High Fence

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Not to start a bomb here but after driving for a few hours and listening to the Hunt Talk podcast I had a lot of stuff rolling through my head.

I am torn on this. I have never hunted a high fence operation for big game.

I will say I have done some pheasant hunts on game farms. I don't considered it hunting as much as shooting but I still enjoyed it when I have went. For pheasant game farms I have been on two kinds. True kick and shoot operations, they dizzy the birds up until you kick them up (not really enjoyable). I have hunted some other operations where they are always adding birds to the field. Yes a majority of the ones you shoot go from flight pens to fields and are not that smart. They do fly better than the kick and shoot operations. You also end up hunting some birds that have been out there for days and weeks.. Tell me those birds haven't been there and done that. Those can be very difficult to get in.

Was this fair chase? The birds can fly, do get missed and still run when hit. My dog has done some long rundown retrieves at these places.

Can a high fence operation ever be considered fair chase? Release and animal on 10 acres and go kill it, Yup definitely not fair chase. Fence in 10 square miles ground and have animals in there. Is that fair chase? I don't have the answer.
 
Planted birds can run and fly to escape. Planted fish still need to be enticed to bite. Captive deer/elk roam the pen until killed; there is no other outcome.
 
It made me think a little as well.

So many people want to go to Africa to hunt, i have never seen so many high fences!
When i went it wasn't to hunt, but my South African friend said we could go to his friends 'outfitted' farm and hunt for free, although i appreciated the offer it wasn't for me at all, riding around a fenced farm (OK it was a few thousand acres) seeing game from the truck and jumping out (slob hunter i know!) the game would spook, and all we would do is drive around until we saw the same ones again or different game, it was not hunting as far as i am concerned, no skill involved at all, apart from bullet placement that is.
I got a Impala buck, head shot, at his insistence:eek:

In the UK we a voluntary scheme whereby you get 'educated' in deer stalking, followed by a shoot test, this is called the Deer stalkers Level 1, the police like people to have this before they issue a firearm certificate, although it isn't compulsory. So to this point no deer have been shot. You can then (as i have done) complete L2, this involves being 'witnessed' finding 3 deer (usually over many days), shooting, gralloching and when necessary putting the venison into the food chain. Now when i did mine it was all fair game hunting, no fences, all wild deer, a challenge as one is also being assessed all the time by the guy looking over your shoulder.
But the governing body decided this was too tough, so now a guy can go to a deer park, all high fenced, often just a few acres in size, slaughter 3 deer in a few minutes and become 'qualified' it has made a complete joke of it and i kicked up some stink over it, but it fell on deaf ears so i resigned from the organisation.
Sorry if this has gone on a bit but it really pissed me off!

So in my opinion, and sorry if this is divisive, but high fenced hunting, in whatever continent, is not hunting.
But i expect this post won't even get read, you are all out hunting fair chase in the wilderness!:D

Cheers

Richard
 
What if the enclosure is 10K acres and the critters home range is 640acres? To borrow a devils advocate question from Steve Rinella.
 
In the UK we a voluntary scheme whereby you get 'educated' in deer stalking, followed by a shoot test, this is called the Deer stalkers Level 1, the police like people to have this before they issue a firearm certificate, although it isn't compulsory. So to this point no deer have been shot. You can then (as i have done) complete L2, this involves being 'witnessed' finding 3 deer (usually over many days), shooting, gralloching and when necessary putting the venison into the food chain. Now when i did mine it was all fair game hunting, no fences, all wild deer, a challenge as one is also being assessed all the time by the guy looking over your shoulder.

Cheers

Richard

Had to go to google for a new word. Thanks Richard for the mental exercise.


Gralloch: disembowel a deer. (iPad spellcheck and my brain flummoxed).
 
I think the easy answer is to immediately say no it is not fair chase. However there is a ton of grey area for debate. I guess for me it would come down to how the hunt is intended to be carried out. Artificially bred animals, feeders and other assorted methods all play into it and often go hand in hand. I think it is possible to have a high fences fair chase hunt but it would be unlikely to be offered and unprofitable for the owner. I agree that trout ponds and bird hunts could fit but not always. Good topic for discussion though.
 
I think it boils down to personal opinion. I have never, and will never, take part in a hunt where big game are fenced in. I have, however, hunted pheasants on a game farm. I didn't really like it. I would rather walk all day in the mountains hunting grouse and not get anything than go pay $150 and shoot a limit of pheasants.
 
I have hunted hogs in a high fence operation in Oklahoma over corn feeders and it's not as easy as one might think. I thought it would be like shooting fish in a barrel, but the pigs start to learn that those funny things attached to the trees shoot stuff at them and with so many stands and feeders it's pretty much a crap shoot as to which stands are going to see hogs. So, there were 3 guys in the group of 8 of us that went home empty handed. It's not something I would normally do, but it was a group of us from archerytalk getting together, so I figured, why not. A few weeks ago after my unsuccessful archery elk hunt, my buddy needed some sheep culled out of his herd, so he left them out of his enclosure and out into a 6 acre pasture and told me which ones to kill and to go after them with my bow. What a pain in the arse that was!! You'd think killing a few sheep in a relatively small area would be easy, but they run and herd up and mingle, so it took me over an hour to shoot the first one. All in all it took me 3 days to kill 6 sheep out of that enclosure. So, it was by far, not easy , by any means. Do I consider it hunting? No. Was it challenging and fun? Yes. Would I hunt a high fence for deer or elk? No.
 
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I watched a "hunting" show on tv where they were hunting pheasants and then Chukars on a game farm. Of course they didn't call it a game farm, but that's what they do is farm birds to shoot.
They had to kick the bush to make the Chukars fly and of course it was flat fields. Wild Chukars run up the steepest nastiest mountains at the first sight or sound. That is where the challenge and reward lies, chasing those darn Devil Birds up and down the mountains.
If I just wanted to shoot something kicked from under me I would just go to the sporting clays course.
 
The North American conservation model clearly states that no one owns wildlife, it is a resource that belongs to everyone. If you put an animal behind a fence that it can't escape from it is no longer wild. Even if it is afraid of humans and runs at the first scent of a person, it belongs to a person or corporation and is sold to a "hunter" as livestock.
 
Planted birds can run and fly to escape. Planted fish still need to be enticed to bite. Captive deer/elk roam the pen until killed; there is no other outcome.

I don't know that being inside a 6400 acre high fence area is that much more of a death sentence than being on 640 acres of public land.

As for the OP, if you like it, hunt that way. If you don't, don't. Don't get hung up on what defines "fair chase."
 
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