Getting to the catch vs. harvest vs. take vs. shoot vs. kill. The neighbor across the street hunts, and has 3 little girls. They are going through that same thing with the girls. I had a deer hanging after I washed it out and the girls saw it. Their comment? Oh look, Scott caught a deer! Mom & Dad are trying to explain that while “caught” might be appropriate, it’d be hard to let it go again. It’s all because of the PC crowd that the different terms are around. To me, “take”, “harvest”, “kill” is the same. “Shoot” to me doesn’t necessarily mean that I could put my hands on it – I could have wounded it and not recovered it.
Tony, let me go back to the experience thing, and how it relates to having something on the wall. For me (at least) having something on the wall is a daily reminder of the experiences I had while getting that animal (or fish or bird). I’ve been on many trips (fishing and hunting) where there is nothing but pictures and memories. If I don’t dig up the pictures, or if something doesn’t jog my memory, then those trips and experiences are forgotten. I’ve been on fishing trips on the ocean where I’ve seen some amazing things, but it takes something like writing this post to jog the memory of those trips. Being out far enough away from land in clean air to see the green flash the sun makes the instant it dips below the horizon as it sets, (try seeing that from land here in the Midwest!). Having a 1,000#+ Ocean Sunfish (mola) next to the boat basking in the sun, seeing a nuclear submarine come to the surface right behind the boat as you are pulling into the channel going to port, being out in a storm up in the wheelhouse with the captain, 15' above the ocean looking UP at a wave coming at you, those are some of the things that I’ve seen but not thought about recently.
I can look at the Mule Deer antlers and think about the 1,000 foot vertical climb up the mountain every day in the dark, (in some places on all 4’s because it’s so steep), trying to beat the sunrise. Watching the rising sun cast its red glow on the mountains and having a bald eagle soaring beneath me as I looked at the valley where the tent is in the campsite. Sitting overlooking a bowl at almost 10,000’ in elevation that’s over a mile in diameter with your feet dangling off a rock where one more step will take you on a ½ mile flight to the bottom. Taking a nap on a rock at mid day in 85°F temps when that morning you were scraping the frost off the 4-wheeler and had to melt ice to make coffee before leaving camp on the climb. Then rolling over and seeing a pile of dried bear poop that you didn’t realize was there earlier. (What, you mean there are BEARS up here??????)
The Pronghorn on the wall reminding me of the rock that I picked up, and noticed that the bottom was colored completely different than the top, then realizing that the rock was probably there in that spot, not having moved for thousands of years before I touched it. (Yes, I put it back exactly as I found it).
To me, that’s what having the thing on the wall means to me. Not the horns per se, but the memories that are associated with them. I don’t know if a picture would do the same thing for me.
It’s all because of the PC crowd that the different terms are around. To me, “take”, “harvest”, “kill” is the same. “Shoot” to me doesn’t necessarily mean that I could put my hands on it – I could have wounded it and not recovered it. 
