no opinion...I just wanted to be the 100th post! hahaha

IMO...

low fence = hunting
high fence = shooting

Most high fence ranches advertise guaranteed success rates.
THERE ARE NO GUARENTEES IN HUNTING.

What about

King Ranch
Cochina Ranch
Chittim Ranch
McAllen
Winniship
Brisco Catarina
Shiner

I'm not against high fences but in a lot of cases they really impact the deer that surrounding smaller ranches see. I really beleive that if a man wants to high fence his ranch then he should do his best to run every native whitetail out of the fence before he closes off the last side. Most of the high fence ranches dont want the genetics of the native deer in the area. They usually want to breed the big boys!!

I do not think that the whitetail belong to any particular ranch. They belong to the great state of TEXAS!

I'm honestly sick of this debate.

There is very little difference between a large low fenced well protein fed pasture with good neighbors and a high fenced place of equal size...

There is NO difference in the ability of the animal to evade on these properties... most times a deer is about 10 yards from cover regardless...

People that dispute Highfences use arguments like Density, tameness, bait, deer age, hunting pressure, other hunter opportunities, etc to further their cause... and they are irrelevant to the fair chase statement...

Fair chase according to B&C (who died and made them the end all be all of hunter ethics?) precludes the use of "escape proof" fencing... well... that doesn't exist.

There is no such thing... I have seen deer come IN and GO OUT of my ranch...


You can not like it... fine... I wouldn't hunt most high fence places... especially put and take operations... but that is a choice...

When you start telling me that I am unethical... that I am lazy or can't hunt... when you say that I'm a thief or a slob or ruining hunting...

That's when I wish there was a smiley with a middle finger.

High fences are all about how they effect the individual hunter.

If you are hunting a large ranch and have the ability to cover several large areas and move around and hunt different deer then I would imagine you wouldn't mind high fences.

If you are a hunter that is limited to say 100 acres or less and you are surrounded on three to four sides of your property with a high fence then I'd suspect you'd not like them.

It's true they don't completely restrict the deer from getting in or out, but they discourage a majority of the deer from doing so, and if you have a small place mentioned above you are hosed when it comes to seeing many if any deer.

High fences are a tool, but just like any tool, there are those who abuse it.

Personally I've hunted on both sides of high fences and I really wish they were not allowed, but that would be taking away the rights of a landowner which I don't agree with, so it looks like this topic is a moot point, and they are here to stay!

If you're hunting 5000 acres of HF property, no one can make the argument that "fair chase" isn't in place. That's bigger than most deer range, fence or no fence. Obviously you can manipulate the population to excessive numbers, but I think there's an in-place discouragement from doing so if you're really trying to grow some big deer.

I don't really agree with putting a high fence on smaller properties (1000 acres should be the min, in my opinion), but there are circumstances in which I can see the argument. Case in point:

Have a buddy that owns about 300 acres right outside of Fredericksburg. Somebody sold 50 acres that is a long, thin tract that borders his land. The buyer sub-divided it into 5 10-acre tracts, and the buyers of these "ranchitos" all set feeders on his fenceline. His property holds deer, but not enough to support 6 groups of people trying to take several deer a year. He and the other neighbor who owned land bordering put up HFs on that 1 side only, and I fully agree that they should have.

Wonder what the origin of "shooting fish in a barrel" is?

I guess it is a little more difficult if you have a larger barrel or dirty water.... but still just a barrel!

I believe land owners should do whatever they want with thier land, and if producing large genetically altered overly fed deer is how they put food on the table more power to them... I have a problem with the demand for this product!

Not texas ranches but do you HF guys not have a problem with this?
http://www.samsonswhitetailmountain.com/Pricing.html
http://www.whitetailhavenofohio.com/rates.htm

Which brings me back to my point, ANYBODY can kill a monster buck on one of these HF ranches if they have the $ to do so. maybe i'm just jealous of the guy with more money than sense, but I work my butt off for everything I have ever harvested.

Right so you should not be jealous, those guys who show up to shoot a monter for $15K should be jealous of you and your hard work and free time you had to do it your way.

What is on our walls should never be the center of what makes us happy, just having the privliege to hunt in Gods creation makes me happy whether it is on a HF or LF to me.

My vote for post of the year!

the reason that the hunts are so expensive compared to public for the most part is because the larger bucks are actually THERE... Low fence that have large deer charge as much or more. ANYONE can kill a deer that is actually there...

Fair chase has nothing to do with deer not being there.

It sucks that all parcels have young deer herds with small racks with little opportunity to harvest a mature buck... But that's not the larger landowners fault... High fence or low.

I don't have a problem but wouldn't hunt them. They are not the same as say Amos place. They introduce from breeder pens

But what about these links- would you be proud of a deer from either of these places?

Ranch 1

Ranch 2

Thats quite the opposite in West Texas where saw rich aZZ landowner next to our property, high fence his land and then on the last day before the fence was completed, he used his fancy private helicopter to run all our mule deer and whitetails inside his fence. Whats really interesting is that people reported the activity and nothing was done about it.His fence disturbed the natural movement and migration on the deer and return effected our hunting. Luckly, some mule deer we managed to stop in there tracks by getting in between them and the fence while the helicopter was pushing them. Oh and we were armed with AR-15's if they tryied to stop us. I'm just glad we save the ones we could. We have now recovered a herd by not harvesting until this next season.

Passthrou, you are absolutely correct that in your case the cost is justified. However I posted the lease that was for deer only, and only for the deer season, not a year round lease that is all inclusive, for what ever is open at what ever time of year, and fishing as well. Your lease lets your family hunt, fish, or just hang out there as well! When you break your lease down to the number of people who use it, and the amount of things they are allowed to do there you are discribing the price of watermellons for everyone, when I was discussing the cost of "A" small apple for one person. I'd say that is a sizeable difference. DONT CHA THANK?

I think you missunderstand my post all together. Not just the length of the lease, but what it buys for that $1000 and in your case it is not buying hunting but what ever the land has to offer for your FAMILY.

Still even if they were the same I have no problem with you are anyone else paying several thousand dollars for a so-called trophy deer, it just isn't for me. In my day it would have been an insult to offer a rancher money to hunt on his place. However, and John Wayne was fond of saying "THINGS CHANGE", but my take is the change is not allways for the better. We have a guy in the White house that is into that smoke and mirrors!

As I said in my post above it is the greed that bothers me, not the fence, high or low!

That’s a misconception in my opinion, I know of no one who grows trophy buck's but I know many who allow them the time to mature and try to provide the nutrition/food source to become trophy's.

technically that's right..... but sometimes it ends up being more profitable to buy.

Let me guess? Timber??? If those places were a dime a dozen we would all own though. Find me a place like that and I'll give you a finder fee but I better make a profit.

Not always timber.. any where you find a land price explosion.

Say you bought in Brown, Brady, Fredricksberg, Mason.. ect 10 years ago. You would of more then doubled or tripled your money if you sold last year

Wow. I'm surprised he could legally get away with that. What an [censored].

LMAO.... finding them is the problem, but sometimes when you find 1, you find the owner to several.

Sure and you are now sitting there wondering why you didn't sell last year. That is from appreciation, not actual profiting from the land making cash and still owning it. Appreciation is never guarenteed and once you sell, you own nothing and need to put that money somewhere if you made some. You have to wait until the next downturn to make a move into land or find the poor soul in trouble that needs to sell. I know several people very underwater b/c they didn't sell last year and it is about to kill them. Actually one did kill himself when the bank came a knocking and forced bankruptcy.

It does sound to me like several laws were being broken. What happened? Local authorities weren't interested or not enough evidence?

found some.... thats about 400acres... 398.38 to be exact, that those deer are about to walk into.

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There are high fence, and then there are other high fence places! Like books you can judge the content by the cover or the size of the book!

I hear guys who hate High fence try to make their case by claiming first the hunting inside a high fence place is not fair chasse. Secondly they say if the place is smaller than the state of Texas it is canned. Thirdly, the animals are tame if they are fenced in. Then sixth they come up with the animals are fed high protein food from feeders. And finally the fence restricts the MIGRATION OF THE DEER!

All those things can be true, but the fence is not the cause of any of them.

First the high fence may have been needed because they have privately owned exotics that must be fenced onto the property, just like his cattle. That is a perfectly justified reason for the high fence. The fact that there are deer in there as well is no reason to deny the landowner the right to secure his property. The fence makes no difference to the public anyway, because he doesn’t have to let anyone hunt his property unless he wants to even if he ad no fence at all. If you had permission to hunt his property, but none of the surrounding property, then what difference does the fence make you are only allowed to shoot on his property.

The size of the high fenced property behind high fence can be a shoot, or it can be a hunt, and the size is not the deciding factor. That size thing comes from the Animal rights folks, who say if there is a fence it is CANNED! BS.>>>>>>>>>>>>

Lets look at this size thing from a little different line of sight! Lets take a a sample of land, say one section (one square mile ie: 640 acres) that is perfectly square, and flat at a table top, with only 1 foot high grass, and is behind high fence! You hunt this on foot, and can move in any direction you choose. You are using a flat shooting rifle with a scope, and a bi-pod for a rest. Is this canned? My opinion is YES it is!

Now lets take a property that is the same acreage that is again perfectly square this means in the perfect square all property lines are exactly the same length. However in this case the terrain encompasses trees, under brush hills, gullies, rock outcroppings. The number of animals enclosed in this property doesn’t exceed the carrying capacity of the land behind the fence.

Both sections are exactly the same amount of acreage right? Now lets look at this!

In the first property the land is exactly 640 cares in reality, because the land is flat! Top that off with because there is not hiding places, or escape routes so that you could stand in the center of this place and hit any animal on the property for all practical purposes. That is a canned property.

In the second property, if ironed out flat this property could be as much as twice the size of the first one, in surface area. When you add in the fact that in most cases an animal has only to take few steps and he is out of sight. If you can’t see him you can’t shoot him, no matter how close he is. If he as all the escape routes, and hiding places to bed, and food and water is available in more than one place, you could hunt till you are blue in the face an never find a smart old whitetail. Is this place canned because it is also 640 acres? The animal rights folks, and many hunters who decide the value of a thing by size, are both wrong. I say you can’t judge a property by size only.

We had a place on our ranch where an elephant could have avoided you for a week if he wanted to.

Now the last thing is the mistake people site is MIGRATION restriction. In the first place whitetail deer do not migrate. A whitetail deer live and die with in one mile of the spot where he was born, but in that RANGE the birth spot is the center of a ragged circle, so from one side through the center that range is two miles wide. Mule deer only migrate in mountain country where the winter drive them down in altitude, and the warming weather in spring lets them climb high, but they only migrate up, and down in altitude. The only legitimate accusation in regard to migration is with elk who do migrate long distances both in altitude and in distance. This bucket hold some water, but not with deer. Many of the exotics on ranches in the USA do not migrate in the wild either. But like deer have ranges where the males range through the female’s smaller ranges. So if the property is as large or larger that their natural range, they are no effected by a fence of any height!

Discussions like this one unfortunately because of many not really knowing anything about the properties they are condemning, or in many cases do not know any more that the Animal rights people about the animals there, give ammo to the antis to use against hunting. Sometimes we are our worst enemies!

...................... BYE!