Bionicrooster

I retract my statement, after talking to Pighunter, whether he and I agree or not he is a mature reasonable person, not a troll...

Pighunter56

Pighunter56

I officially pull my horse from this chariot race, 358, i wish you the best of luck, and many great seasons ahead of you.

Bionicrooster

I am with PH, whatever floats your boat...

txjourneyman

Please keep in mind that all folks here in Texas don't feel the same way. Although I have never hunted a high fence ranch, I still pay to hunt as do most Texans I know. There isn't much free access to private land here unless your family owns it. We lease. I don't pay much for my lease but I still pay. I guess that means I pay to hunt hogs.
Also, someone mentioned the size of Tx deer being larger than those in NJ. Well I beg to differ. Tx may grow big racks but they are on small deer. deer in the northeast are much larger than those here. At least in my experience, and I have hunted both places.
I wonder how many Tx acres, no, square miles are surrounded by high fence?

diamondaranch

To pay...not to pay! High fence....low fence....no fence!!

Wow, interesting stuff here. A few points from our perspective and few questions.

1. I am not really up on the canned hunt deal? If someone has 50-100 acres behind high fence I can seeyour point....in my opinion that is ridiculous.

2. Our business here is all hunting...all the time! That is how we support this place after 4 generations. Raising livestock doesn't cut it anymore.

3. Considering those two points so far....we ARE high fenced on two sides of this ranch (about 15 miles of fence). The other two sides (actually five sides if you count every corner to corner a side) are 4 foot cattle fence.

4.Why the high fence? Two reasons.....we are in the business of trying to produce/manage monster whitetail deer and various exotics. Second, we don't want them getting hit on the highway or to be harvested by "weekenders" (no offense to them...they are nice people) that have bought a tract of land about 20 acres that was once a 10,000 acre ranch. They don't manage huntand they shoot just about anything they see. Why? They set up one feeder, keep a travel trailer, and hunt maybe once per year. It works for them. That is their business. But I don't want them to reap the benefit of 3-4 years of managing deer on our place. It's that simple.

5. If some of you call 6,900 acres behind high fence a canned hunt, then so be it. As of the time of this post...9:21 a.m. I have four hunters here at the ranch. They have been here for 3 days and seen nothing but squirrels. Not at all unusual here.

6. How in the heck do you "fence in" a hog? The only thing I can think of or possibly conceive of in that regard is a small (1-2 acre) pipe and welded wire panel fence that is set into the ground a foot or so. We have a"holding pen" like that. Why? We constantly trap hogs (sometimes a couple hundred per month), transfer them to a very small (1/4 acre penbuiltlike the above), and sell them for the meat. We do that because of the awesome numbers of hogs here.

We constantly fix holes in our fences from the little devils! I have personally seen a hog PICK UP a fence, including a couple T-posts with just half of his snout/nose under the bottom of the fence!

7.I always wonder what it would be like to hunt New Zealand? The ocean is about the cheapest/maintenance free fence I can think of.

8. Most of our hunters are trophy and MEAT hunters. If they just want the trophy, that is fine with us...we keep the meat or donate it WEEKLY to the local churches. (we live in the bible belt here)

9. Why people pay? Most of our clientele are from the inner city, don't own any propertyand don't have time to lease/maintain land here in Texas.

9. No offense intended to any of you....just our thoughts. And I tend to agree with Rebel Hog....."if it works for you do it."

best of luck to all of you

Rebel Hog

Thank you Damon!

I personally have never hunted a Preserve, and we have many in FL, but many of my friends have. Hey, we are still friends.

We have Millions of acres of different National Forrest which is Public Land and have a 5'Hog wire fence around them to mark the area. We have over 90 WMA'swhich is Public Landand close to a million acres, with a 5' Hog wire Fence to mark the area. We have 1000's and 1000's of acres of Paper Companies Land which has a Special Permit of $100 to hunt on, which has a 5' fence to mark the area.

With all I have mentioned above........I have paid $500 a yearplus expences on Proctor & Gamble (1700 acres)Propertywith no Fence at all to hunt on for 5yrs.In my 55yrs of hunting I have hunted every National Forrest, every WMA, every Paper Company and many personal private properties in Florida. No, not any Preserves, but that is my prerogative as it is someone's prerogative to do so and It's OK by me! To Each His Own!!!!

txjourneyman

I agree wholr heartedly with RH. If it is legal and the way you want to hunt then DO IT! I hope my post didn't give the impression that I am against preserves. I don't hunt them but won't hold it against anyone that does. And maybe someday I will. Who knows what the future may hold. Greg

Biffstir

Greg, yours is the most level-headed, well-rounded and justified post in this string, thanks. I think you make excellent points given your location in the country.

(I've put down my dirt clods and come out of my make-shift foxhole...
Biffstir