i'm all in when it comes to fresh meat..but that man was a bit inconsiderate.

not everyone is OK with it..
i once let a tarp come loose over a dead deer. some dad flipped me off..(in front of his kids in the backseat, btw)..i pulled over and secured the tarp. when it comes to this kinda stuff, you base your decisions on the person you may offend..not the cool country folks.

not so sure my "first move" would be to remove the head. weird.

Vash, your story reminds me of a visit from a friend during hunting season.
He pulled up in his old beat up 80s pickup with a cow elk and a couple of white tails in the back with their legs sticking up in the air.
That got the neighbors talking!
At least we didn't butcher them in the yard!

Agreed Joe. I worked at a slaughter house one summer in Iowa when I was about 15 years old. Had to prove myself on the chicken line before they let me outside with the big boys. Great summer job.

My wife got really annoyed when a skinned a rattlesnake on the kitchen counter using her kitchen shears to split it up the underside.

So it's not just an African thing? Amazing.

My dad lives in Ann Arbor, MI, a decidedly liberal college town. A few years ago, he shot a nice 8 point buck on the last day of the season. He brought it home, and hung it in the backyard from a maple tree. Its a pretty open area, and I'm sure the neighbors just about fell over when they saw it. You can take the man away from the hills, but you cant get the hills out of the man.

Me too!

I know nothing about butchery and would find it interesting; plus, if I ever get to go to a Letterman show, I'd have a leg up if he did his 'Know your cuts of meat' bit.

Let's see...would I rather have a neighbor who butchered a cow in his driveway every couple of months,

or a neighbor who owned a hog...

with straight pipes, that he rode to work every morning at 5:00 a.m.? :)

Well that stirred up an old memory! Somewhere, in an old family photo album, is a black and white, Kodak box camera snapshot that my dad took of a gaggle of neighbors, gathered around my grandfather standing in his driveway with a shark he'd brought back to Pennsy from one of his fishing trips to New Jersey.

It was before I was born and when I saw the pic, at about age five, I asked my dad and he told me my grandfather cut it up in the driveway to eat. I remember asking "people eat sharks?!" :D

Not everyone loves a steak.
I dont eat any meat, and find it sad the way man treats animals.
Good point that no one wants to see where it comes from.
Why not take your kids to have a look?
Just my opinion, not out for an argument. :)

..

Where we live, during hunting season you will see guys butchering deer out side all the time. We do about 10 deer a season in my neighbor's garage with the doors open if the weather is right. All in full view from the road. Some other neighbors will stop over to see how we did, but I'm sure there are others who are disgusted by it. At least I know my kids know where dinner came from since a very young age.

When I say perspective, I mean that all over the world the slaughter for dinner is not necessarily hidden from the children for their protection. It is the way life is. You eat meat, it comes from an animal. Maybe it's different for where you live, but here in the South hunters are more common than not. I grew up seeing deer slaughtered and cleaned in the yard. Most Kitchens are not big enough to do the job(as the guy's in the story probably is). I guess your definition of barbaric and mine is different.

+1

I watched a episode on Masterchef where they had a truck full of apples, and they had to slice and dice 'em up. Then they brought in another truck...that had a chicken. You should of seen some of those poor yuppie faces at the thought that cutting up a live chicken was their next project. How'd they get into cooking meat????

I do not think butchering a dead animal for meat is something to hide all the kids from. I know what I'm eating when I eat meat. I knew someone with pigs in their back yard, they had some great sausages in the their freezer/fridge. However, I tend to stay away from pork knowing the food quality that pigs eat for themselves.

People live in a residential neighborhood for a reason. Whether this stuff is obvious or not, whether other cultures deal with the issues or not, generally people in a residential neighborhood don't want to see or smell how sewage is processed, nor how garbage is dealt with, nor experience livestock being slaughtered or butchered. It is not unreasonable for a complaint to be issued or for appropriate charges to be filed. If you have neighbors and you burn your trash, have loud parties, park in a thoughtless manner, or butcher livestock in plain view, don't be surprised when they complain. If you want to process meat, you need to find an appropriate location out of plain view. If that means you can't kill and butcher cows in your driveway, you need to relocate if that is your aim in life. It is not unreasonable for neighbors to expect hunters to skin and quarter their kills in the woods and process the carcasses indoors. Perhaps our society is too sheltered, but transforming a living sentient animal into food is unpleasant, and it is ok for people to want to avoid that aspect of life in their own homes.

Where I live locals were told to remove deer from a swing set that they had hanging. One hour north where I hunt it is expected to see deer/moose or any other game hanging. It is almost like an invitation to come in and have a drink. We can talk about the hunt and who else in the area did well.

Personally I am proud of the fact that I could exist if all hell broke loose.

I wasn't saying that the meat had to be "processed" indoors totally out of sight. I'm going on the assumption that the animal was slaughtered right there in the driveway. I'm also going on an "assumption" the driveway was prominent to the street and neighbors.

I'll stand on barbaric if both both assumptions are fact.

Butchering a large animal brings forth some logistical issues that are not really compatible with an urban neighborhood. A cow is 50% meat when it's butchered.

So if it weighted 1,000 pounds live, that means 500 pounds is guts, skin, horn, hooves, lower leg bones etc. That's 500 pounds of quickly rotting stuff that needs to be disposed of. One should probably not put it in the garbage can for a couple of days for curbside pickup...

Then there is alot of blood. I mean ALOT. If you do this in the driveway, then you wash the blood down the curbs into the sewer. You'll find that it takes about 16 seconds to start drawing flies quickly followed by maggots. If it's summer and there's no water in the sewer, you've just stunk up the whole street and drawn every fly for about a 3 mile radius.

I have no issues with butchering animals - humanely. I"ve butchered my turkeys and chickens. It's messy and stinky. We have the butcher take care of the cattle. I would not have done this at my urban residence. Took care of it out at the rural property.

There's a time and place for everything. An urban yard/driveway is not the place to butcher a cow.

angela

I have to agree 100%

I have no problem with what he did but he did it in the wrong place.

I wonder if the home owners board will modify their CC&Rs so that it doesn't happen again. :)