Depending on the scenario we could imagine, I think for most everyone, hunting for food will be secondary to scavenging if you don’t already have stockpiles or are in your “bug in” location.
Think about the impractical nature of hunting when you’re trying to avoid human or animal interaction. Can you find game? Can you stay on your land or do you need encroach on other’s? Can you harvest it? Process it? Store it? Defend your quarry? Everywhere you go, even in the sticks, there will be people. Gunshots draw attention. A guy carrying a weapon draws attention. If you have an AR15 and I see you first, I might not want to give you the same benefit of the doubt as a guy walking on my land carrying a lever action…right or wrong, there’s going to be a sizing up of folks outside of one’s “tribe” and how you deal with them.
People are going to loot, people are going to defend what’s theirs. Hunting will be secondary to either scavenging or defending what’s yours from others.
I live between a dozen chicken houses and five pastures of cattle and near a lake. I know some folks and some know me…but if I stray into the wrong area carrying an AR15, I’m pretty sure Farmer Jones’s second cousin who is sitting watch over their fields in a tree stand is going to bust my melon open and I won’t know what hit me. I’m quite sure some suburbanites are going to get hungry and think they can come out here and get free chicken and steak…I don’t want to be confused with them. I honestly can’t picture a scenario East of the Mississippi where your worst threat isn’t a human. Lone wolves won’t do well for long since we can’t watch our own backs, we’ll all need a cooperative tribe.
The biggest message I took from this is that I should purchase NODS