x2

I hunt a ranch in Webb County. If you can sit through a morning or evening hunt without seeing anything, you must be blaring a radio, or running around. A slow hunt is not seeing at least 10 different deer. Many times it is many more than that. By the way, it is a large low fence ranch with no feeders. I will hunt high fence, low fence, or no fence. The true HUNT is what matters to me. I have been on HF ranches where the deer were harder to hunt than many low fence places I have hunted. I believe most of the arguments people throw out against HF hunting are not valid.

Just FYI, high fence hunting is banned in Montana and Wyoming and will likely be on the ballot and pass in North Dakota. Manitoba is the latest Canadian province to restict it and follows most other provinces.

This is interesting about Montana and Wyoming, wonder if this means they are are going to take down some of their ownstate owned high fence along hwys?

Manitoba's ban was considered a victory by animal rights groups, strike one against hunters that fight between themselves.

If its game fence it comes down. You can look it up if you don't believe me.

They were effective using the disease prevention argument. BTW Boone and Crocket does not consider high fence fair chase. The deer can never be booked.

Didn't say I didn't, just curious if the state will also remove all fences along hwys. I'm not a big fan of HFing true migatory big game animals, but at the same time I support proportey owner rights, whether it be land, house, car, ect.

But then again I also haven't seen to many fences that most big game animals couldn't go over or through if they wanted.

I already knew about it, I said the animal rights groups got there way because of hunters fighting between each other. They claimed a victory whnen the law was passed.

Depends on the property.. It can be fenced on three side or..... The funnier part of that what hieght is escape proof???? I don't believe they even state a height.

Then you'll find some of the "Open Fields" laws and "State Walk in" suggestions interesting. It will also show you what the state thinks about ownership rights when it comes to game animals. These are coming down the pike.

Montana's is not suprising at all.. That Animal Rights extremest started there many many years ago... going after the state largest land owner and his high buffalo fences.

I strongely disagree with you do to the fact the majority of the states are strenghting their tresspass laws. Most states have already done a way with the old school property has to be posted and that trend will continue.

well, i really wasn't going to "get into" this, but i've decided i don't want assumptions made about where i stand on this issue. so i'll make a few clear, concise statements that apply to ME:

1. when it comes to big game, i am a still hunter. that means no feeders, no stands, 100% fair chase and wild game.

2. i don't care which side of what kind of fence that game is on, so long as it has a typical chance of eluding me. if a fence prevents that, then i'm out.

3. i don't think high fencing does that 99% of the time. high fencing does not equal "canned hunt." a canned hunt is livestock harvesting plain and simple: an animal is turned loose in an enclosure that drastically inhibits its chances of eluding a hunter.

4. texas is a "fence out" state. that means that if you have land and want stuff kept off of it, you have to fence that stuff out of your property (primarily livestock law here). high fencing was actually started as a wildlife management tool to reduce the ENCROACHMENT of outside variables into the herd management equation. it's a typical "fence out" strategy of animal husbandry, not a fence IN hunting strategy.

5. however, certain high fence operators started introducing exotic species and it quickly became "fence in," but still for animal husbandry reasons, not hunting tactics in most cases. sure, some few unscrupulous jerks will turn a zebra loose in a 40 acre high fence enclosure and charge another jerk a few thousand dollars to go out there and shoot it. then they'll take pictures and pose and call each other great white hunters. and they make us all look like just as big of jerks as they are. we should figure out a way to make THAT illegal without screwing with what is right and good. they're a SMALL minority, gang.

6. i'm a wingshooter mostly and don't do much big game hunting anymore. i have not figured out how to use high fences effectively in hunting migratory birds and quail yet. i mean...they'd have to be REALLY high!

7. i have shot a few camp deer in the past 15 years or so when guys asked me to because they weren't as confident in their own ability to do so as they were in mine. never did that behind a fence of any kind. i usually hunted for no more than a few hours and had it done. the last camp deer i shot just so happened to be a wild trophy deer taken 100% fair chase less than 1 hour after i started hunting. i was lucky. i'm not telling this to brag. there's a moral to this story:

there is no substitute for TIME AFIELD. that and blind luck are the 2 biggest factors in taking a trophy wild animal of any kind when hunting or fishing. and the more time you spend out there the better luck you'll have. a dry worm won't catch fish. ya know? i got a kick out of the fella who said he sat out there for a whopping 3 hours and only saw a few deer. most deer hunters follow this pattern: a few hours morning and evening. almost every trophy buck i've ever taken or seen moving during legal shooting hours has been around lunchtime! you know why? there's a reason why that buck got older and bigger than the rest: he's smarter! he knows when most hunters are in the woods and he doesn't stick his head up then. he moves to water and food at midday. he does it quickly. he stays near cover and escape routes. and you'll only get one chance. he won't be in the same spot again for quite some time if he sees/smells you.

for all of the reasons stated above, high fences don't bother me. i certainly don't ever plan to hunt behind one. but i don't care how many other people do. but i sure would like to see canned hunts...REAL canned hunts...go away. that's just killin' and calling it hunting.

hunting over bait is illegal in many states. and hunting deer with dogs is legal in some states. it's good to keep an open mind about things, folks. i won't hunt deer near feeders, but i'll hunt doves in a sunflower field. that's just me! and it doesn't bother me if YOU hunt deer at feeders where it's legal. i'd rather you planted food plots and hunted those, but that's just MY sensibilities. and i have no right to impose those upon you or judge you by them.

and here's the kicker: you don't have any right to judge others when their (legal) way of doing things doesn't quite rub you the right way either. it's about respect, gang. we need to respect one another as people first and foremost. then we need to respect the game and land upon which we depend. next, we need to respect the sport and heritage itself.

and i guarantee you 98% of us can agree that turning a striped horse or a goat loose in a 40 acre pasture and then shooting it isn't hunting and shouldn't be called hunting.

but that's a FAR CRY from a 1000 acre high fence ranch with a total quality deer management program in place with no feeders or deer stands where a dad bow hunts with his son and daughter!

I'll look up the rules. BTW Indiana passed a bill in 2006 eliminating further high fence hunting and closing the existing operations in 7 years.

After all these posts I still can't figure out why any of you care is someone put up a high, low, or no fence???????

With respect to animal rights organizations "winning" on regulations against HF hunting, its just a start. They will not stop trying to strip us ALL of ALL our hunting privileges.

Should ALL HFs be deemed the devil and removed, a new fight will begin of a systematic elimination of ALL hunting.

Sometimes you have to back your "hunting brothers" play, even if you don't exactly agree with it.

I promise you this, those slap d**ks won't fight among themselves about how to stop us all from enjoying the outdoor and hunting.

A high fence's main function is to keep deer out, not in.

I could care less about a 100 acre HF exotic hunting operations. You get what you pay for....... a kill, not an experience.

Quailhunter, I too wish I still had the article,but 1960 was 49 years ago,long before Al Gore invented the internet, and I still may have it if I could just remember what book it was in, but if memory serves it was in one of the gun/hunting annuals,or maybe NRA magazine, but I believe it was a Peterson hunting annual, but not sure! I don't think it is a good manors to convene a Kangaroo court and hang the messenger! I didn't write it, I just read it!

It may very well be BS, but there were a lot of pictures in the article, of the Game men, and the pictures the hunters took of the deer, and for sure three of the pictures were of the same deer. They had more pictures but not pictures that would have been clear shots.

I truely can't remember where it was written, but some of the older outdoor writers may know where it can be found! If you find it let me know as well, because it was in responce to, I believe a PeTA member, Cleveland Amory, accusation that any fence constituted a Canned hunt! I read it when it was new, and just before the hunters banned together and got Mr. Amory fired from TV Guaide with over 100,ooo threats to cancle subscritions to TV GUIDE.

Well, as an outdoor writer, I'd love to help. But this one sounds like it's above my pay grade! I was BORN in 1966. And the archives of a lot of this sort of stuff aren't exactly what I would call exhaustive or accessible.

But I will say this: there ain't 18 acres anywhere that you could run that sort of experiment on and could get those sort of results nowadays: scent blockers, better camera equipment, better knowledge of how deer move/smell/see, and much more. On the other hand, I could take you to a lot of places where a "clear" camera shot would be nearly impossible on an 18 acre parcel. I've seen many thickets that were bigger than 18 acres! And you'd have to crawl the whole thing on hands-n-knees.

This whole thing sounds ill-conceived. And in the 60's, a smelly outdoor photographer with a big old clunky camera would have been pretty easy for any whitetail to avoid in close quarters.

I recall one night when I was hunting hogs in an East Texas river bottom during the deer rut. A couple of real bruiser bucks were mixing it up right freaking behind me through a thick line of brush in a bottom pasture for a half hour. I sat and listened. Had my financial planner at the time with me that night. We were having a blast just listening to these big ole bucks fighting. The racket was amazing! It sounded like we could have reached back through the brush and touched them at times. Rob was mobility-impaired, but I wasn't. I eventually decided to sneak through the brush on my belly and try to get a look. I had not moved much more than from a seated position at the base of an old oak tree to lying on my belly when those deer disappeared into the night...during a FIGHT!

On other occassions in thick country, I've been sitting in similar situations in broad daylight and had whitetails walk up right beside me and almost bump me with their noses before detecting me. I've stalked deer inside of 30 yards for up to 30 minutes without spooking them. But if you shift your weight just wrong on a twig or leaf at just the split second when the wind dies or the deer freezes and holds its breath, you're busted. And they can "disappear" like phantoms in the woods and tall grass/crops in ways that the best specops snipers would give up a limb to emulate!

I know a bunch of guys who have stepped within a couple feet of a wounded deer while tracking them without dogs and never knew they were there.

So 10 outdoor writers in 1960 (7 of whom probably smoked, none of whom wore camo, none of whom used scent-reduction tech, and all 10 of whom were toting very smelly photographic equipment) in an 18 acre patch of woods would be up against it big time!

Kenmorrow, That was the whole idea of the experement, to show that the fence is not as limiting to whitetail survival as the animal rights people tried to get law makers to believe. That fact seems also to be lost on many whitetail hunters today as well, if the responses to this discussion are any indication.

There are whitetail, and then there are whitetail! Deer anyplace where they are hunted hard become ghosts, and in most cases become totally nocturnal, and are rarely seen durring legal shooting hours.

A fine example of this is the LBJ grass lands Near Decator, Texas. That area, being so close to the Metroplex, got so mush shooting traffic back in the 1980s that you had to step on a deer before he would move in daylight. You could walk down little hidden seep creek bottoms that were well hidden, and the bottoms looked like a thousand deer had migrated along it from the way the bottom was tracked up every morning. I purposely spent the night in a tree above one of these pathways with a red prediter light, and no firearm. After about 8:30 PM the woods came alive. there were deer, and hogs everywhere,yet as the sun started coming up suddenly as if by electric switch, they were simply gone! I assume tucked away in the briars and under brush for the daylight hours.

In this case you could have fenced this place off with high fence, and it wouldn't have uped your chances of baging a good buck, though it is evident the deer are there in high numbers, but so were hunters, and shooters. The deer simply learned to cope!

Now if you fence that same area, and not allowed anyone in there, for six months, you would, IMO, see deer in the daytime because again, the deer would adapt to the conditions they experience. So Again, IMO, the fence is not the deciding factor, but the lack of pressure on the very expensive ranches that makes it easier. Up that pressure as it is in open land, and I think just like LBJ you would see a far more difficult hunt, that is if you hunt not bait, and hide in a blind.

This pressure, or lack of it, is another reason that you see far better trophies on places that are expensive to hunt. When a man is paying a large sum of funds to hunt a property, that doesn't allow you to shoot immature deer, the deer get older before they are shot. On open land that is near large cities, and get lots of pressure the hunter is more likely to shoot the first legal deer he sees, and so the trophy quality drops dramaticly over time. The fencing,the rules, and the high price allows the the deer to NATURALLY produce better deer, even if they are not fed suplimentally, or use introduced breeding stock form other places.

All I'm saying is the fence is not all bad, nor is it all good, and is not the most important factor in the quality of the deer inside it! Hunting pressure caused by high accesability, and low cost is far more detremental to the quality, and numbers of mature deer in any area.

As I have consistantly said The High fence, and high cost is not for me, but if it floats your canoe, the paddle on down stream, and do your thing. On the other hand, if it doesn't, and it doesn't for me, then don't hunt there, but don't cuss those who do, especially in a public forum! The time may come when the high fence properties may be the only hunting you will have! just ask the hunters in Europe,especially England, who have been doing so for two hundred years. You pay, for private huning places or you do not hunt there!
...........................

I agreed with everything you said down to the very end there about Europe. That's an over-generalization. There is plenty of "public" hunting opportunity in Europe based on the hunting population in Europe and land utilization realities there. But "public" hunting there is more highly regulated in general in Europe than in the US or Canada. It costs considerably more to be a public land hunter in Europe, for example. And you can only hunt with a licensed guide unless you are a licensed guide in much of Europe. (like the German Jaegermiester program, for example) Furthermore, they have forest and riverkeepers from whom you have to secure fairly pricey permits each time you wish to go afield. This is true for camping, hunting, fishing, etc. and in some places goes like this: you want to float a 3 mile section of river through a forest, camp overnight, have a campfire, and fish. You will need a fishing license, and that requires extensive schooling and relatively high fees. Now you need a permit to float the river from the riverkeeper for that 3 mile section. You need another permit to fish that river section. You need a separate permit to camp from the forester. And you need a fire permit if you want to build a campfire. Each of these costs money, are limited in number issued in any given time period (quotas), and can be denied for any number of reasons. So all of your stuff may be in order and you may get permits for everything but the fishing. Sort of kills the whole point of your fishing trip, doesn't it? Furthermore, you can BET you will see the forester and riverkeeper and game warden while you're there. And they will check you. Change it to hunting and you'll have the game warden with you 24/7 and he will tell you which animal...if any...you can shoot.

MacD:


outstanding post. I agree completely. There are many variables that determine the "difficulty" or "challenge" associated with a hunt. High fences are one variable which everyone seems to focus on, perhaps becasue they are so visible and obvious. By on the list of potential varialbe, the type of fence falls way down on the list.

I'm glad to see several of us in agreement on this because this is the RATIONAL position based on empirical evidence. But I suspect a more common reason why the high fence is so popular a whipping boy is because most hunters don't have keys to them. I learned a long time ago that it is very, very attractive to the masses to beat up on what they don't have access to but a few others do. Interestingly, you can make fans out of most of these detractors by giving them a key. I've actually tested this theory a few times and it has never failed. Once, I hired a guy I was having a lot of trouble with regarding hunting access to a certain property and gave him hunting priveleges. He immediately went from bad-mouthing trespasser to fierce guardian of the kingdom! LOL

As I said you pay or you do not hunt in Europe!

Yes, but it varies from country to country and region to region as to whether this is mostly on private or public land. That was my point: public vs. private.

kenmorrow said "But I suspect a more common reason why the high fence is so popular a whipping boy is because most hunters don't have keys to them. I learned a long time ago that it is very, very attractive to the masses to beat up on what they don't have access to but a few others do. Interestingly, you can make fans out of most of these detractors by giving them a key. I've actually tested this theory a few times and it has never failed."

Wow, you think it's all class envy, no ethics, traditions, or morals involved. Quite the pedestal you have put yourself on. What was I thinking when I enjoy myself on a low-class, low fence place.

And what is that you are standing on captain purity? People that hunt HF are immoral? Non-traditional? Unethical?

And you don't so you are all these things?

Wonder why none of th HF haters responded if they would be proud of a low fence deer off these low fence ranches???

King Ranch
Cochina Ranch
Chittim Ranch
McAllen
Winniship
Brisco Catarina
Shiner