Keith Warren lost me years ago when he said that ranchers put up high fences to keep the neighbors deer out of their place.

That excuse has been used for decades.

Let’s call it what it is….I don’t want my deer wandering off the property where the neighbors can kill then.


I’m pro HF btw. But I’m honest. HF certainly has their place

In the UK hunting is a sport for the elite only and they have no high fences.

In Texas the most expensive leases are low fenced where you can enter a deer into the B&C record books.

It’s much cheaper for me to kill a 170” deer on a hf package hunt than it is on a low fence package hunt where they advertise deer of that caliber



Just some food for thought….

There is some big time BS slinging going on in here. Wow.

Starting from the bottom going up (just because it is easier to do that, plus it is equal opportunity):

Hunting is about record books

Deer are my property and not for others to enjoy

State should set a deer density and consequently limit the amount of deer that can be shot on smaller properties or over-crowded leases

Deer farming means having deer tied up to shoot at a la target practice

Killing a "farm raised" deer isn't really hunting

Shooting a genetically modified and selectively bred cow would be more fun than shooting a genetically modified selectively bred deer

Freaky genetics are bad if farm raised, but if "wild type" ....

Preference for a 150" clean look over a 200" "farm raised" look, but what if you saw that same 200" look on a LF....blast away I bet

State should let some hunters break ARs because the areas have been "top graded" and only the narrow genes are left, not recognizing half the genetics come from the female side of the equation

A farm raised deer can be a "championship deer"


Just take this as a grain of salt, this was equal opportunity ribbing at the stuff posted on this thread. I am happy to discuss with anyone who takes offense to me calling this stuff out, but some of this stuff is really rich with BS and some of it is simply mind games you all play with yourselves.

Agreed. It's bastardizing what hunting is. Like catching a 50lb channel cat out of the aquarium at Cabela's and calling it a trophy catch. To each their own though....I guess it's not hurting anything...

Care to define what non-bastardized hunting is?

I guess at it's simplest, I would say it's hunting for meat. Hunting an animal that lives in an environment where almost every variable isn't micro-managed. For me, I love the mystery and challenge of hunting an animal that has been as unaffected as possible. Yes, every animal is affected by human interaction, development, etc. But I enjoy all of the constantly changing variables of food sources, water sources, growth from year to year, and so on (and yes, even the fact that the deer may get shot on a neighboring property). Just my opinion, which people make not like, but...oh well. I guess I used strong language with 'bastardization', but no slight to anyone that wants to put up a fence and grow some monsters. Let's admit that it's a different activity though.

Maybe a 100 acre lake would be a better comparison.

Deer are not shot inside the breeding pens.



Maybe some education how the breeding industry works and some good examples of operations who have released deer would help some of these opinions become more realistic

Micro managing started with feeders. If anyone wants to point a finger at what Texas hunting has become, start with those.

The height of the fence has little to do with any of the above mentioned with the exception of getting shot by neighbors. The animals are still subject to the effects of food sources, water sources, human interaction, etc.

Unfortunately, and I mourn this loss to some extent, we are in 2022 not 1950 anymore. We have many more game animals now than then but we also have technology and techniques used today to greatly Maximize any efforts out afield.

Look at our hunting equipment for example; we now have rifles that can shoot reliably and accurately at 700 yards, muzzleloaders that can shoot to 300 yards and bows that will shoot 100. And you will never under or over estimate the range because we have laser rangefinders.

This has as much to do with “the bastardization” of the sport of hunting as much as anything else, but are now commonly accepted.


The problem that many of you have with the current state of hunting has little to do with fence height

I've gotten all the education I need from pics like this:



Deer were never meant to have 300-400-600" of bone on their head. There is no defense to these science experiments nor is there much to 'Well, he lived in a pen, then we put him in a larger pasture and shot him so that makes it ok'.

So your basing your opinion off a picture? Have you ever been to a breeding facility? If not, go visit one. Highly educational. You can’t paint them all with the same brush.

Like you, I’m not a fan of operations who kick a deer out only to be shot a few weeks later, nor of operations who specialize in freakishly giant 500” deer. I prefer more typical racks myself.

But that only makes up a % of the population of breeding operations. Since they suspended the TTT program a person has no choice but to go to a breeder to get deer if he wants to stock a property or introduce new genetics.

Breeding operations are another tool in the box that can be used to enhance a persons enjoyment of the property, but like many other things in life, some folks have taken it to the extreme and now the publics perception is that all of them are that way.

It’s like diesel trucks….many like a stock ford but nothing wrong with a little lift, new tires and replacement bumpers. But someone out there will put a 10” lift and 44” tires and a transformer bumper on it while blowing black smoke for hundreds of yards and now that’s the publics perception of all diesel trucks and their owners

I agree with you on most of this. I'll probably be in the minority here and have a different mindset than most. Personally, I don't care about killing huge, 180+ deer. They don't taste any better. I've never understood paying thousands of dollars for single buck that someone else raised, managed, and dumped on a HF property. I'm not arguing that people's high fences are ruining the pastime for everyone else. It's just a different activity altogether. It's not hunting. It's killing a large farm animal. Now, I guess you can make the same argument for feeder hunting, although baiting animals is a pretty ancient practice...

Be careful saurkraut, you are trying hard to toe the line but you keep stepping in the water with some of your statements.

Very few HF places "dump" deer to be killed by hunters. Most HF places are large enough that hunting a specific deer is really difficult, and baiting animals is hardly an ancient practice (perhaps finding where animals would eat and hunting there was practiced, but that isn't baiting) since most ancient people could not afford to put out bait for hunted animals due to their own needs to survive.

Just trying to poke a little. Glad this discussion is going again. I thought my previous posts shut it down, I will try not to be so provocative.

The OP nailed it when he titled his thread; "Deer Farming". IMO, it dang sure ain't Deer "Hunting". But, that's just my opinion. I know the challenge in killing a great buck, and only know that challenge under fair chase, LF and public conditions.

We're all free to take an animal under any legal means, and to each his own. I don't have a problem with HF harvesting at all. But, I think it should be honestly represented when posting and telling a story about the hunt.

txtrophy85
The height of the fence has little to do with any of the above mentioned with the exception of getting shot by neighbors. The animals are still subject to the effects of food sources, water sources, human interaction, etc.

Unfortunately, and I mourn this loss to some extent, we are in 2022 not 1950 anymore. We have many more game animals now than then but we also have technology and techniques used today to greatly Maximize any efforts out afield.

Look at our hunting equipment for example; we now have rifles that can shoot reliably and accurately at 700 yards, muzzleloaders that can shoot to 300 yards and bows that will shoot 100. And you will never under or over estimate the range because we have laser rangefinders.

This has as much to do with “the bastardization” of the sport of hunting as much as anything else, but are now commonly accepted.


The problem that many of you have with the current state of hunting has little to do with fence height


[/quote]
I can agree with most of what you typed about the high fence except the "Little To Do" part. If I apply too much pressure to a certain buck, or the rut makes him want to travel, then said deer can go miles away. With a high fence, the deers travel is locked down to a few hundred or thousand acres. They are not free to travel 4 or 5 miles or swim across the river. Also on high fence you can more easily regulate population density and buck to doe ratio. To each their own, I am more of a meat hunter but have several nice bucks mounted in my shop that were taken over 35 years ago. One of them that was hunted with hounds in Louisiana. That is still legal there in certain seasons and used to be legal in Texas many years ago. Times and laws change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

But baiting animals with a timed feeder is very recent. You can pretty much see animals on demand where a bait pile you cannot. And why do people pay money for sports cars when a Camry will get you from point A-B just the same, why do people have oversized houses, why do women like diamonds????….because people just do

If your purpose for hunting is primarily for food, then that’s a separate topic altogether. What would it matter what sport or trophy hunters are doing if just any deer will do?

No right or wrong answer here, but if your strictly a meat hunter it’s hard to see valid points when it pertains to trophy hunting.

I can agree with most of what you typed about the high fence except the "Little To Do" part. If I apply too much pressure to a certain buck, or the rut makes him want to travel, then said deer can go miles away. With a high fence, the deers travel is locked down to a few hundred or thousand acres. They are not free to travel 4 or 5 miles or swim across the river. Also on high fence you can more easily regulate population density and buck to doe ratio. To each their own, I am more of a meat hunter but have several nice bucks mounted in my shop that were taken over 35 years ago. One of them that was hunted with hounds in Louisiana. That is still legal there in certain seasons and used to be legal in Texas many years ago. Times and laws change, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. [/quote]


I own a small low fence property, that I love being low fence. I see the same bucks all season long. Rut, human activity, etc. they are still around because I give them food and water.

Very, very few deer nowadays travel far because they don’t have to. In Texas they are not moving 3-4 miles to a harvested corn field. They don’t have to wander half the county to find a hot doe. Some don’t have a home range of more than a hundred or so acres.

So I’ll concede that a fence will restrict movement, but it’s not to say the deer would have ever left the place if it was low fence….in a lot of cases probably not. You certainly can manage for tighter ratios and herd numbers, that is the main benefit of a high fence.

I want folks to understand the facts about the average high fence place and breeding operations and form an educated opinion on them rather than rely on feelings and knee jerk reactions to heresy and photo images and opinions of others. I’m not trying to sell others on the acceptance of a HF just to understand what really is the case, it’s proven that a lot of people who are against them have never been on one. That’s like saying I don’t like orange sherbet having never tasted it but the color looks funny and the name sounds weird so I don’t like it

It ain't me but it don't have to be me. I am not everybody. Others prefer something different and I am all okay with it. Some people like vanilla ice cream while others prefer chocolate. Disparaging those who prefer chocolate because I prefer vanilla does little to benefit me.

I figured out a long tome ago not to be concerned with how others CHOOSE to spend their money.

When I hunted in Clay County several years ago, I was on a lease that had a sister lease several miles away as the crow flies brokered by the same group I got my lease from. I say that only to say they sent some pics of a deer one of the hunters shot that year, and I remembered that buck going through one of my trail cam areas and getting some pics either the day before or within a couple days. It was a very unique deer so very recognizable. The straight line distance between the two spots was no less than 3 miles, with plenty of creek and pond in between so no telling how far that deer wandered around looking for a hot doe.

So even though we can bait and hunt over feeders in TX, it does not mean a buck won't travel.

it certainly does not, but what % of the population traveled that distance or even half that distance?


Its a bell curve, some deer won't leave the yard, others will wander half the county, but 90% have a home range of about 640 acres give or take.

Are the big, bad forum vigilantes going to come after me??

People can do whatever they want and call it whatever they want, and I know they will, regardless of my comments. If people get upset by opinions on an online forum, then that's pretty sad. I'll leave it there. Not trying to troll anyone. I disagree with some of the opinions on here and agree with others.

not trying to be a vigilante at all, not trying to troll. Just trying to unstick some thick stuff left in your comments.

So if I drive around on a LF property and kill out all my tags in one day it’s hunting but if I shot a buck on a HF ranch after 20 days of being in the field hunting for him it’s not hunting.

Interesting, learn something new everyday

Somes just seems to think things have to be easy the way they read it. Too easy when they have no idea (none).

I own a small low fence property, that I love being low fence. I see the same bucks all season long. Rut, human activity, etc. they are still around because I give them food and water.

Very, very few deer nowadays travel far because they don’t have to. In Texas they are not moving 3-4 miles to a harvested corn field. They don’t have to wander half the county to find a hot doe. Some don’t have a home range of more than a hundred or so acres.

So I’ll concede that a fence will restrict movement, but it’s not to say the deer would have ever left the place if it was low fence….in a lot of cases probably not. You certainly can manage for tighter ratios and herd numbers, that is the main benefit of a high fence.

I want folks to understand the facts about the average high fence place and breeding operations and form an educated opinion on them rather than rely on feelings and knee jerk reactions to heresy and photo images and opinions of others. I’m not trying to sell others on the acceptance of a HF just to understand what really is the case, it’s proven that a lot of people who are against them have never been on one. That’s like saying I don’t like orange sherbet having never tasted it but the color looks funny and the name sounds weird so I don’t like it



[/quote]
It looks you are near Boerne, Tx and that may be the way the deer down there act. But in our part of the Piney Woods of East Texas they like to roam around. Years ago, I had a split main beam on camera and a few weeks later it was killed 2.6 miles (per Google Earth) away. It was chasing a hot doe that ran in front of a truck doing a safety patrol on the perimeter of where I worked. The person driving rolled up to where the do crossed the road and stopped to look at her. Then his truck got hit by the buck running wide open and broke its neck.
I live right at 5 miles North of where we hunt and have some of the same bucks on camera in my back yard as I do on my cameras in the river bottoms.
I also don't have any problem with anyone wanting to hunt HF or any other way that is legal.