The Words We Use and How They Define Us

[BillyC]

Around here we say “Did you get your deer?. I always say I “ got one” and I take it to the processor after I field dress it.

 

[Old-Duckman]

Not along the hunting lines but about word usage. I was speaking with a gentleman on the phone about restoring a motorcycle. I told him that I had "torn it apart" already... He coreccted most appropriately. He said, "You disassembled it and you can reassemble it. If you tear something apart, you can't tear it back together." Wise words and I no longer use that phrase. I have seen that phrase used on this forum though...but I did not post a "correction", but the man's quote surely went through my mind!

 

[Justin.44]

I remember coming home from hunting deer as a kid and my mom asked "Did you catch one?" Like we were trapping them in cages or something!

 

[rkg1]

Here in central Pa we kill it and cut it up.

 

[BackDraft]

Not along the hunting lines but about word usage. I was speaking with a gentleman on the phone about restoring a motorcycle. I told him that I had "torn it apart" already... He coreccted most appropriately. He said, "You disassembled it and you can reassemble it. If you tear something apart, you can't tear it back together." Wise words and I no longer use that phrase. I have seen that phrase used on this forum though...but I did not post a "correction", but the man's quote surely went through my mind!

In the Fire service, if we save a person from a burning building, we say we “got a grab”. I guess to us it sounds more modest than rescuing. Also, early on, a rural department had tankers to haul water. Now they’re “tenders”, because “tankers” fly.

 

[TDM]

Words. When I was growing up we used to say “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Now words have been weaponized. But there still just words. Some folks don’t know the difference.

 

[SOLANCO]

In the Fire service, if we save a person from a burning building, we say we “got a grab”. I guess to us it sounds more modest than rescuing. Also, early on, a rural department had tankers to haul water. Now they’re “tenders”, because “tankers” fly.

Couple of miles downhill from us our stream has grown to a respectable size. Sometimes see the local VFD filling their tanks there.

 

[HighUintas]

In the Midwest, deer hunting really can be like harvesting. So I call it that sometimes, jokingly. It's like going out to pick yer favorite ear of corn off the stalk.

Out west, I kill em.

There's a difference between a processor and a butcher. Growing up, the deer all went to processors. That's what they called themselves. This was is a hick rural area... I know they didn't care a bit about PC terms. It could be because they didn't have a year round storefront or counter. You just drop your animal off, place your cuts order, pick it up awhile later. I'm now the processor. I'm not good enough to call myself a butcher. I'd call myself a hack.

 

[necchi]

How about Shakespeare?

Oh Gadd's! Shakespeare!
Why didn't the old man just say he was hungover, and that's why it took so long to open the gate.
What did it take? 400 words just to hear he was too drunk to get it up the night before?
Waag!

 

[Colonial Boy]

"Killed" and "Butcher" for me. Harvest denotes that you raised it either a crop or an animal. Process is non-descriptive. My bank can process a loan application

My bank can kill and butcher a loan application as well.

 

[user 31257]

I always use “kill” rather than any of the sugar coated terms and I say “cut it up” rather than “butcher” or whatever else people say. I think of butcher as more of a domestic animal process even though that’s probably incorrect.
In the little town I grew up in, it was common for folks to use “skun” or “skun out” rather than “skinned”.

 

[Christophero]

I specifically shot this deer. If someone teaching a class to potential new hunters to get them involved in the sport I won't become enraged if they use kill, catch, or harvest. They are preparing the next generation to continue that which we love to engage in.

When I removed her entrails, hide and deboned the carcass, cut up and ground the muscles in to protein for future dinners on my own, and if someone taking time out of their lives to teach the next generation of hunters happen to use the terms field dress, butcher, slaughter, process I won't be bent out of shape, as they are doing us a service to keep what we believe strongly in alive in this uninitiated culture. I know the terms I use reflects what is taking place before my eyes with my own hands. What they want to call it while they are teaching and participating is their choice. Becoming bristly and angry won't win any converts to our way of life. It makes us feel good that we can snarl at other's lack of superiority, but let's remember, gents, we are only one generation away from loosing our freedoms. Alienating that crop of kids and grandchildren with our 'it has to be this way or no way' attitude only turns them off. There are hills to make a stand on, live or die, but is harvest, field dress, process really one of them?

 

[dehart.stephen]

Like the worn-out GI in France said when he looked back and shook his head at the town in rubble, " ...Well, we just 'liberated' the hell out of THIS place...." Guess you could say all the polite euphemisms we fling around nowadays are. very "liberating."

 

[JEBMs]

I never heard harvest, processed, etc.used in reference to game animals until I got on Internet forums. We always killed, gutted, skinned, quartered, and cut up or butchered the animal.

 

[TDM]

I never heard harvest, processed, etc.used in reference to game animals until I got on Internet forums. We always killed, gutted, skinned, quartered, and cut up or butchered the animal.

Your exactly right! Never made that connection before.

 

[OldRust]

Here in central Pa we kill it and cut it up.

This one made me smile. Growing up in NC PA .. Clinton County right beside you we killed and cut them up too. Regional dialect

Thanks,
O.R

 

[oldwood]

Age 12 in S.W. Pa. , Dad took me and my first buck to a "butcher" shop. The man there called himself a "meat cutter" , and seemed a tiny bit indignant at being called a "butcher". Semantics.....

 

[springfield art]

Language is a funny thing. To what extent do we define our words? To what extent do our words define us?
In Europe during WWII juden might send you to death at Auschwitz. But in other mouths would identify you as a resistance hero. Today, and on this forum, liberal is nearly a term of opprobrium. Not so much so when FDR was trying to pull our fat from the fire of the Great Depression. Now the label conservative has a value that varies depending on how much one believes in government's ability to solve long standing societal problems.
It is, I think, refreshing that some meanings do not vary.

Radio commentator Dennis Prager is clear when he differentiates between "leftists" and "liberals"...liberal in the classical sense means someone broadminded, vs. leftists in the political sense.

 

[Sidney Smith]

I don't sanitize what I do. When I hunt, I kill animals and birds. I gut them, then I eat them.

 

[SOLANCO]

I am comfortable with my earlier post in which I favored plain language for the things we do. If I shed blood, animal or human, I must own it.