Tactful Tales of Hunting

Is the use of the terms "guts" and "gutpile" necessary and appropriate?


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Berek

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When refering to the harvesting of an animal, how many of you would use the terms "guts" and "gut pile" in mixed (men, women, hunters, non- and antis) company or find it unnecessary and without tact to do so?
 
What really offends me is using the term "harvested" as a cocamamie, namby-pamby, sillyninnyism to replace the honest "killed".
 
I prefer the term "field dress".

I believe it behooves us to remain tactful in mixed company.

On the other hand, if we are hunting antelope out at my cousin's ranch, a proclamation such as "The coyotes are feastin' on the gut piles" is entirely in line. ;)
 
My opinion?

If you're talking about a steaming pile of dead animal parts in mixed company, it doesn't matter what words you use -- someone's going to be offended.

pax
 
Regardless of the audience, I generally speak of "killing" a deer. I refuse to be euphemistic about that part of the hunt. Now, it seems sorta like courtesy to not be overly graphic about the aftermath, but I see no point in going overboard in worrying about others' delicate sensibilities. They don't like it? Let'em eat veggies.

It amuses me to speak of "disassembling" Bambi or "rendering into component parts", just for the fun of wordplay.

"Field dressing" was what I first heard my father and uncle say; a bit less graphic than "gutting out a deer". But it's not something I particularly worry about.

I'd say it's a bit much to describe an exit wound as, "...big enough to stick your head in and look around without getting blood on your ears."

:), Art
 
I've found that, for instance, when someone sees me in hunting clothes, they ask, "Been hunting?", I'd like to say, "Nope, but HOW could you see me in these cammos?" :rolleyes: Naw, someone has asked me, "Kill anything?" & other folks recoil in horror at the idea of Bambi getting shot! I'll answer in a quiet, non-redneck voice level either way, then if there's further recoiling, I mention that what I have "harvested" isn't pumped up with hormones & antibiotics just under legal levels & my family won't grow breasteses on their backs, then walk outta the store! Boy, does THAT get a stare!
 
I'm with Art on this one. No need to foof it up with a sugar coating. It is what it is. As if anyone should think it's any different from what happens in a slaughterhouse while stuffing a Big Mac into their intake................come to think of it, what happens in the hunting fields is more tasteful than what takes place in a slaughterhouse. Cleaner too.
Being the jack pine savage that I am, I really don't care who I offend as long as what I'm saying is true.
 
I shot a deer several years ago, and after taking it to the check in station, I decided to leave it partially exposed out of the trunk of my car even though new state reg.'s said I didn't have to once it was checked. I was proud of the state land trophy and live in a city, so despite the political incorrectness of it, I advertised the deer. I'll bet some people may have been offended on the highway. I know my neighbors were to the point that the "mom" called up and asked my wife if I'd please cover up the dead deer waiting to be butchered in my back yard. Other young neighboring kids asked why did I shoot the deer? I tried to use the event as a teaching experience for them.

On another occassion, my children's elementary school was recruiting volunteers from the community to teach a short seminar on any preferred topic. I submitted a proposal to teach about "Hunting & North American Game Animals". I was soon informed that this topic (as well as "fishing") wouldn't be acceptable.
(They wouldn't allow the NRA Eddie Eagle program into city schools either.)
 
If you're talking hunting in company that doesn't approve of hunting -- as someone said above -- it won't matter what you use. Personally, I would use "field dressing" if I absolutely had to talk about it with non-hunters, though I can't imagine when that might be. I was raised in a non-hunting family and family gatherings to this *day* are not a great place to bring up hunting, though I do it because I've since recruited a couple of family members into the sport. I don't hide the fact that I hunt, but try not to throw it in people's faces who I know are upset by the subject, either.

As far as "harvesting" animals? They haven't invented a fast enough tractor to harvest a deer yet, so I still "kill" mine.

;)
 
i am tired of the wishy-washy nonsense bent on not hurting the delicate sensitivities of peta. peta would like to be done w/ hunting regardless of the words used to describe the act.

the way i speak of hunting to hunters, non-hunters, and anti-hunters alike:

i don't harvest a deer - i hunt deer, and when i find one i want, i dump it (sometimes substituted w/ 'bust', 'tip over', and 'kill').

i don't leave entrails around, i field dress the deer where it lays. and then i'll shoot the coyotes the next morning over gutpiles.

etc. no need to sugar coat and be wishy washy.
 
As far as "harvesting" animals? They haven't invented a fast enough tractor to harvest a deer yet, so I still "kill" mine.
How fast can a deer go???
How about one of these babies?-
4tveo1.gif
JCB Fastrac
The yellow civilian ones are good for 40mph.

The militarised version will do 50mph!!! :eek:
Military JCB Fastrac (CAUTION! 3.7MB Acrobat PDF)
And it's a nice shade of green :D
Not sure what type of harvesting attachment you'd fit though :)


On a more serious note, I tailor my hunting/varminting tales to suit the audience. If the subject comes up, antis and non-hunters get a sanitised version of reality, though I sometimes ask them to ponder the reality of where their steaks and sausages come from. Fellow hunters and a few others get the full story.

.
 
Look, I'm just the 'ideas man', I come up with the concepts and the grunts on the ground gotta make it work :evil:


I love my job :D



ps. Here's a REAL 'Deere' harvester-
combine_9660cts_action110078.jpg
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:


.
 
I"m occasionally pestered by the Nervous&Twitchy non- or anti-hunter types. I like to point out that I'm a natural food freak, preferring to avoid all those growth hormones that the N&Ts ingest.

I also point out that the hunter and the gardener are the only ones who are true do-it-yourselfers as to feeding themselves. Otherwise, one is merely hiring somebody else to do the scutwork. Nothing wrong with that, of course, so long as the one doing the hiring is aware of what's being done--and thus avoids the sin of hypocrisy. :D

Art
 
I remember as a kid we took field trips in school. Now I had been hunting and "field dressed" game, just what you did. Most of my classmates , both boys and girls had. Many of us had "wrung" a Chicken's neck too...been out on farms...etc.

We went to see how / what is involved from Cow to hamburger.

Still say they don't do field trips like they used to...need to tho'. :evil:
 
sm ~

Two of my younger boys went on a camp out with the boys' group from church last weekend. They came home extremely muddy, extremely tired, and quite chattery.

On the camp out, they hiked a half mile into the woods carrying backpacks and such, gathered fallen wood for a fire, learned how to read a compass, and, oh yeah, watched as the leader chopped the head off a chicken with a machete for the evening meal.

Reports were that it was messy, but that the chicken didn't suffer at all. My tender-hearted ten year old reported that he was sad for the chicken, but added that that's what chickens are for, and that it's okay to be sad sometimes. I asked if anyone else was sad, and he looked at his brothers and said, "Well, some people were. But we were all hungry, and we weren't mean to the chicken. We just ate it."

That's a pretty good life lesson.

pax
 
pax

That is so cool, thanks for sharing.

Amazing how kids see past all the blurry stuff, and get to the heart of the matter.

I am the eldest of 4. I had chased a chicken, chopped his head off, and chased it again when I was a wee brat. Made more clear that saying " running around like a chicken with his head cut off" .

We decided to get some chicks one Easter, so the younger ones could have that experience. Well time passes and one day the kids come in from being somewhere, they did notice the Chickens...probably under house, not unusal.

Supper time and " Mom, 'teve...this chicken bone looks different. Well hard to say my name so you leave off the the "S", the drumstick was the "bone". Then the other 2 kids noticed the rest of the Chicken was a bit different.

Life Lesson shared at the Supper table. The baby brother cried, the middle sister " oh NO" and the brother next in line to me lost his apetite.

Well they ate veggies, munched on bread...kinda quiet.

Kitchen all cleaned up, everything put away. About 9 p.m. little stomachs are grumbling. I hear the Fridge and the "sound of sneaking". 3 Kids eating Cold fried chicken, under the kitchen table,...must be a kid thing.

"We were hungry". "This Chicken is good..." .

Life Lesson futher instilled and so it took a picnic under a Kitchen table - whatever it takes.
 
Eggs.

I recall a kid threw a fit about not gettng a toy he wanted and taking the 5 eggs in the fridge , and throwing them to see them break on the side of the shed out back.

This was my neighbor's kid. So the kid got a spanking and made to clean up the mess. Dad gets him the car, figures he is going to have to buy some eggs.

Nope. Grandpa's place, where he learned the next morning about going out to the hen house to get eggs " be watchful for snakes you hear" :uhoh:

Well he learned eggs are not white, they have poop on them, and don't come in a nice cardboard container.

He learned some other life lessons, he was hoping to get by , by just buying fresh eggs at the market with his own money...
 
When refering to the harvesting of an animal...somebody has to clean it before you can eat. Same with butchering hogs and plucking chickens. My mom's parents used to win the chicken plucking contest at the county fair year after year and sometimes the corn shucking contest.

I don't recall anybody ever talking about gut piles and entrails and such. They were ususally too busy processing meat and keeping the dogs out of the scraps. That reminds me of the evening my uncle cleaned a half a burlap bag of squirrels and one of them was so old and tough he couldn't clean it. He threw it to the dog and the dog and couldn't get it apart. Meanwhile, my grandmother (on my dad's side) had begun canning them.

Oh well. I vote for call it what you will.

John
 
Ok, I guess it's time that I let you all in on why I asked this question.

Let me start by saying that I view "killing" vs. "harvesting" as a personal choice and is neither here nor there. I have always refered to it as harvesting, just how I was raised.

When it comes to "guts" and "gutpile", I've noticed many non-hunters and (especially) anti-hunters automatically see a crime scene from CSI or something with blood all over the trees and entrails hanging from the branches with us splashing in the middle of it all like a kid in a mudpuddle going "la lal la...."

Ok, that's a little extreme, but a gory crime scene nonetheless. I got into a discussion with some other folks that feel that using terms like "entrails" and "harvest" instead of "guts" and "kill" are "compromising" themselves and using the term "entrails" (which was the original term for "guts") is aiding ppl in living in a fantasy world where meats and eggs just magically appear.

It has been my opinion (opinion, mind you...) that using the original terms for what we do eliminate the visual that the anti-'s paint of us as gore-mongering nut cases that are in it for the kill alone.

I think the most moronic portion of that conversation was when someone accused me of lying to my students. By using the terms "harvest", "field-dress" and "entrails", I was apparently lying to them about that part of the hunt.

Oh well. I guess I just wondered if I were the only one.

Berek
 
Good points, Berek. As far as "harvesting" goes, I just like to poke a little fun. The word works, and I've used it myself a time or two in the distant past. I just don't think ANY words ANY hunter uses are going to change any minds particularly in the crowd that already is pre-disposed to see us as "gore mongers". It's only the people that are sitting on the fence that we'll ever hope to educate. The ones across the fence...forget about 'em. I won't change my vocabulary to suit their "feelings".

Nice to see you are a hunter-educator here in WNY. Keep up the good work.
 
"Harvesting"

-has always had a different meaning to me.

--Growing up - referred to farmers bringing in crops from the fields.
--High School and such, taking an International Scout and going 4 wheeling for fun.
--When in the Main OR of a hospital. When a person died, We Harvested the organs, bones skin, eyes...
Organ donors, bone grafts, eyes...this is how one obtains them.

We usually started about midnight, when things settled from regular cases and emergencies. A "full" harvest, may have teams from all over the country flying in and say taking only the eyes, another team may only need the heart, and fly west where the recipient was waiting. We had our own needs, walk a Playmate cooler two OR suites down with a Liver. Then shake the ladies hand 2 weeks later, that rec'd it.


We were respectful, nonetheless we called it what it was. The Organs, were referred to by their proper names.

Reality is what it is. One thing to speak to a child's level scared, another to put in layman's terms a procedure - the bottom line is always the bottom line.

Take a "less informed , denying" individual *ahem*. Reality sets in when the heart they are getting is in fact from someone who died. Tends to shake some misconceptions.
 
My five year old little girl prefers to use the word guts when she tells stories at daycare. Course some of the city slicker ladies that work there find it offensive, but the owner is an old country girl and she finds it just fine. Course she did ask me not to let Maggie bring a Hog liver to school for show and tell like she said she was. We sent a tusk along instead. She's got a head start on the anatomy classes, since she asks what all that stuff is and what it does. I was pretty proud when we where gutting a bowshot hog one evening and she was digging through the pile and said,"Daddy, you got the broadhead right through the heart."

Course she did decide to talk about playing with baby pigs still in the sacks with the cords attached over Easter Dinner... My dad and brothers thought it was funny as heck. I think my mom and wife wanted to cull me.... :D

I vote for kill, gut, and eat... :)
 
'Course, sometimes you need to be offensive...

I was sitting on campus, eating some sort of sandwich--probably roast beef--and a Sweet Young Thing walked up to me and asked me how I could eat meat!

Affecting my best Oklahoma accent[0], I looked her straight in the eye and said, "well, first, ah go out in the woods, with a rahfle..."

The look on her face was priceless.

[0] Sad to say, I'm an import. Born in OH, spent time in OK, MD, back to OH, now back to OK. I like OK.
 
I like to kill animals, eat thier flesh, and use the skins to decorate my house. Then again, the antis I know are less concerned about guts then they are me popping the heads off doves. :neener:
 
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