mauser06

i can see BOTH sides of the issue. yes, you dont want you 10,000$ bucks to roam wild to never be seen again...so they ARE keeping the animals in.

but, you dont want joe schmoe saying "i didnt see the fence when i was walking......" when he gets caught shooting one of them animals IN the fence.

also, id imagine they keep predators out. i dont know how well a pen raised deer will fair against a hungry pack of yotes or similar..

just some points i can understand...

actually know a guy that RUNS a high fence operation. im not gunna lie, i enjoy to drive over and view the elk...just because ive never seen a wild one and they are amazing animals. pen raised...but they still bugle and fight and stuff like that..pretty neat to watch and snap some pics...he also has a small herd of deer. in the fall he had a 200" 3.5yo buck being delievered. he said first thing he was doing was sawing the rack off...didnt have it "bought" and wont till next year so he takes the antlers off so it dont get whacked from the road. he also keeps the deer hidden...you can hardly see them from the road unless you know they are there. guess it would be easier to whack a deer in a fence than a elk...but the elk are also right up tight to the house so they are safe too i guess....

i will say this...that guy is a real good guy..i enjoyed talking to him..he enjoys what he does...and makes money doing it...cant blame a guy for that...but when he asked if i knew anyone that would want to hunt and said hed give me brochures, i kindly said i dont know anyone with that kinda change layin around...just aint my cup of tea...

he did say theres been more than once they let bulls go on a 3 day "guided" hunt in a high fence area for the hunter and when day 3 comes and they are still hunting, he starts to sweat...he was honest..said he gets guys to drive them and get them moving. but, he isnt calling it hunting...thats his job and i could tell he took it that way. he knew that if he didnt get them their elk, that he wasnt getting the check for his work...and, he puts alot of time and work into the operation..keeping a "hunting lodge" on the high fence area...trailering animals to the high fence area...setting up hunts...caring for the animals and that sort of thing(alot of work in "farming" elk and deer..not to mention all the 12ft fences...he got alot of acres fenced in at his house...plus the hunting area...cant bash a guy for makin a living i guess...

buckmaster

thats crazy! i was just about to ask you about that place. i wondered what went on there (deer wise) everytime i go buy, i kknew there had to be something in that place. so they dispose of the antler and just process the meat? interesting.

Ok so whay dont they take the antlers and sell them to companys that makerknives, Chandaliers(SP), lamps and other home decor? Or even rattling horns, burrying them is a waste, i think.

GMMAT

Aaron.....RJ Reynold isn't hurting for money.

njbuck22

These threads never cease to amaze me. All things considered, lets be serious, there are high fence ranches and then there are high fence ranches. I have never hunted whitetail on in a high fence, but i did go after exotics in Texas once. The ranch i hunted was thousands of acres, the animals in there, other than being in a fence, and fed corn twice a week, had no other interaction with humans. The fence had no bearing on the hunt. Now dont get me wrong, shooting and animal in a 20 acre or even 100 acre "yard" while being pushed around isnt hunting, but there is no way that you can compare that to hunting 1000+ acre high fence ranches. ps- the ranch owner also had one hired hand to walk the fence once ever week to check it, he said that in the past he has had poachers cut the fence to sneak in.

*JB*

I don't see why some people say that hunting a high fence is bad when the high fence may be 3 or 4 thousand acres. Those same people go out to their "honey hole" that is 40 or so acres where they have patterned the deer and see the same deer day after dayand they think their big man hunter. Whereas a guy who hunts a 3,000 acre high fence area is shooting in a pen. Give me a break.

Schultzy

I totally disagree with what your saying! Is it fair chase? Heck no! Some people choose this way of hunting, whatever works for them.

*JB*

Is feeding deer year round and hunting over a food plot fair chase? Now that people are scouting year round, planting food plots, setting stands up on travel routes, there really isn't much fair chase anymore.

bawanajim

This seems almost foreign to you but most people hunt deer that are free to go anywhere they like even to the neighbors food plot.[]

davidmil

The arguement that says they do it to keep others out is a smoke screen to make them feel better about themselves. LOL Really, in nature, if left to itself, if you let things run their course... the young 1 1/2 old bucks on a property woud get run off by both the big bucks and their mothers. It prevents inbreeding and insures survival of the fittest. 1 1/2 and 2 year olds on a neighbors property or then next "Free Range" herd would be dispursed into surrounding country side overlapping and insuring minimal inbreeding and again survival of the fittest genes to be passed on. Instead, the big fence boyswith their food plots and shooting towers and supplemental feeding end up with a much larger herd that the land could possibably support on it's own. That's why they sit there and watch several hundred deer in a few sittings and call it QDM. I call it GDM(Growing Deer Management). Nothing natural about it. They artifically inflate the herd, the food sources and the facts. They put up a fence because they don't want any of their home grown bucks to escape. They're nothing more than the same thing as "The Preserve" under the guise of QDM. You can look on websites formost of these places with high fences and find a link to "Breeding" where you can buy a stud buck or some of his offspring so you too can have the big buck genes. It's not herford they're raising.... but they do it in the same way right down to the feed lots. Deer on steroids kind of.

Schultzy

Yes its fair chase! They can come and go as they please. So are you going to tell me that when your hunting a scrape its not fair chase either? Eventually the bucks and doe's are going to hit it or check it out just as they do a food plot or a field!