[Sca-cooks] Yes, it's gross, but I'm curious . . .

[Bill Fisher]

Hrm, I used to hunt for quite a while in PA and it never came up.
There are a large number of things people do to "bring them luck on
the hunt."  At my Dad's hunting cabin, the guys would suck moths off
of the wall ( I never did, really ;-) ) to bring them luck on the
hunt.  The guys down the road, would go skinny dipping in White Deer
Creek the day before buck season started.

Sounds like there may be a plausible connection, but I have never
heard of it before.

Cadoc


On Thu, 09 Sep 2004 10:17:24 -0700, Ruth Frey <ruthf at uidaho.edu> wrote:
>      Had an interesting conversation at an event this last weekend, and wanted to toss it to the crowd to see if any further info came up . . . There's a certain amount of peripheral non-food stuff to go through to get to the OT stuff, but bear with me.  :)
> 
>       As part of an Arts tournament entry, I'd made myself a hunting horn in the classic manner (cow horn, lop off the tip, carve in a conical "self" mouthpiece, coat the upper 1/3 of the inside airway with beeswax, etc., etc.).  A gentleman visiting from another area had not yet seen the thing, and was very curious, so I showed it to him, and went off on the usual Full Description/Lecture; among other things, I mentioned that I'd read Period hunters would apparently plug the mouthpieces of their horns after the hunt, and then use the horn for a drinking vessel.  I also made my usual jokes that that wasn't a very appealing idea in some ways, since horns were also used to carry fewmets (animal droppings, often from deer, collected before the hunt and used to assess the condition of the animal being tracked), but that it was possible deer droppings would have actually improved the taste of some of the lower-class Medieval beers and wines.
> 
>       At this point, the guy I was talking to floored me by saying, "I've never understood the thing about putting deer droppings in beer.  I refused to try it."  Turns out he was with some folks on a camping/hunting type expedition (probably in Montana, forgot to ask where this was), and some of them actually put deer droppings into their beer before drinking.  My friend was utterly grossed out and refused to participate; he was unclear about whether all of this was some weird hunting tradition, a macho-testosertone thing, or just a gross-joke sort of activity, and he didn't really care to inquire further.  Nor could he say whether this method of flavoring beer was a regional/folk thing, or just something unique to this group of people.
> 
>      But for me, there was a sudden bizarre connection of hunting + deer poop + beverage/drinking vessel, and I couldn't help wondering if this was some really strange folk survival of Period hunting practices.
> 
>      Has anyone come across anything remotely like this before?
> 
>      Sorry, as questions go it's a weird one, I know, but y'all were the group of people I felt most, er, qualified to offer insight.  Take that as you will . . . ;)
> 
>                 -- Ruth
> 
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