HARVEST ? No thanks I hunt, shoot, & kill.

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Harve Curry

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I keep seeing the word harvest in place of hunt, shot, killed, taken or took. PC, I guess. So in the tradition of Col. Jeff Cooper and sticking to the correct definitions of words, I looked up harvest in three dictionaries. Chambers (1983), Webster's (1933), Webster's Int'l (1953, so huge I keep it on a book pedastal).
Harvest means to gather the crops that you labored on ( as in plowed the field, watered, fertilized, irrigated) to grow fruits, nuts, grains, or vegetables. I am not a farmer, I tried it and it is hard tedious work.
I hunt free roaming animals with my politically incorrect firearm, then I shoot, and if all goes right I kill. No apologies, no sugar coating it to get along with greenies, or any other newage politically correct notion.
So at the end of a succesful hunt, didn't you kill that critter?
 
I first heard the word used in this context back in the early 70's when a professor said he would "harvest squirrels" when was was a kid. Didn't bother me any, I knew what he was talking about.
 
When I worked for parks and wildlife we did "creel surveys". 30 years later, talking to a biologist at a local boat ramp weighing and measuring fish as the fishermen came in and weighing mine, I was corrected. "They're not called creel surveys anymore, they're known as "harvest studies"". Well, excuse the heck outta me. :banghead::D No matter, whatever the current in thing is, same procedure, same data collection, different title.
 
PC titles change so often that I can't keep up. I usually just say that I shot a deer/pheasant/squirrel/etc. It's simple and it's actually what happened.
 
IMO, shooting deer at a feeder while sitting in a box is harvesting, not hunting. It requires no special effort or skill.

That said, I'm more than happy to get a deer that way. Nothing at all against it, I just can't bring myself to call it hunting.
 
IMO, shooting deer at a feeder while sitting in a box is harvesting, not hunting. It requires no special effort or skill.

That said, I'm more than happy to get a deer that way. Nothing at all against it, I just can't bring myself to call it hunting.
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Well, it's the only way to be successful. Oh, I've shot deer without the feeder, it really don't do that much. In fact, most of the deer I've taken on my place have been away from the feeder, can count on one hand the ones that WERE at the feeder. This season, I ain't seen a thing other than hogs.:banghead: Yeah, I call it hunting. But, then, I go "duck hunting" and "dove hunting" and if I wanted to be correct about it, most times it's "duck shooting" and "dove shooting". You don't "hunt" 'em. In the case of ducks, you set up deeks on a pot hole, call 'em, and get 'em in range. Doves, you just get in the flight path and pick 'em off as they fly by. Where's the "hunt"? Yet, everyone says "dove hunting".
 
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’

‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master— that’s all.’
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Hardly a distinction worth getting excited about IMHO, and it sometimes does no great harm and may do a lot of good to describe hunting in a non-confrontational way to those who have no experience or understanding of it.

In any case the word "harvest" has a wider meaning than just getting in a crop. It can quite accurately be used for collection of the fruits of the environment, including timber, fish, and meat from wild animals. It has other meanings too. Nothing PC about it. Dictionaries don't prescribe or delimit use either, they describe it, and often they lag considerably behind actual usage in our evolving language. - especially when you are looking at a 1933 edition. Many words have emerged even since your Chambers Dictionary was compiled, and others have acquired new meanings.

I've often told people things like "I like providing the food we eat by my own efforts. I grow vegetables, brew beer, and go out into the bush to hunt for animals for us to eat" Most people, even highly urbanised people, can understand that. Describing it as a "harvest" actually puts it in a proper context too - that of a resource which is managed and drawn from for food just like a crop.

Just baldly telling people "yeah I like to spend as much time as possible out in the bush killing stuff" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Mind you, I've found people will soon stop pestering you at work if you adopt a suitably wistful expression and say "its been way too long since I did some killin'...";)
 
I agree, unless you raised it, you are taking, killing, or hunting.

Words mean certain things. That is why the framers were so careful in deciding which ones to use.
 
Any time I have a gun in my hand and I am going to kill game, it is hunting. I also hate to see anyone try to put down others choices of hunting methods.

Sorry K3, I find your post annoying. If you did not want to offend anyone, you should not of said it. JMHO.
 
You find the truth -- which he applies to himself -- annoying? LOL

Anyway, MC, dove hunting must be easier where you are. It's definitely qualified as "hunting" some times and places when I've done it. And duck? Hell, if you sit in the cold before sun-up, after paddling around in a boat in the dark, and there's a good chance there won't be any ducks, I'd call it "hunting".

I suppose if you go to your heated duck club, watch "Exploding Varmints I & II" on the big screen while waiting for the sun to rise, and take the heated tunnel out to the mahogany-interior heated "blind", and have dog handlers deal with the retrieves, that's not hunting. I'm not sure it's "harvesting" either. It does sound like fun, sometimes, though. The Brits call bird hunting "shooting", AFAIK.

Anyway, I think the word "harvest" is a nod to the fact that our game populations ARE managed. We're not just shooting whatever's out there. Realistically, it is a "harvest", at least when we're hunting game that wouldn't exist without game management. That doesn't make it less of a "hunt", necessarily, but it can make sense to call it a "harvest" when it really is.
 
Shooting a deer at a feeder box is killing an animal, not hunting or harvesting. Also not legal in any state I've hunted in.

Gunman said it here:
"Words mean certain things. That is why the framers were so careful in deciding which ones to use."

If you are accused of violating a law and go to trial , you'll depend on the definition of words. We shouldn't twist words or even allow it. Look what happens to the 2nd Amendment.
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"Words mean certain things" but those meanings can and do change over time, they aren't fixed. That is why you aren't relying on Webster's 1828 edition. The role of dictionaries is to describe those usages, not to fix them forever - that would be an exercise in futility. Noah Webster recognised that.

In any case, the word harvest does have much wider meaning than that which you've quoted - even for legal purposes. For example, we have laws here related to the "macropod harvest", "forest timber harvest", "abalone harvest" and "water harvest". It isn't hard to find similar examples in the US, as well as examples of the official use of "harvest" in the context of hunting including Wyoming Game and Fish Harvest Reports, Tennessee Harvest Management Reports and even in New Mexico the NM Game and Fish Dept Harvest Reports..

The word is also used in the context of organ harvest, bone marrow harvest, Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, and a number of other contexts. It has expanded from its roots, as words sometimes do, to encompass a fairly broad definition based around "collecting" or "gathering".
 
Our places have feeders and game food plots: They are there to supplement the deer's natural food, to keep the deer on the place and to give deer a place of refuge when hard pressed by hunters.

We do infrequently get a deer on one of our places. We do not harvest, shoot or kill deer over the feeders or in the game plots. We ambush them on their way to the feeders and plots.
 
"Words mean certain things" but those meanings can and do change over time, they aren't fixed.
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True enough, and they vary with region.

For example, I had an Australian roommate who was a competitive cyclist. He came through the door after a long ride and said, "I'm f*cked!", then plopped down on the couch.

Now in the US, saying "I'm f*cked!" after a training ride would mean, "My time was WAY off; I'm going to lose the next race for sure!" But in Oz, I found out it just means, "I'm really tired!"
 
Well, yeah, that was just that one incident.

He used the word a lot, and its meaning generally had to be deduced from context. Funny thing is, he didn't sound as crass as I do when I use the word a lot.

Americans tend to use the word as a general-purpose modifier, as punctuation, a meaningless placeholder, for emphasis, for rhythm, etc. Aussies seem to use it to replace other words, more often than we do.

However, I haven't heard the word used to replaced "to kill an animal." Said roommate had been living in New Zealand for a few years, and from what I could tell I think that "f*cking sheep" means the same thing down under as it does up here.
 
I ask you this, what word would you use when coming home from hunting and your 4yr old son asks if you caught something? No son, I was hunting and through hard work and prayers the good lord allowed me to kill a deer so we could eat and be thankful. That deer's family and friends are sad but being killed by me he didn't have to worry about starving, freezing to death, being killed by a cougar etc.....

Taking any life should not be taken lightly and "sugar coating" "changing meaning" etc... will only lead down a misunderstood path.

Sure they use the term harvest for a lot of things, and a lot of those things are farmed. If you are a farmer of fish, abalone, oyster, clam, deer, elk, timber, wheat, potato, corn, etc... why not use the term harvest. If you aren't a farmer then I don't see a need to use the word for hunting.

The term probably comes from the State Wildlife dept. that treats the herds as their crop, they just have us as their migrant work to travel around the state and harvest their crop for them so they don't have to and they get to charge us for it too!
 
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Armedbear, I fell in the floor thinking how funny it would be if your roomate walked in, pumped his fists in the air and announced, "I just f*cked a sheep!"
 
I ask you this, what word would you use when coming home from hunting and your 4yr old son asks if you caught something? No son, I was hunting and through hard work and prayers the good lord allowed me to kill a deer so we could eat and be thankful. That deer's family and friends are sad but being killed by me he didn't have to worry about starving, freezing to death, being killed by a cougar etc
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My 5 year old understood that deer hunting meant killing deer when he was 3. He also understands the difference between what a toy gun does and what a real gun is for. Its too bad that much of the adult population in this country doesn't posses that level of common sense. The only unfortunate thing is that he's too young for me to take hunting- it isn't because of a lack of him asking me to take him deer hunting all the time:cool:
 
Getting back to Harve's point: Seems to me that so long as one is not confrontational in one's phrasing, "kill" is a quite reasonable word--since that's what was done.

If some other person then gets confrontational, IMO that's the time to point out that the hunter is a do-it-yourselfer and the non-hunter merely hires out the killing and scut work. "Out-sourcing", as it were. :D

Separately: If you walk and stalk, you're imitating the wolf; he's a mobile hunter. If you sit in a stand near corn or a trail, you're imitating the cougar near a waterhole or overlooking a trail.

And laws about baiting vary among the states...

Art
 
And laws about baiting vary among the states...
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True.

However, if you're in the field and a buddy refers to you as a "master hunter", it's always a compliment, whereas being called a "master baiter" by your hunting companions is not, regardless of local laws regarding feeders.
 
ArmedBear, yes I found it annoying, but more irritating Why bother to say something if you want to say I don't want to offend anyone. I figure, if it is legal and in the hunting regulations as legal, it is hunting. If someone wants to sit in a stand and shoot deer over a feeder,and it is legal, so what. The out come is the same, dead deer.

But back to HARVEST, Harvest is something a farmer does to crops, killing is what we do when we hunt, bottom line. That politically correct BS is just that BS.
 
If someone wants to sit in a stand and shoot deer over a feeder,and it is legal, so what.
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He said it about himself. He just said that it was more like "harvesting" than "hunting." He didn't call it wrong.

Your decision to be annoyed at him for that strikes me as utterly bizarre. Several people here have made the distinction between "killing" and "hunting."

Nothing wrong with killing for food, either. But I've heard a number of people make the distinction between shooting a deer that happens along, from their kitchen window, legally, with a tag, and "hunting". Why is it wrong to make that distinction, especially if a hunter may do both?
 
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