Hunting as a grocery alternative: what r/povertyfinance's 114-comment debate actually reveals
As seen on the 24/7 Wall St. homepage on October 19, 2026.
It definitely can be as long as you don’t fall into the gear trap, but it can also be incredibly expensive if you let it. It’s a great feeling to put food on your own table. Where are y’all to have open season on rabbits? They’re regulated like any other game where I am.
A couple says roughly $700 in rifle and gear has yielded nearly 10 deer over five years, zeroing out their meat budget. The 114-comment pushback is the real lesson: licensing, tags and the gear trap can erase the savings fast, so price the full setup before betting your grocery bill on it.
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A post by Amaya3066 on r/povertyfinance describes how one couple went from no hunting background to harvesting nearly 10 deer over five years, starting with a cheap single-shot 12-gauge and a few boxes of shells from Walmart. Their total investment in a deer rifle, scope, and ammunition came to around $600 to $700. At that scale, the math works out in their favor.
Rabbits were the entry point, and an important one. The couple harvested them from public land 30 minutes from home, with cheap shells and no season or bag limit restrictions in their area. Two wild turkeys, taken at a local farm's invitation, added more meat for the cost of four shells. Those early, low-barrier wins are what made the larger investment in deer hunting a logical next step.
The 114-comment thread adds the complications. The top comment, from DeltaBlueBBQ with 91 upvotes, lands on the central risk: the gear trap. Hunting runs cheap or expensive depending on whether a person keeps their setup minimal and purposeful. Other commenters point to licensing fees, tags, required hunter-orange clothing, and processing knives as costs that quietly erode the savings before a single animal is harvested.
Several commenters offered alternatives that stretch even further. One noted that trapping and jug-lining for fish deliver more meat per dollar and per hour than hunting, with a total setup cost under $10 in some states. Another flagged that a .22LR rifle is cheaper to feed than a 12-gauge, and that an air rifle is cheaper still for small game. The throughline across the thread is that the strategy works best when the setup is deliberately kept lean from the start.
The original post is candid that this path is not available to everyone. State regulations vary widely, rabbit hunting is not open-season everywhere, and the time required to learn, scout, and harvest is real. What the thread collectively argues is that for people in the right geography with the right regulations and the discipline to avoid gear creep, wild harvesting zeroes out a household meat budget over time.