- Outdoor columnist Ben Smith dives into a smelly phenomenon most hunters experience nose first.
Alright guys, this is an article that my wife has begged me not to write. So of course I’m writing it. Not that the topic is incredibly offensive, or anything like that. It’s a perfectly natural occurrence in the outdoor community. She’s just afraid that I’ll sully my reputation, or hers, by writing about something she deems utterly ridiculous and disgusting. But hey, I’m a guy that spends a great deal of his time alone in the woods pondering the unknowns questions of life, and this is one that has driven me crazy for a long time.
Before I go any further, I feel that I should offer some sort of warning. This article is going to attempt to answer a question that may leave some of you feeling a little grossed out. If the inner workings of the human digestive system make you queasy, you’d better go ahead and stop now. If you find bathroom talk, or bathroom humor, to be offensive and taboo to discuss, go ahead and click the next article, or turn the page if you’re reading a printed version of this column. Should you choose to continue, you’ll hopefully be left with an answer to a long burning question that has haunted me for as long as I can remember.
If you’ve ever gutted a deer, or gut-shot a deer, you know all too well that familiar smell. It will flat clear out the skinning room at your camp! Guys will be tripping over each other to get out the door for fresh air. But no matter how hard you try to escape, once it hits your nostrils you are damaged for hours, sometimes even days. If you hunt long enough, sooner or later you’re going to go through this. And can we even consider you a real hunter if you haven’t gagged and almost puked while cleaning a deer? But the stench of deer guts isn’t what I’m here to talk about today. This goes a little bit further.
Over the years I’ve noticed something about myself, and others, after gutting a deer. It usually happens a few hours after all of the skinning and cleaning up is completed. You know, just when you think you’re safe from that unmistakable gut stench. First, is that uncomfortable bloat that you get right above your waistline. Obviously, it’s just a little gas, likely from all of those scrambled eggs and bacon you ate after the hunt. Knowing there’s more room outside than in, you let a little of that gas go. Congratulations, you just punished everyone again.
But how can it be? I only ate eggs and bacon for breakfast. How in the world did this happen? What died inside of me over the course of the last couple of hours? Why did that fart smell EXACTLY like the innards of the deer we cleaned two hours ago? By now you’re either completely grossed out and leaving, or you’re thinking, “Oh my goodness, it’s not just me!” You’re right, it’s not just you. You’re not a freak and you’re not alone in this quest to understand why your farts smell just like the deer you gutted two hours ago.
I began this research several years ago after wondering if I had stomach cancer after cleaning a deer one day. I was sure that I was dying, but was too afraid at first to share my concerns with anyone else. And then one day at the deer camp I heard someone else use the term “gut bucket farts” and I’ve been on a mission ever since to find an answer. Call it research, call it a survey, call it whatever you want, but I began to open up about my experience with others and the results blew my mind. Every single deer hunter, and I mean real deer hunters, shared my affliction of suffering from gut bucket farts following gutting a deer. At first, I was relieved, but then I just became perplexed. None of us were licking the insides of these deer and most of us (not all of us) made sure to thoroughly wash our hands after gutting a deer. What was the cause of this foul curse?
First of all, flatulence is caused by several different things. The digestion process can create gasses to build, some foods taking longer to break down than others. Bacteria in the gut breaks down certain foods that produce gas. Also, the ingestion of air during eating and drinking, and sometimes breathing can also lead to gas production. So, could the ingestion of air during the skinning process really make your farts smell the same as deer guts? According to one doctor, the answer is no. Instead, this doctor explains our gut bucket fart problem a different way. His theory is that we only think our farts smell like deer guts for one of two potential reasons. One, we still have remnants of deer gut particles in our nose hairs that stimulate olfactory receptor cells. Or two, we are programmed by the memory of deer gut stench to think that’s what we smell.
This got me to thinking even more, and to the best of my knowledge, I cannot remember smelling deer gut farts from another person unless I’d been in the vicinity when they had gutted a deer. That would explain the theory of having the particles already in my nose or my brain being tricked into thinking they smelled that way. Once again, I was relieved. Now I can gut my deer and go out in public without worrying about crop-dusting an innocent bystander. If they weren’t in the room with me when I gutted the deer, they’ve got nothing to worry about. Or do they?
Ben Smith
