Roy Yoder of whitetailhavenofohio has worked for over 20 years to get the herd that is on his preserve as have the Flees of wildernesswhitetails and many others.
I don't think that there are many of us here that wouldn't be elated at having an opportunity to hunt their best bucks if money were not a factor.
This thread is about high fence hunting and not on the distribution of wealth within our society.

PM me the real estate listing.

I dont agree with this either, but i was simply keeping my statments on the high fence hunting contoversy. It doesnt matter what way you spin it to me or what you compare it to, High fence hunting is not hunting in my eyes. But i respect your opionion, i am simply voicing mine.

I would get Zero enjoyment out of killing a deer that had been released for me to shoot... and the sooner before the shooting the animal is released the worse it is... I see why other people do it... It's not some ethical thing for me... they are animals after all...

Those deer have a lot of things going against them IMO... though they are certainly amazing creatures to look at...

I just booked a hunt at the Dallas Zoo. I am really looking forward to it. The Buck to Doe ratio is awesome. They are native animals and have no genetic manipulation. I scheduled it early. I have always wanted a buck in velvet. They told me the whitetail doesn't migrate but they said the fence was well hidden. I have ordered me a 500/450 BP Express Double Rifle. I just know the mount will look awesome on my wall. OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH! I just love hunting?

LOL I LOVE IT MAN!!!!!

i'm just gonna state my opinion this way: 100% wild...100% fair chase. you MIGHT be able to do that inside a high fence on a really huge place like the king ranch.

on the other hand, the exotic thing is getting so bad that a guy might have to high fence his place to keep the freaking zoo escapees OUT!

I'm doing the same thing at the King Ranch and its LOW FENCED. They are going to drive me around in a truck and I can pick out which one I like! Bet I have the same or better results than you. LOL

Ole Sasquatch1 just about covered everything ever said about the high fence ranches!

Gentlemen, there will never be an end to this conflict between people on either side of this thing. I have seen hundreds of these threads, and nothing ever comes of them other than to make passive internet enemies. That is unfortunate because we have strenght in mass, and as the old saying goes "Devided we fall!"

As I said much of the rhetoric offered by many are right out of the Animal rights play book. Most repeated from news media, who are biased against hunting in any form. The AR folks, and the media are not the only folks who are ignorant enough to make damageing statements publiclly. Once Old Gritts Gressum made the statment in a TV interview with a reporter who was asking questions about gun control. When Gritts said that hand guns were not hunting guns, and that regulating them had nothing to do with the hunter. NOW, if there was ever a man who should have known better than to decry ANY firearm being legitimate to the hunter, it should have been Gritts.

Most forms of hunting other than open range, free to walk to where ever game goes, will draw some flack from someone, and even the open range draws flack from the PeTA people.

My personal preference is places like Alaska where you can get in a jet plane and fly in a straight line for two hours without flying over a town or road. That to me is hunting the way it was meant to be. I'm under no illusion that there will ever be anything like that in the lower 48 states, and especially in Texas. In North America, and more so in Europe, those days are gone forever. In Texas some counties are bigger than some countries, but there is no open land where you don't either have to have a permit from the state, or pay a land owner to be able to hunt anything.

As In Europe, the hunting ranches are the way it is in Texas, and there are as many different types of ranches as there are hunters. All have some redeeming facets, but none are even close to the open range hunting of old, or of the last wilderness of North America in Canada, and Alaska.

Even Africa is going the same way. When I first hunted Africa, you could walk 300 miles in a straight line and never see a fence of any kind. That is not the case today, especially in RSA,where the fences have gone up all over the country. Not because the land owner wanted to fence his property, but because the law demanded it. If he doesn't fence his property, then it is illegal to allow hunting on his proterty. Many of those ranches in RSA are over 1,000,000 hectaris (not acres) in size, but by some folks here that is a canned hunt. Admittedly I don't hunt them either,but not because I don't think it is fair chase, they just don't have the animals I want to hunt, or if they do they are too expensive there.

Texas is the same way but for a different reason, that goes along with strong landowner laws to protect the land owner's right to total domain over his property. That is a good way to have the law, eventhough it really hurts the hunting public, who, on paper at least, own the wildlife of Texas. This is like haveing a million dollars that is locked in someone else's safe, and you have to pay him to get a little of it out so you can use it.

Gentlemen, and women, The only thing I hunt in Texas are doves, and hogs, on a 96,000 acre low fence ranch near Brady,Texas twenty miles as the crow flies from where I was born, and three miles from where my father was born. All other hunting is either in Alaska, Canada, or Africa. I'm getting old, and lately I haven't even done that.

I look at it this way, if I'm going to have to spend a lot of money to hunt, then it will be where there is something to hunt that is not within 30 yds of some tower blind,feeder, ranch house, or his yard fence!

So what I'm saying is The BS that goes with hunting in Texas is what it is, and you better get used to it because it is not going to get better, only more restrictive than it is today. I see a "SIGN" in the future that says if you hunt anything in Texas,it will be behind high fence, or you won't hunt in Texas!
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This topic can be an emotionaly charged one. I guess if you are rich and have several thousand acres that you want to high fence and breed your deer herd. Go ahead. Sounds a lot like animal husbandry to me. But to each their own. Don't mistake Texas Blind/feeder hunting whether it's high fenced or not with "real" spot and stalk hunting. But the reality is most deer and exotic hunts in Texas are going to fall somewhere in those catagories.

You bring up a point that should be addressed. If high fence is a canned hunt what is sitting in blind and waiting for the feeder to go off? As I see it, it is the same as for as sportsmanship and real hunting.

Why spend dollars on protein and feed on a low fence if you want a "natural" trophy? As already defined in the previous posts a real trophy is a free range deer, if you have a feeder the deer no longer is dependent on being free range, it slowly becomes dependent on the feeders for food. Sounds kind of like a Democrat on welfare deer to me.

I really think most of you need to venture out a little more. I have been on a couple high fenced ranches and seen ZERO deer in THREE DAYS in the spring while fishing and hanging out!! Sorry but that is how it is. Deal with it. Deer just don't jump at you unless it is managed for the hunter to kill deer every chance they get which must be the tiny tiny minority of ranches you hear about since no one seems to have first hand experience on here except JCB. My buddy hunts a place high fenced on three sides and virtually on the one other and going out in Oct and sitting in the stand will result in normally little to no deer. They also make sure they kill plenty of deer themselves and not expect others to do it for them during the rut.

TX duckman said..."My buddy hunts a place high fenced on three sides and virtually on the one other...."

Where can I get me one of those virtual fences? I hate running the auger, pouring Sakcrete, and stretching wire.
And how do you train livestock (much less deer) to recognize a virtual fence?

Having hunted inside one for three years now, i have come to this stance on high fences. Unless they are 10 feet or more high, they aint high enough. If theres a hot doe on the other side, a buck will jump a standard 8 foot high fence flat footed with no running start. Ive seen it with does as well, leaving there fawns on the other side freaking out trying to get to her, and eventually trying to jump it like she did and getting hung up. High fences for the most part will keep things in, but i feel they ultimatly are nothing more than a fancy way to keep PEOPLE out, not deer in. I think we should spend as much time and energy introducing new hunters to the sport as we do bickering about whether high fencing is ethical, right, wrong, or a waist of time. JMO Skinner

Shooters like high fence hunts, Hunters prefer fair chase. Sure if a place is big enough it can be like fair chase, but most are not like that. These places represent hunting the business, not hunting the sport. The emphasis is on size and sucess. The bigger they are and the more you kill the more you make. In this day and age there is a line of people 10 miles long that want a trophy deer, but don't have the skills, patience, or work ethic required to kill one in a fair chase situation. But they do have money, and behind the right high fence that is all it takes. So happy hunting, I hope you get a big one, I'm sure you will.

Question, do hunters use feeders, blind etc.? If they do then I think they are more shooter than hunter. It is pretty easy to sit in a blind and wait for the feeder to go off.

I'll agree that different hunting methods require varying levels of skill. Sitting in a blind over corn is not particularly challenging, but lord knows I have spent many a day in a stand and not seen a deer. I don't here that from the guys that I know that spend thousands to hunt behind fences. I have never hunted behind a high fence, but I know alot of people who have. These are guys who have never killed a big buck and then, with the stroke of a pen through a check book, they become trophy hunters with 150+ class ( depends on amount check was made out for ) mounts on the wall to prove it. I know a guy last year that was sitting in a stand watching buck after buck come out. Behind him siting in his truck on a hill was his guide radioing him to let him know how much each buck would cost. All I am saying is that the amount you have to spend should not determine the level of sucess you have.

Your example is a good one but not a true representation of most HF operations. A lot of the HF you see do not even allow guests much less paying hunters. They are what they call in England private reserves solely for the landowner's benefit. Then there are the commercial operations, a very few as you described and then some that you will sit in a blind and may never see anything, and then the ones that you will see a lot but choices and pocket book limit your shots. Most are challenging enough that if I had the money and ability to walk I would hunt them and call it a real hunt. Unfortunately walking is my major issue, so the fortunately for the pocketbook and the deer they are both safe.

Since my lathe is broke and I waiting on the repair part and I am retired I have a lot of free time. I went through and looked how many of the people that spoke against the HF had old posts about feeders. Most of the ones against the HF called it shooting or killing and not hunting. I did not check everyone's post, but overall I would say 99% of the ones against the HF use feeders.

My pennies worth of thoughts is that is the pot calling the kettle black.

One last post on this thread and it will be put to bed for me!

There was a controversy back in the early 1960s when high fence was just getting a foothold in Texas, by the YO ranch! Several of the magazines were simply buzzing with hot language for, and against the fence. After this went on for a couple years. One of the hunting groups in conjunction with game departments decided to do an experiment. It went this way.

On one of the military bases they fenced off 18 acres of deep woods, and placed 18 male whitetails in the enclosure. That is one buck deer for every acre, which is far above average. The deer were not fed or watered but were simply left to their own devices, for one month, with no human inside the fence.

At the end of the month 10 well respected hunters who were opponents of the high fence as canned (a word that had not been coined yet at that time) and unethical. In that month the deer learned where every food source, water seep, and escape route to cover in that 18 acres. These 10 hunters were each given a camera, and had three days to take as many pictures of as many bucks as they could. The pictures only counted if they offered a clear shot, if they had had a rifle.

At the end of that three days only five of the ten hunters had any clear pictures at all, and of the ones that offered shots, there were six pictures of bucks, and three of those were of the same deer. SO! What that told us was in 18 acres 10 top hunters only saw four of the 18 bucks in that 18 acres that could have been harvested in three days.

I don’t know about you but that doesn’t sound like much of a CAN to me! Of course, if the deer have been handled, and lost their fear of man, and are turned out into an 18 acre enclosure where he isn’t scared of his shadow, as all wild whitetail are, and into 18 acres where they have never been, then sure THAT would be a CAN with a lid on it! As long as the deer in a real high fence enclosure are allowed to live there,( and a lot more than 18 acres) and are hunted regularly, with cover, and food and water has learned the escape routes, he is not a slam dunk, unless he has been listening to feeders go off every 30 minutes, he’s going to be a tuff target!

Still, like most on this website the high fence is not for me, but there are many things folks here consider ethical that I personally do not agree with, but as long as the hunters who use those things that are legal, and do not take more than they are allowed, I say go for it, if that is what you like! I don’t have to like what anyone else does, as long as it is legal, but if he breaks the law, he should not let me see him do it, because the GAME THIEF phone number is listed on my cell phone!

I would love to see a link to this story or a copy of it. No offense but I have to call BS. 10 people who have no experience hunting whatsoever can go into an 18 acre pen and get more pictures than that if there are 18 deer in there. They could get it done in an afternoon much less 3 days. I will be happy to eat my words if I am wrong and you can provide a copy of the study.

Happens to me a lot behind the HF. Sat out yesterday afternoon from 5:30 to dark. I saw 3 does at 7:08 and had one 2.5 year old 8 pointer show up at 7:45. That is all I saw. I have sat out 3 other times this summer and saw nada. It happens to us also.

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no really, my butt get numm and it somtimes get cold when i forget to bring my heater into the blind, also it hard when the feeder sint set right or has a dead battery, then its a waste of time sitting in the box.

a lot of ppl don't see that over the course of a weekend.

Not in South Texas