Fenced in hunting?

[Gary O]

Any of you folks been hunting for elk on fenced in ranches? Did it seems like fair chase to you? Sounds like South Africa. I have been there twice and hunted my fanny off for most of my game. I will admit we drove around the ranches, too. What say you? Thought I may harvest a cow with my daughter? Thanks...

 

[short barrel]

Not for me, although it fits right in to lots of folks agenda. Might be a good way to share hunting with your daughter though.

 

[jrdolall]

If you are just after meat then I have no issue with fenced hunts but please don't brag about shooting an animal in a small enclosure. If you are out West and hunting a "fenced" place that is several thousand acres then it is certainly fair chase. I have hunted a 1,000 acre ranch in Alabama that was no easier than hunting any other piece of property in the area.

 

[Art Eatman]

Depends on the size of the fenced area, seems to me. And the sort of vegetation.

Fairly open country, I'd think several thousand acres at a minimum. Timbered and brushy, a thousand or more would take work.

A hundred acres and a group of elk? Unfair.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

Is it fair chase? No
Would I want to do it? No

But there is no ethical issue. If it snaps your cap, then do it. Certainly nothing wrong with it.

If you are just after meat then I have no issue with fenced hunts but please don't brag about shooting an animal in a small enclosure.

I agree. You don't get to brag about the kill afterwards if you kill a 200+ inch whitetail or a trophy elk when the herd was 50 yds from you and you were talking to your guide in a normal tone of voice about which one to shoot.

 

[Patocazador]

If you want a quick fun way of obtaining a hog or an exotic animal that is not available except in fenced ranches, then go for it. However, an oryx or ibex killed on a Texas high-fenced ranch is NOT the same as getting one in its native habitat ... and don't try to convince anyone that it is.

 

[Liberty1776]

for me, this >

Depends on the size of the fenced area, seems to me. And the sort of vegetation.

Howsumever, I have been heard to mention that fenced places or "catch and (not) release, is a great place to give young children and young dogs a taste of what is....

 

[burrhead]

Patocazador, oryx are extinct in their native habitat and you won't find any free-rangeing, legal-to-take oryx anywhere in the world. I think people who have not hunted Texas fenced ranches don't really understand that those areas are usually many thousands of acres. I'm going to hunt a six section ranch in south Texas this winter and consider it pretty much free range. Six square miles is a lot of territory and the fences are for keeping animals OUT as well as IN. But we all have a different take on it.

 

[WestKentucky]

Areas measured in miles or squares seems ok. The deal breaker for me is when they show up at 9am because that's when they get fed 300 days a year. I also know of a Petsmart employee who used a really good analogy to fenced hunting...killing a deer in a fence is like catching a guppy in a tank. Pretty easy unless the tank is huge or your after one little bastard in particular.

 

[eastbank]

i hunted two ranches in south africa and one in botswana this year, on two of the ranches the boundry fences were plain three strand cattle wire about 4 four feet high and at over 10,000 hecters, to say it was fair chase is a under statement(a very hard hunt on foot) the other hunt was like shooting fish in a barrel and i left on the second day with out asking for a refund on the last two days left on the hunt. the animals were high fenced in and were in sight all the time in the open and you were just driven after the game you wanted to shoot,they had no chance to escape at all. eastbank.

 

[mquail]

White Sands Missile Range has an Onyx hunt. http://www.nps.gov/whsa/naturescience/oryx.htm

At one time I was very much against what many would call a "canned hunt" but now I'm not so sure. When I lived in South Dakota we had a lot of pheasant preserves (?). Guys n gals would go hunting, shoot some pen raised birds and have a good time. I knew lots of people who couldn't tell a released bird from a wild one after they bagged it. One fellow stopped by the house with a limit of birds. All of them had holes in their noses where the spec's had been. He was happy. Not far from where I lived was a place folks could hunt elk, in a pen of maybe 100 acres. The guys I met had a grand time and got a lot of meat too boot. At one time one of the veteran groups had a raffle and sold lots of tickets to shoot a donated bull on the property. The money went to a good cause and whoever shot the bull got a lot of meat. In my opinion it's not what I'd call hunting in a 100 acre pen but those places that have thousands of acres penned in I'd say is hunting.

In short if you live in an area with lots of game and have access to land then that's fine but if you don't and want to hunt one of these place I'd have no issue with you and besides that you get lots of meat to take home.

 

[burrhead]

Friends of Animals won a suit a couple of years ago to make hunting oryx illegal in the US with some exceptions. Land owners can go through some back flips and get an exemption but I thought the New Mexico herd was off limits. Guess I was wrong. Happens often to me.

 

[Art Eatman]

Oryx are endangered in Africa. The herds in the US are expanding. The woman who bosses USF&WS issued a ban because of what she had been told of the problem in Africa. I think--but don't know for sure--that reason finally prevailed. There was a brief period between promulgation of the order and its effective date when ranchers were killing their Oryx to avoid future problems.

There are huntable numbers in the herds at White Sands and in SW New Mexico.

I haven't seen the twenty or so Oryx anytime lately, that used to hang around the 118 highway fence of the O2 Ranch south of Alpine, Texas. Their pasture is some 100,000 acres; any cross fencing is 3- or 4-strand barbed wire.

 

[burrhead]

They're still there, Art. I see 'em occasionally but don't go to Alpine any more than I have to. I hunted a lease near Brackettville the last couple of years and they have a large (100+) herd.

 

[jmr40]

The deal breaker for me is when they show up at 9am because that's when they get fed 300 days a year.

Lots of places where there aren't fences and the same happens. I'm not being critical or fences or baiting. Do what is legal and what you enjoy. What is legal and ethical in one part of the country is illegal and unethical in others.

For me, I wouldn't enjoy hunting inside a small fence or over bait. But in reality hunting over a harvested field isn't much different, nor is using bottled attracting scents. We all have to decide on what we consider right. If I were primarily meat hunting I really don't see much problem with either. No different than a farmer killing a hog for the meat. I wouldn't feel good about a trophy rack taken in such a manner.

But that is just me. I try not to be critical of others.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

I'm not being critical or fences or baiting. Do what is legal and what you enjoy.

I feel the same way.
I wouldn't enjoy a high fence hunt, but I certainly have no problem with folks who do. They have a hell of a lot better life and chance of survival in a high fence than they do in a slaughterhouse.

 

[gspn]

We used to take some clients duck hunting every year. They would bring a few of their customers with them.

One of those customers was a guy from Texas that ran a high-fence exotic game hunting operation. They had all kinds of animals…the particular hunt he told us about was either a red stag or an elk hunt (I can't recall which).

One of his hunting customers came down and shot a trophy animal and was super pumped up about not only the size of the animal, but how close he was able to stalk it.

The owner of that ranch is laughing at that customer to this day because the animal he stalked so well, was so tame that they fed it by hand. The customer didn't know it…everything seemed like a wild animal hunt to him…but he had no way of knowing what the real situation was.

I don't see myself ever going on a high fence hunt…it's just not for me.

 

[Andrew Leigh]

i hunted two ranches in south africa and one in botswana this year, on two of the ranches the boundry fences were plain three strand cattle wire about 4 four feet high and at over 10,000 hecters, to say it was fair chase is a under statement(a very hard hunt on foot) the other hunt was like shooting fish in a barrel and i left on the second day with out asking for a refund on the last two days left on the hunt. the animals were high fenced in and were in sight all the time in the open and you were just driven after the game you wanted to shoot,they had no chance to escape at all. eastbank.

What he said.

There is a difference between "fenced hunting" and what we locally refer to as canned hunting. Ultimately everything is fenced it is simply the size of the range within the fence that changes. Canned hunting is where the fenced area is so small that you have 100% chance of shooting what you want.

In South Africa the average size of a "fenced hunting farm" starts at about 7 500 acres and then they get sufficiently bigger after that. These farms serve a vital need in the industry as they offer sustainable hunting being commercial ventures that breed and manage stock for the sole purpose of hunting.

I could take you to some 7 500 acre farms that you would find not only most challenging but downright frustrating as there is plenty game but you cant get close either due to how wily they are or the thickness of the bush.

 

[H&Hhunter]

oryx are extinct in their native habitat and you won't find any free-rangeing, legal-to-take oryx anywhere in the world.

Oryx are endangered in Africa.

Gentlemen please lets not confuse our species here. The common Kalahari Oryx are most definitely NOT endangered in Africa. The oryx hunted on White Sands missile range is the common non endangered oryx. You will most definitely find plentiful free range oryx to hunt all over Africa.

The oryx that is endangered is the scimitar horned oryx from Northern Africa primarily in the Sahara Desert and they are not extinct throughout their range but are highly endangered.

Scimitar horned oryx. Endangered except for in Texas.


Common Oryx plentiful in Africa and free ranging and over populated in new Mexico


There are several other species of oryx in Africa as well. The fringe eared oryx of Eastern Africa is also hunted and plentiful in its traditional habitat.

 

[Sav .250]

Not my idea of hunting!!

 

[H&Hhunter]

People hear high fence and they freak out. It really depends on how big the place is as has been mentioned. I hunted a place in South Africa that was 70,000 hectares (172,900 acres) with a perimeter fence around it, that is like the size of Rhode Island. A lot of places are 10,000 or 25,000 acres with a perimeter fence. Those places can offer a very good hunting experience. Many paces in Africa especially South Africa, Namibia and Botswana high fence not so much to keep their animals in but to keep undesirable stuff out.

Am I going to go to a game farm in Texas to hunt for myself? No I'm really not interested but I support your desire to do so and would be glad to tag along. I have hunted several large places in South Africa that are perimeter fenced. In every circumstance I've been invited as guest they are not something that I have booked to hunt but have found the hunting to be fun and challenging.

 

[Art Eatman]

Thanks for the Oryx correction. Regardless, the USF&WS lumped all Oryx into their edict.

Decades back, the Michigan game folks built a high fence around 100 acres of thick timber and undergrowth. Spent a year or two doing an accurate headcount of the deer.

Then, they allowed controlled-number hunting. The focus was on success rate for the hunters.

Average rate over a few-years period: Two percent.

There's a mesquite thicket in my southeast pasture of around thirty acres. Okay, fence it high. The only way you'd find Bambi would be if he stood on his hind legs and waved at you. Same for millions of acres in Texas.

Terrain. Vegetation.

 

[ClickClickD'oh]

Meh, I guess the evil Texas high fence canned hunt ranch operator has to chine in here.

Sure, we've only got a measly 900 acres of dense scrub hill country under fence, so I guess it's pretty much like shooting deer in a feeding pen, or so I've been told. Sure, if you take a mule ride around the ranch at the right time of day you are pretty much 100% guaranteed to see a deer somewhere. And, I guess if you didn't care about what you take home with you, that means you have a 100% chance of getting a shot in no matter how much you suck at hunting. Oddly enough, we don't have much of a problem with people plugging dumb does from the mule.

Sure, if you pay us to come to our ranch and hunt a 200+ white tail, you'll get a shot at a 200+ white tail. Not because putting a fence around deer makes them more stupid than they normally are and they all group up in a big cluster in front of the hunter, but because our family has been working all year at patterning that deer and we can put you on him with a very good probability.

(...super frustrating bucks aside that is... the ones that we watch grow massive antlers for four years, then when it comes time to sell him, he vanishes from October through January only to show up fat and happy after we stop hunting. Pesky buggers.)

But then again, that's why some people pay people like me to come hunt on our ebil high fenced ranches instead of going to open country to do it. They simply don't have the time or inclination to put in a full year of scouting tracking and prep to get the trophy they want.

The point is, someone still did that work. That hunter didn't magically know exactly when or where to be when that trophy decided to walk out of the woods.

Now, little 50 acre kill ops... screw them.

 

[H&Hhunter]

Just to be clear as there is still some confusion on the legality of hunting scimitar horned oryx. It is once again legal to hunt the scimitar oryx on game ranches in the USA, the USFW was defeated on their anti hunting attempts with this and two other species that are endangered in their traditional habitat but doing very well in Texas and other places. The law that defeated the USFW directive was called the "Three Amigo's Law" and it was passed about a year ago.

http://gametrails.org/three-amigos-becomes-law-dsc-lauds-move-for-rare-species/

 

[H&Hhunter]

Thanks for the Oryx correction. Regardless, the USF&WS lumped all Oryx into their edict.

Art,

That is actually not correct the directive was to require a CITES permit for the harvesting on game ranches of three species which are critically endangered in their home habitat but are doing smashingly well under proper conservation management on game ranches in foreign countries. Those three species three the scimitar horned oryx, Damas Gazelle and the addax.

Which on another note;
Once again proves that a proper game management program which includes hunting and assigns monetary value to a species is the key to healthy sustainable numbers.