I think if I was going to do this, I'd think about Stewart Island, there's several hunters huts in the Port Adventure / Tikotatahi or Port Pegasus area, if you could track down the owners for permission and get a lift down on a boat with a kayak or inflatable kayak you could do 6 months down there without annoying or being annoyed by anyone. With a kayak of some sort you'd have unlimited fish and shellfish, you could trap possums, with a gun you'd presumably be able to get a few deer, not sure of the need for permits and any seasons on the deer?
I could imagine managing well enough if you took say 1 kg of food a week - say 10 kg flour, 5kg mung beans, 3 kg oil, chillies, salt, pepper, garlic for 6 months, rest gathered and hunted food. Two or three times as much would be better...
Doing it completely living of gathered / hunted food would be really hard I think. I've done sea kayak trips on only a kilo or two per week of the above minimal brought food, everything else from seafood, and been quite comfortable. I've tried to see if / how I could manage only on gathered food, it was remarkable how quickly my energy levels dropped without the carbohydrate and fat, no matter how much fish and shellfish I ate. I lasted only a couple of days like that. Access to plenty of fatty food - eels, pork, mutton birds, seals would help a lot. How much fat does a possum have on it?
I'm curious, you say you previously lived for 6 month periods on wild pork and possums and a few veggies you grew in the bush. How much if any other food did you bring with you? I'm not interested in arguing definitions of 'self sufficient', just curious as to your experience living of the land and what worked, what was difficult. Did you, could you preserve any of your caught food? Possum jerky, salt pork, smoked eel, rendering down lard? I would think having a way to build up a surplus to give you time to get some other things done and peace of mind to manage lean times / bad weather / injury or sickness would be important, less so if you had a sack of flour in the corner of your hut.
This post has been edited by the author on 21 June 2017 at 20:06.