For purposes of this discussion you really have to boil things down to their simplest terms. For me that is asking the question "Do you take pleasure in killing an animal?". I personally define that as a feeling of satisfaction or enjoyment of killing something. I personally take no enjoyment in killing. In some ways I agree with Atlas that if you hunt for the enjoyment of killing then you may be out of touch with what hunting is all about and to take it a step further you may be a little warped. When I shoot an animal and it runs off and dies somewhere you can't see it there is a pretty big disconnect between the act of shooting and killing. However when I shoot an animal and am there to watch it take it's last breath in front of me I certainly take no enjoyment in that. That's what I'm talking about. When I was a teenager there was a woodchuck digging up my dad's garden. One summer day I snuck outside and shot him with a field point, pinning him to the ground. I then took a shovel and beat the poor thing to death. There was certainly no enjoyment in that and to this day I feel somewhat bad about doing it. I guess if that's something you don't understand or agree with then no amount of words typed on this computer is going to change that. A question was asked and I answered it from my perspective. Perhaps yours is different.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck is pinned to the ground and pummeled with a shovel? Not very much. The first animal I ever successfully hunted and killed was a squirrel and I did it with my trusty Crossman 66 Powermaster. It was a great shot but to this day I remember walking up on that squirrel feeling remorse and also truly realizing the finality of it all.
Agreed. .and that is not what was meant by the question I actually agree with you and have stated such in previous posts with the skunk and bear scenario .... I am convinced mire than ever it is semantics...
We use to have the "chicken killing stump". It was just a chunk of wood that hadn't been split for firewood. A hatchet stayed there just for killing chickens. I would hold the head stretched out and dad would hold the chicken and do the deed. We would kill 4-5 at a time. Had them in a box, kill one throw it down and let it do its dead chicken flop and then grab the next. I don't remember much about butchering hogs except making the cracklin' in the house and stuffing the sausage casings. Now that I think about it we didn't do our own beef we took it off and had it done for some reason, probably because of the size. I remember raising them as calves and we would name them, even got somewhat attached to them. Didn't save 'em. I do remember cooking goats over a fire pit to.
Based on your avatar alone, I've always just assumed you're a bit of a psycho. So that doesn't surprise me.
I made the thing, "Team Kill", not because I overly love the killing part of deer hunting, but because at the time I made the name everyone was calling killing, harvesting. A deer is not harvested like corn, they are killed. I don't want people to start equating killing a live animal with a brain and emotions, with that of picking a vegetable or fruit. As for the death part, in years past it brought a lot of mixed happiness/sadness. Heck, for the first 15 years I hunted I never took a picture of any deer I killed out of respect for the animal. I know that sounds weird, but at the time I felt like I was disrespecting a dead animal by parading it around so to speak, laughing and joking while it was dead.
No, not one single bit. In order to be a good hunter, you must kill. My avitar pic was a 150.00$ Montana coyote. Anywhere else would have most likely turned it into a 50.00$ coyote. Precision shooting is what it was
Do you still feel this way dork? How would you respond in 2014 if I told you, you would only have 2 more kills in the next 8 seasons? LOL
Hey easy.....no one picks on Swamp Stalker but us forum brothers of his. I'll have you know that man is a legend amongst a hundred or more hunters on an online forum...this is no easy task which any mere mortal can easily achieve without countless hours of time committed online interactions which most would scoff at.
I enjoy the kill. That's why I spend so much time shooting, tuning, making sure broadheads fly well. When that opportunity presents itself, I want it to be perfect. The best, fastest kill I can make. I don't like hurting animals, I like killing them fast. the worst feeling in the world is that you wounded something.
I've always used the term harvested - for the same reason I call my AR-15 my AR and not my assault weapon. It is as widely accepted in society to call an AR an assault weapon as it is that hunters kill their quarry.... I am not offended by the use of the term kill, however I know it carries with it negative connotations which do not exist in me. I fully understand that killing is an intricately woven-in part of harvesting that neither exists without the other, yet due to the chance at more conversations about hunting with non-hunters I choose the term harvesting. That's just me. Doesn't need to or even should change another's decision on how they describe or talk about their hunting however.
Hopefully I didn't come across as a jerk in my post. I don't care what people call the killing of a deer. It was just at the time in 2014ish I noticed everyone start using that term.
Nah, I still don’t like saying harvest or hear someone else say harvest. I know it’s a more acceptable term and I get that but you don’t harvest deer you kill em.
If you called your AR-15 your "assault weapon" you'd be using an inaccurate term for it anyway, but that's beside the point. People can use whatever terminology they like, of course, but to me using the word harvest instead of kill is simply inaccurate. Well, that is unless you run a big high-fence operation, import genetically superior whitetail stock, breed them, feed them, water them and give them everything they need to survive and mineral supplements to grow huge antlers. In that situation I suppose "harvest" would be an appropriate description of the "kill", but it's still a kill no matter how you look at it. The only time the definition of the word harvest actually fits when talking about wildlife is when total number of animals taken during a season is being referred to. This is just my opinion, but using the word harvest instead of kill appears to be nothing more than an attempt to gloss over what it is we actually do and make it more palatable to the politically correct crowd. Me personally, I say screw the politically correct crowd.
Truthfully, I only use(d) the word harvest because it is what the DNR web page calls it. Being in a Democrat state that very well could be the reason they chose that term, but not the reason I utilized it. Pretty certain there's a few threads on this forum that show I could not care less what others think about me or my beliefs and I won't sugar coat my words to appease. Now I feel like they conditioned me and am pissed off, I'm gonna kill a deer now for spite.....
