's noodling if you have enough whiskey to make you drunk enough not to know better. I guess it beat's starving. I know lots of people who do it and none of them are dead yet. But a bite from a copperhead will slow you down a lot if you're trying to catch your food. A trot line can catch a lot of fish too but it takes a lot of fishing line. A decent stick made into a makeshift gig can feed a hundred people in the spring just from frog legs. I've never ate anything better in my life than frog legs.
If you grew up learning about the plants in your area you can harvest lots and lots of food from the forest. The problem is generally that most of that food is ready to eat for a short season and if you miss out you miss out. I grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky where we had lots of edible plants. Nuts of all types (one hickory nut tree can feed a person all year practically), raspberries, black berries, poke salad, elderberries, paw paws, grapes, plums, wild strawberries, mulberry trees, wild onions, ramps, chestnuts, walnuts, beechnuts, wild leeks, mushrooms, muscles (not a plant obviously but great if you can actually still find any - they're just about extinct - there were millions of them when I was a kid), dandelions, sassafras (for tea), tubers (if you can stand them), wild lettuce, etc. are just some of the wild plants I can think of quickly. There are others but they are hard to find and not as desirable. And of course there's honey if you know how to get it.
I can tell you it doesn't take long to hunt out an area if you're trying to live of the land. You'll kill every game animal for miles within a couple of years and that's considering that deer are still plentiful when you start like they are now. They will leave an area that is being hunted heavily. They aren't stupid at all. Rabbits, squirrels, etc. will quickly fall to your firearms and traps. Expect to learn to like the taste of possum and coon. Possum in particular are more plentiful than any other animals around and they reproduce at a higher rate. You may have to fall back on eating mice even. They will keep you alive. Just swallow them whole and forget what you just did as quickly as possible.
People are a lot tougher than we think we are in our civilized world. We can eat things that would make a billygoat puke if we're starving. People ate some really awful stuff during the worst years of the depression. I know people that ate tree bark, grass, and anything else that would fill that hole in their bellies. It turned out to be way worse than they thought though. Most of them didn't try it twice. Heck people eat dirt sometimes.
Some of the things we are trying hard to get rid of might provide us a lot of food in the future. Wild hogs reproduce at a staggering rate and they taste just like pork when you eat them (for some strange reason). We might even find a taste for nutrias.
I also live near the mighty Ohio River so finding fish in that isn't hard at all except you'll probably die from eating it and there will be a hundred thousand other people hitting the known hot spots. Everyone knows where to catch sauger and stripers. Everybody knows better than to eat them too. With Institute WV, Pittsburgh PA and the local chemical companies all up river from the spot to catch those fine tasting fish I'd say even trying for food there is a going to be an unproductive waste of time.
BTW if you are city people and you think all that land you see in the country is free and open, boy will there ever be a surprise waiting for you. You will be the ones people are running off to protect their land. And trust me they will know you are there. Sorry but resources will be VERY limited and it will take a lot of land to feed just a few people. If someone thinks you are killing the game on their land they won't be happy about it. Sorry. Really. But that is how it will go. I know how things went during the depression. My parents generation lived through it and we heard all the stories. Strangers were generally considered a threat and were dealt with accordingly.
