Defending Your Homestead: 5 Steps to Follow

Whether you’re living in a rural or urban homestead, there will be moments when you will have to defend your family and property from intruders or people looking to take your resources.

These defenses include getting suitable firearms, setting up your home for tactical situations, fencing, and employing other methods for protecting what’s yours.

Remember that these tips aren’t a substitute for knowing your homestead from end to end. However, these methods of defending your homestead will help you know the quirks and features of your land a lot better.

5 Ways You Can Defend Your Homestead

Think of preparing your homestead like an onion – it must have multiple layers of protection not limited to just your home. 

You have the house itself and the surrounding area, which you might have to divide into areas for growing crops, raising livestock, or other activities.

While your house is the most critical area to protect, you’ll still want to ensure your resources aren’t stolen or damaged. Here are the five best ways you can defend your homestead.

Get Weapons for Home Defense

Since many homesteads are large, with borders stretching past what your eye can see, the best weapons, in this case, are rifles. They pack a punch even past 500 yards.

If intruders ever enter your property, you can still pick them off from afar from the safety of your home when using a rifle compared to other close-range weapons.

However, the best home defense weapon for use inside your house might be slightly different. This is because of the more close-range engagements you may find yourself in.

Therefore, you should get at least one long-range and one close-range firearm to round out the selection. Try to get optics on them, like green dot or red dot sights, for additional accuracy indoors (Shooting Mystery has more information).

Alarms, Cameras, and Locks Are Key

You should place locks and alarms on all windows and doors in your home. These are the main entry points that intruders can use.

While having locks alone already makes them quite safe, having alarms that set off when the locks are being broken can wake you up quickly, even if you’re in a deep sleep.

Additionally, having CCTVs both inside and outside your home can help you see all angles at a glance from a TV or computer screen. This gives you a tactical advantage.

You should also install alarms, cameras, and locks on the gate entering your property so that you have an early warning system and can prepare better for any threats to your way of life.

Good Guard Dogs

Whether you have livestock or are just growing plants, having guard dogs can scare off and confront human intruders and natural predators.

Many species of dogs, like the Norwegian Elkhound, Rottweiler, German Shepherd, and the Doberman, can detect and fend off all kinds of natural predators hunting livestock.

They are also a deterrent against human intruders because they can easily pick up scents that aren’t familiar to them. Their barks will let you know to expect unwanted company.

Fences Are a Great Deterrent

Even in urban environments, high fences discourage robbers or intruders from entering by having a physical barrier that’s hard to pass.

The rules are a bit different in homesteading. You should try to conceal and not make the fencing too obvious, as you don’t want potential intruders to be able to study the fencing around your property.

It’s pretty easy to mix barbed wire and hard fencing with natural fencing like bushes and vines to make it look more natural. A great plus is having it blend in with the rest of your property.

Conduct a Regular Inspection

Regularly inspecting your whole property can help you spot weak points in your perimeter fencing or any ways intruders can easily enter.

If you get overconfident with your setup and don’t do regular checkups, you might miss a weak spot in the fencing that will easily allow intruders in.

For example, if a small tree fell and broke part of the fencing, you might not see it from your house. However, intruders will use this gap to enter easily without having to break into anything.

REMEMBER: While setting up traps like in the movies can be tempting, they’re illegal in most states. This is because they can indiscriminately harm animals and people, especially those on your side of the fence.

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Frequently Asked Questions

After learning more about defending your homestead, you might have other questions related to homesteading or defense weapons.

Which States Have the Best Homestead Exemption?

Texas, Florida, Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, and Oklahoma are the states with the broadest and best tax and liability exemptions in the US.

What’s the Best Home Defense Gun?

If you’re defending yourself and your family inside a home, the best gun would be a short-range weapon like a shotgun or a pistol.

Shotguns can put more lead downrange, but the wide buckshot spread can accidentally hit people you don’t want to. On the other hand, pistols are less powerful but more precise.

If you’re looking to defend from longer-range from inside your home or a prepared position, a rifle with at least an excellent red dot sight or even a full-on rifle optic for longer-range engagements is recommended.

Are Booby Traps Illegal?

Booby traps are illegal in many US states. This is because they often hurt animals and people indiscriminately, no matter what they’re doing at that moment.

Booby traps shouldn’t be part of your setup because if you lose track of them, they are bound to go unnoticed and be a danger to non-intruders like visitors, children, or even livestock.

There have been many documented cases of booby traps accidentally injuring or even killing unintended individuals just because they were set up and then forgotten.

Final Thoughts

Defending your homestead is one of the things you’ll have to prepare for but hope you’ll never have to use. Unfortunately, it’s part and parcel of living off the land and being self-sufficient.

As long as you make sure to focus on protecting both the house and the property as a whole, you’ll give yourself layers of protection that will never be broken.

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