Home › Forums › Campfire Forum › "Harvest"
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I guess I’m on a rip today…but, this word somewhat offends me. We kill, plain and simple.”Harvest” seems a weasel word like “collateral damage”. Blood is spilled that is the truth. It’s all philosophically arguable but harvest seems too politically correct and evasive. What say you?
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Deer are killed. Potatoes are harvested. I’ve done both and I know the difference.
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A lot of the people that advocate using the word harvest instead of kill think that it is more palatable to the anti crowd. The truth is, you can call it harvest, kill, blood bath murder and it won’t sway an anti’s opinion one bit. They don’t look at hunting logically, they look at it with knee jerk emotion and no word in our language will make them feel better about it.
It doesn’t bother me when people use the word harvest, and I only expect the same in return.
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I like your words Longbow Hunter. That about says it for me. I might add….
When we say we “kill” a deer, the word is specific to the deed. There is no other information conveyed. The listener doesn’t know whether we ate the deer or left it in the ditch.
When we say we “harvested” the deer it gives more information. It means not only did we kill the deer, but we kept it for food. But it has some connotations that don’t apply to hunting. It implies that the deer was as docile as a cow when we killed it. It implies a domesticated act, not the wild act that it is.
We hunt to return to the wild. We kill so that we may eat. We need a new word to describe what we do. A word that links the killing to the hunting, but equally important, links the killing to the eating.
That’s a big job for a single word.
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When the girls see “harvest” they say “They always say that.” With a look of disgust.
When they see someone say a little prayer, and thank the animal after making a kill on TV they have the same response. Audrey says it with more colorful adjectives…
They haven’t condemned me yet but I have yet to bring home a kill.
I’m thinking I’ll say he was attacking Bambi.
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On the other hand…..
Have they ever seen a farmer kill a cow he has raised?
The cow stands there beside someone who he has trusted all his life, and the farmer hits him over the head with a sludge hammer. NOT PRETTY. That is how they get their steaks.
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True enough that’s a big job for one word, Steve. I also find a lot of contradictions when I hear an anti hunter, especially if that person is eating a store bought burger. In some cases it’s due to a prior experience that turned their stomach. Seeing a deer with an arrow in it’s rump walking through their backyard did it for one friend. But that’s sort of another part of the puzzle. As a whole we’ve been gently guided away from the cycle of life in which one thing dies and another eats and we all get out turn. It’s a shame that hunting and eating are so far removed from one another to so many of us. Kill should mean eat, with few exceptions. Hunting became sport and sport means win and win means trophy. I’m grateful for our tradbow community here, where the experience is the real prize and a buck or a doe or a groundhog can be celebrated. All the best to you! Dwc
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I have always disliked “harvest” used in this context.It seems to appear most often in newspaper articles and Fish and Game literature meant for a non-hunting (not necessarily anti-)and it implies that we are doing something that need to be sanitized somehow. I do not use “harvest” in my own writing, and as some of you know I often edit it our of others’. There is one context in which I think it is legitimate though. If a biologist is talking about “the 2016 moose harvest in Unit 9,” I really can’t think of a better way to say what’s being said. Don
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The term harvest does get used to soften the blow when it comes to eating meat as food. What really needs to be taught to our children is that “absolutely nothing lives on this rock without the death of others”. Plants only live because other plants died and their bodies became food for the organisms that break down plant fiber into soil. Then more plants grows and the cycle continues. It makes no difference if you pull a carrot out of the ground by its green top or a pike out of a stream by it’s lip you are killing it so you can sustain yourself. With that said let us give thanks today for all the dead bodies on the Thanksgiving table, and the live ones we are sharing the meal with. Happy Thanksgiving
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While I don’t use the word myself I agree with most that has been said. Don had a good point about the non-hunting public. IMHO as it pertains to the non-hunters…harvest has more of a relation to hunting where killing relates more to a slaughterhouse. Steve
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It really doesn’t bother me, even when it’s edited out of my writing. 🙂
I guess I see both sides of this. When I’m talking among fellow hunters I just say “kill.” When I’m speaking with non-hunters (not anti-hunters, non-hunters) I use a little softer vernacular — usually “took” or “got.” To me, it’s not about political correctness; it’s about knowing and respecting your audience. My neighbor north of our property is a hunter. I wouldn’t worry the least about him seeing a dead deer hanging on the game pole. But our neighbors to the south are former anti-hunters turned simply non-hunters (thanks to a lot of polite conversation over the years). I’ve been known to rake leaves over a blood trail if it’s visible from the hiking trail near our mutual property line.
That being the case, you will never hear or read me using the terms, poke, smoke, whack, stack, or anything about a hit list.
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Jason,
You forgot cap. As in I’d like to cap that deer!
I like your attitude Jason. Folks are so uptight these days about so much. You can never go wrong by just “respecting your audience”.
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Agreed. Well said.
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J.Wesbrock wrote: That being the case, you will never hear or read me using the terms, poke, smoke, whack, stack, or anything about a hit list.
Another term that drives me nuts: when people talk about animals they killed and say, “Those bids are so dumb.” Calling the animals you are hunting dumb is just so disrespectful. And it is ironic that I usually hear people call an animal dumb in the middle of a story that they’re bragging about the animal they shot! I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but I’ve been hearing a lot of that talk lately since the brandt season has been so crazy this year.
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Not trying to steal the thread but whilst we’re on the topic of expressions used in hunting….
I hate the expression “It’s a shooter” or “That’s a shooter”.
It makes me feel slighted sometimes. I don’t trophy hunt, if a big deer strolls by sure, but I feel belittled by some because I may shoot a forky or a small frame deer. People using that expression seem to imply that the deer I shoot and eat are inferior and below their level. Myself also below their standards as a hunter because what’s on the table should of had huge antlers.
Every deer I have ever shot was a trophy to me and never looked upon as “a shooter”.
I spent a lot of my youth where venison was an important staple in our diet. I was glad to have a meal with meat and never a thought entered my mind as to how big of antlers it carried or what sex it might have been to start with.
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R2 wrote: Not trying to steal the thread but whilst we’re on the topic of expressions used in hunting….
I hate the expression “It’s a shooter” or “That’s a shooter”.
It makes me feel slighted sometimes.
It makes me feel embarrassed for the speaker when I hear it. Cringe worthy.
Or “that’s a book buck” ug.
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Steve Graf wrote: [quote=R2]Not trying to steal the thread but whilst we’re on the topic of expressions used in hunting….
I hate the expression “It’s a shooter” or “That’s a shooter”.
It makes me feel slighted sometimes.
It makes me feel embarrassed for the speaker when I hear it. Cringe worthy.
Or “that’s a book buck” ug.
I have struggled with this myself. I prefer to shoot a larger animal for the cost/# value of it. I try to not shoot anything that visually looks 1-2 years old. If I were in Indiana or something and the yearlings weigh what my 4 year old deer weigh in GA, I would be shooting them often(they taste better). I find that horns don’t taste all that good and the wife doesn’t particularly like animals looking at her when she is walking through the house.:shock:
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I understand why many use the word harvest when referencing deer they have killed. Assigns an agricultural tone to the act. Makes it necessary to obtain the meat. Only problem with it is, that hunting is not agriculture. Many believe that game management is like agriculture now that the common belief is that wildlife has been reduced to something that needs to be managed. I disagree. Wildlife successfully adapts no matter what we do or don’t do as long as we don’t over hunt for subsistence and in these times with a grocer on every corner there is no need for that. In my area deer seem to be thriving in a semi urban setting despite hunting pressure, the influx of coyotes and even a stray bear or two. With all of this and an increase in vehicle traffic I can’t tell any difference in the numbers I’m seeing through out the year. But they don’t seem to be increasing either so apparently a combination of things is working to keep the numbers where they are. Again, this is not agriculture or management, it is more or less natural order even if some of these seem not so natural, they exist in the ecosystem.
But anyway I’m not totally down on the word, it just may or may not be an entirely accurate description of the act.
The ones that get me are phrases like “meat doe” or “meat buck” or “freezer filler” like they have to explain themselves to others for taking a legal deer or for not taking a “mature animal”
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I hate that word too! we kill, plain and simple!
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