Sharptail or Sharp-tailed?

By Karl DeHart

Contributor and Edits by David Lupien

I have recently gone back and read some of the blogs I’ve posted on my Web site.  It’s obvious that I don’t have an Editor on the Upland Idaho LLC staff!  I am a terrible speller who is only saved by Microsoft’s Word spell check. Because it’s so time consuming to create new blogs I simply don’t take the time to edit and re-edit the things before I post them on the site.  So, my apologies for some of my grammar and spelling issues.  This got me to thinking though about my spelling and writing abilities, hence this article. 

I spell phonetically, how the word sounds to me.  I remember when I first moved to Idaho and started hunting our unofficial State bird, chukar.  I spelled it like it sounded, “chuck” “ar”, chuckar.  I was quickly corrected by David my English teaching, fellow chukar hunting roommate.  To ensure I would spell it correctly in the future I used a little phonetic memorization process I started in Jr. High School.  I pronounce problem words in my mind as they are correctly spelled not how they are normally pronounced.

This all started with the word beautiful.  To me it sounded like it should be spelled buetiful.  Of course after missing it on a test I needed to find a way to spell it correctly.  I started to consciously pronounce the word to myself as b e a utiful, sounding out the first three letters individually.  This allowed me to remember how to spell it correctly.  To this day I automatically run through my b e a utiful every time I need to spell beautiful.  It may sound strange but it works for me.  I use the same technique when I need to spell chukar.  I consciously pronounce the word as chu car instead of chuck ar, which reminds me there is no c before the k.

Another issue I have is remembering which words have hyphens.  It seems as bird hunters we like to use hyphens.  This may come in part from naming things after two items, like prairie chicken.  One use of the hyphen is to join two words that were previously used individually.  As two independent words are used together to describe something they gradually gain the hyphen between them.  For example sage-grouse now has a hyphen in most scientific literature when it didn’t use to.  The transition doesn’t always stop there either.  Eventually sage-grouse may just be one word.  That doesn’t happen for all hyphenated words but it does for some and depends in part on how often the word is used.

Short of memorizing hyphenated words, how do you know when a word needs a hyphen or not?  The short answer is: it’s easier to memorize which words are hyphenated.  The nice thing is if you spell sage grouse without the hyphen you aren’t incorrect. 

Having said all this I still can’t determine if I hunt sharptail grouse, sharptailed grouse or sharp-tailed grouse!  I think I’ll just keep calling them grass chickens. Or is that grass-chickens? Uhgg!

Here is a short list of common hunter lingo and acceptable spelling.  I’ve started to keep it next to my computer.  Now I just have to remember to use it when I’m writing.

Chukar

Quail

Ruffed Grouse

Ring-necked pheasant

Sage-grouse

Wing shooting

12 gauge

Sharp-tailed Grouse

Fly fishing

Baitfish

Four-wheel drive

Offroad

Gamebag
Brush pants
Double-barrel
Bird dog or bird-dog

Now add your words to the list and submit the list to the forum.

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