Versatile survival guns. It's always an interesting question, no matter what website it comes up on. I like a lot of different guns, for different applications in different areas, and for different things.
If I'm looking at a gun for a long-term survival situation, I have to think about what that could mean for where I live. Hunting isn't likely to occupy too much of my time, because I'll probably spend more time working on growing crops. I'll hunt, sure, but ... probably not every day. Unless forced from home, I'll be here, so I can continue to do what I do now with my guns, and that is use the appropriate one for the application, whether that is a .22 or something else.
I hunt birds now for recreation. It never really bothers me to spend a morning hunting and only take home one or three birds, because I'm doing it for fun, exercise, to get outside, and to work my dog. If I was doing it for a survival reason -- to get as much meat as possible in as short a time as possible, I wouldn't do it the way I do. I would be going for nets, traps, and possibly snares. The shotgun and dog would definitely still work, but it's a low-return method, honestly, for time, calories expended, and cost of shotshells. Even if I shot every bird I saw.
My only gun for years was a .22 Ruger semiauto. It did everything from defense to hunting to emergency preparedness, and is still one of my favorites. It is the one gun that always goes to the range, and usually gets shot the most by everybody I shoot with.
Oh, and about lions. The earlier discussion was entertaining.
There are at least a couple of contributing factors to the attack statistics quoted earlier: there are more lions now than there were in majority of the 20th century, and that is partly due to decreased predation by humans on them, and partly due to the fact that there are a lot more deer nowadays (their primary prey species). The fact that there are more of them increases the probability of increased interaction between the species, and the fact that they are hunted less than they used to be, up to and including not at all in some areas like California, means that there are going to be more aggressive cats out there, ones that are more willing, or at least desperate enough, to try taking a human. Doesn't mean that they will always succeed when they try.
I live in an area where there are a lot of them. I don't worry too much about it, but I do carry a gun when I hike, year-round, mostly to protect my dog from them and from the coyotes -- which I see a lot more often.
Wild animals area concern in these kinds of scenarios, but I don't think that they are going to be the primary problem most of the time.
Sorry,the 12 gauge rules.
