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The thing about
a Coues deer, is there's
like, controversy over their name
So, I've been sittin' here sayin' "Coues deer, Coues deer, Coues deer," and some guy, somehwere, is
pullin' his hair out because he calls 'em
"Cowse deer".
It's spelled C-O-U-E-S.
It's from a guy, so it's a dude's name that it's named after.
People who go by Cowse deer
do it kinda self-righteous way, like they know they're going against the grain
because most people say
"Coues deer". I went and put this question
to Chris Denham,
who publishes Western Hunter Magazine, and who has published the word
C-O-U-E-S probably more than any other person on the planet.
And I asked him what he prefers,
and he said, oddly, neither of the popular pronunciations are probably right
in terms the what the guy's name was
that his name was probably pronounced "Couse," like "house", not like
plural cow, so "Couse".
But, over time,
in popular usage, people have just
come to say "Coues deer". And, while it might not be correct,
it's become a standard pronunciation.
And Chris Denham said that it doesn't matter how many
taxonomists or biologist say Couse,
he's gonna say "Coues" until the day he dies.
And once he told me that, I became
a Coues deer man, not a Cows deer man.
There's like two takes on language and dictionaries and stuff.
There's prescriptive and descriptive.
And descriptive would be to seek to explain how people do use a language,
prescriptive would be teaching you how to use a language.
When it comes to animals, I kinda go with how people use it
rather than what's, you know, technically correct.
Which is a long-winded way of saying there's a Coues deer over there.