Do You, Personally, Kill Your Own Meat? page 3

[Paleobird]

I have killed my own dinner in the case of digging up clams and going spear fishing for lobster in Mexico.

Once I witness the killing of a huge turkey for the family thanksgiving dinner at my sister's house. That turkey did not go quietly into the great goodnight. My BIL and my husband at the time, both big guys really had to wrestle and fight the thing. It's funny in retrospect but at the time there was blood going everywhere and it was pretty horrific.

Of course they didn't know what the heck they were doing. I'm sure it can be done more humanely.

[Pamsc]

I grew up fishing and was taught to clean what I caught at a fairly young age. I'm not into fishing but now and then I am in a situation where I buy uncleaned fish and clean it myself. As a teenager I became an expert in opening raw clams. I recently passed that skill on to my daughter, who did have a little reaction to seeing the clam clamp down. I don't enjoy dropping the live lobsters into a pot of boiling water.

I've never killed or cleaned a mammal or bird. When my parents had good land for hunting in New Jersey they let a neighbor hunt on their land in return for 1/4 of a deer. Their vegetarian friends would eat venison because the animal had had a natural life. My youngest sister would not--my parents said she had a "bambi fit."

[sbhikes]

I used to go fishing a lot as a child. I was quite desensitized to sticking a hook through the bait to the point where I was pretty cruel to the bait, which was live. I may have actually killed some of the fish I caught, but I don't remember. Being a kid, my dad and mom usually took care of preparing the fish. Also, many fish have really sharp spiny fins on top so I was afraid of some kinds of fish.

I've never killed any other animals for food. I would like to. I think it would be a good lesson. Not long ago I went to a friend's house for fresh crabs and I watched him put the live crabs in the boiling water. Nothing happened at all. Just lifted the lid and stuck them in and closed the lid. The crabs were kind of sluggish from sitting on ice.

[Uncephalized]

The only animal I've killed myself and eaten is fish. I didn't have any problem killing them, but mostly what was going through my mind was "stop flopping around so much you f***ing fish, it's making it very hard to kill you!" Fish are not warm or fuzzy or very smart so it's hard to feel too bad when they die.

My dad and I got elk tags for this winter, though, and I expect that to be much more emotional and intense, if I manage to shoot one. I'm looking forward to it but very nervous about how I'll handle it.

[solstice]

we even cooked up groundhog----fattened on my garden! Is that "Appalachia" enough?!

Also...it's MUCH harder to skin a deer if it's not a fresh kill...skinning a warm deer is really easy.

[Nady]

I also grew up fishing~ I could catch it, scale and gut it, and have it frying in the pan with eggs by 8am I can't say I enjoyed the time I had to club a catfish into oblivion so I could clean it~ all that and I discovered that I don't like catfish! I will also admit to triumphantly (albeit viciously) decapitating a gopher with a shovel because he had the gall to think my veggie garden was his personal utopia, never thought to eat it though~

[Crabbcakes]

we even cooked up groundhog----fattened on my garden! Is that "Appalachia" enough?!

ROFL! My neighbor is the Queen of Rodent for Dinner! She has yet to invite me over for any of it, but she grew up in rural West Virginnie, so it comes to her a wee bit naturally, methinks.

Her husband takes care of the varmint problem at their place, and here is the scenario: out his back double deck doors is a number of acres of cleared land - just mowed grasses. So he can easily see when a groundhog shows up. He generally keeps a gun close by, and when he sees one, he doesn't go outside, or even get out of his dinner table chair... he just asks his wife to open the doors fully... he takes aim... and shoots the groundhog right from the comfort of his spot at the head of dinner table.

I'm still not sure I have processed that one yet.

[Rasputina]

I have a trained cougar named "Gunther" who does all my kills for me. I brush his fur and he brings me dead animals- it's very symbiotic.

[aix_sponsa]

I've only eaten squirrels that I shot and cleaned myself, caught fish but never cleaned them (that will change). I'm "desensitized" to cleaning animals because I majored in Wildlife Management in college and for a few classes were required to turn in multiple skulls that we cleaned ourselves, and study skins that we did ourselves as well (like taxidermy, but stuffed with cotton or polyfill and stretched out straight for mammals, on a dowel for birds). I've skinned and stuffed many small songbirds I've found, and now have a hard time passing a dead bird on a road who is in good enough shape that I can collect its skull. I have a skull and skin collection from being a former GA DNR park naturalist and it just comes natural now after having to learn it for college. You just have to do it! It's not that bad, really.

[catdance62]

I have posted before on this subject, but yes, my husband and I kill our own meat. We have a farm and raise goats, sheep and chickens (we haven't bought store meat in many years). We regularly slaughter the excess males and keep what we want and sell the rest. We also kill and eat raccoons and possums we catch in our live trap. I have also eaten snake, iguana, hawk (too stringy) cat (also stringy) and wild hogs. In October we are getting a 4-month old steer to raise over the winter and butcher in the Spring