Big Buck Canned Hunts

High fence operations in Africa are really taking off. Keeps the predators out and the trophies in. Yet no one talks about canned hunts in South Africa.

Its my impression that many Easterners somehow feel guilty about killing wildlife.
This is likely a result of many decades of short seasons and foolish laws restricting semi-autos and modern muzzle-loaders from their forests.
Jack
 
rem33, how many acres do you hunt, on any one given day? Walking around, that is, not from any vehicle or horse. Just curious...

One thing about a whitetail: If the food and water is ample, he or she is gonna basically stay within a half-mile to a mile of "home". I know lots of low-fence pastures where anybody who's spent any amount of time around the area will know roughly where to look for a particular buck.

To repeat: The high fences are to keep other deer OUT, not the resident deer in. It is the way the landowner controls the population so it doesn't grow beyond the carrying capacity of the land. And, typically, such a pasture is quite a bit larger than a guy can hunt over in a day--fencing ain't cheap.

Art
 
I appolige who am I to judge

Well we hunt very large areas, dozens to hundreds of square miles. I said in another post I have a very damaged ankle, and wear a support or good boots always ( Egad now the excuses) Shattered 25 years ago and it never lets me forget it. All day or long hikes, long distances dragging game will without fail cause me to take pain meds which i hate to do. I hunt with my dad who is in his 80's. We have developed a way that is as fair a hunt as we can without still hunting which we have done and still do on occasion but neither of us care a lot for.
I carry good binoculars and a good spotting scope, We get high and glass vast ares of sage brush for the most part, looking for several minutes to hours then try and stalk what we find, if we find. We can be careful that way and not kill something in a place that too difficult to get out. I carry over 500 feet of rope and have a good winch.
For the most part walking is not a good way to hunt in my opinion, but can work ok if your slow and quiet, the game is going to hear or smell you coming but i have filled my tags that way numerous times.
One might say the way we hunt is not hunting in the pure since and maybe they would be right, so who am i to judge.
I can fill my deer tag every morning if I want to go to a ranch I can hunt at day break and wait for the deer to head back to the hills. They cross every morning without fail. Is that hunting? Well some might say so ,but I would call it filling your tag and not really hunting. I confess I have done that too.

I think I was wrong to judge anyone, I haven;t been in others shoes, or hunted where you or others do, or delt with the conditions you have to deal with, but it does sound strange to me hunting inside a fenced area where you know for a fact the animal is there, or over bait. I have shot coyotes over a gut pile the next morning, and those alfalfa fed deer sure taste good, so I have too I guess.
Gunslinger is right we have enough trouble without fussing amonst ourselves.
 
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:) No biggie.

I pretty much learned from my father: Walk toward where Ol' Bucky beds down, kick him out of bed, and if his horns stick out much past his ears, shoot him. It makes for a lot of exercise and sometimes a long day when Ol' Bucky ain't home.

We've done quite a number of hunts where four or five of us would get on line and sweep a valley. Of course, the guys in the bottom generally won't see much; the upwind guy on the hillside will most likely get any shot. The fun comes in when a little piddly-diddly forkhorn jumps out and folks start hollering, "Shoot him! Shoot him!" If some sucker bites, and shoots the buck, next heard is, "Awww...What'd you shoot that little ol' thing for? He ain't hardly worth taggin', and he's too big for camp meat." :D

I've always thought sneaky-snaking was the most fun. Just ease along slow, stopping from time to time to just sit and watch. Wet weather is good, since there's no noise from dead leaves and grass. I got close enough to a fat little 8-pointer one time to hit him in the rump with a small rock from about ten feet. "Counting coup," I guess you could call it; he was fat as butter but not really big enough to shoot. Young and dumb, but I educated him about people. :D

Hey, it's all fun.

Art
 
Okay, so we are trying to keep other deer out? One of the Great Lakes states had a problem with over population, so you know what they did? They made it so that you were not elegable to shoot a buck 'till you did your part and shot a doe. Of course I do understand that southern does could have a fawn at any time of year, so that might complicate things, but the idea has merit.

I also knew I was going overboard by suggesting noone go within 1/2 mile of the fence. The idea was more to make folks think about it a bit.
 
ART,
Now that sounds like huntin'! Say, would a "OO" loaded shotgun help the guys in the bottom any? Would it be allowed there? My own father is 86, and while he is a crack rifle shot, just can't plow brush anymore. We walk narrower strips of cover with him in the clear and me bird-dogging the thick stuff. I use a shotgun for this, and it works great. We have bagged quite a few with this tandem rig. Just keep your shots to 25yds or less as buckshot is a HORRIFIC crippler beyond that distance. "3in 15-pellet loads have more authority than the old 9-pellet, but both work. You need 4-5 pellets for a quick kill. The piece of meat each pellet tears up is no bigger than your thumb.

Just so ya know, I do respect your opinion, even if I just can't square with it. If you ever make it up this way though, I'll show ya some "Right Purdy" country to hunt in.
 
High fences came about long before all this big-buck-breeding garbage. The deal is that it's not just, "Give me all your money and come shoot a monster buck!"

First you hook up with Mr. Banker for some 10K or 20K acres, plus Oh-My-God dollars per foot for high fencing around it.

Pastures are improved from re-seeding with native grasses, herbs and forbs. Remember, a lot of this land was once overgrazed or farmed. Water supplies are improved via wells and stock tanks. That's bulldozed dirt tanks as well as any small sheep/goat-sized water troughs. Phreatophytes such as cedar and mesquite are reduced in quantity, if not eradicated; this allows creeks to once again flow as in the distant past. Mesquite got replanted northward as those oh-so-romantic trail herds headed toward Kansas, and when the Indians quit setting range fires. Cedar, like greasewood and sage brush, is a replacement growth from overgrazing.

Okay: Now you have a place that's a deer's smorgasbord. If you don't have high fences, guess who comes to dinner? Yup. All the deer from the surrounding ranches where improvements haven't been done.

Next you get into the management thing. You shoot a certain number of does. You shoot "garbage" bucks: Mature spikes, or scraggle-horned bucks. You don't shoot six- and eight-point bucks, but only the fully mature critters. After some years of paying priincipal, interest and taxes, you wind up with deer on your place that look like what your grandfather talked about--if and only if you can keep the other deer off your land.

The feds don't do any of that on "our" public lands. WYSIWYG.

So there's a short course in land management and restoration. Or you can say, "To Hell with it!" and have a bunch of low-fence, rocky, over-goated junk land where coyotes and buzzards carry rations to get through or over. IMO, once you're west of Sonora, Texas, on I-10, you're looking at a bunch of "ruint" country, all the way to Phoenix, Aridzony. Or US 90 from Castroville to Van Horn, except for some of the grasslands around Marathon, Alpine and Marfa.

:), Art
 
Art

e-gad,,, now that you Really explain it I feel even worse for blastin you, I had no idea about all that, I would hunt that in a NY minute, and by my age otta know better than to run my mouth,, DUH,,,,,
 
Ehhh, no problem. I'm just lucky in that I've probably read more about how other folks do what they do than most folks have. And I've wandered around Texas a lot more than most. I've never done any big-deal hunting, but I've done a whole bunch of piddling little wanderings through all manner of jungly stuff and open country and in heavy brush...

If you pay attention, some, you learn a little. :)

Art
 
Whitetail hunting to me means, pre-season scouting to see where the deer are bedded down, where they are feeding and what trails they are using to get back and forth to those areas and where their rubs and scrapes are. Then we usually wait for them to move from one area to the other. Years ago I would walk many miles in search of the ever elusive whitetail and have actually walked up on a whitetail bedded down in a snow storm but my body is no longer able to do that. In fact, I gave up hunting for 10 years until I purchased my own land and made it accessible for myself. I hunt in a shotgun w/slug only area and the average shot distance is 45 yards!

There's no comfy little shack to sit in while waiting for the bucks to come and feed over the food plot (food plots are illegal) and one needs a special permit to shoot a doe.

I've seen those TV programs where some guy brings his 10 year old to some ranch in Texas and they sit in some shack until some gigantic buck walks out into the food plot some 200 yards away and the kid shoots the deer. Then they take some pictures and Dad says how proud he is of his son and someone else guts the thing and drags it away for them. Sorry but I do not consider that hunting because that buck has probably been showing up at that food plot for the last three weeks. That's like shooting fish in a barrel.

In New York State baiting deer is illegal, even feeding deer during the non-hunting season is illegal because of Chronic Wasting Disease. http://www.dec.state.ny.us/website/dfwmr/wildlife/deer/feedregs.html

Csspecs said:
I hunt in the norther lower peninsula of Michigan, I have hunted the same area with my father and brother for the last four years. We hunt for three weeks of bow season and have yet to get even a doe, and we use bait! (its legal).
I know people that sit in blinds that have bait piles that are always there and they don't always get their deer.
Then I come on here and some guy from New York or Wisconsin that hunts in a corn field with a high powered rifle states that the way I hunt is cheap and unfair!
I use bait because I don't have 1000 acres of corn fields to "hunt" in. At best I can see 50 yards, without a bait pile to keep the deer busy I may not even see ONE deer (and a doe at that) for the whole season.
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Csspecs,
Bowhunting is the most difficult way to harvest a whitetail deer. Maybe you need to change your methods. Are you hunting from a treestand? I hunt on less then 100 acres on heavily wooded land and see many deer every year. I don't hunt cornfields with a high powered rifle either. I've killed deer with a shotgun from 75 yards to six feet away! I don't kill a deer every season because I don't hunt strictly for the meat because I've taken many deer in my lifetime and now I just hunt for large trophy animals.

riverrat66...out
 
I bow hunt on a little 20 acre plot in Southeastern Oklahoma, with a small creek running through the middle. There are always deer moving along the creek, but they are ALWAYS moving. I use a corn pile just to slow them up for a good solid shot, so I really don't see it as BAITING.

I keep feeders up all year on the property, just to keep deer in the area, but I don't hunt any of them. I set up away from them, so my hunting doesn't effect the deer that come to the feeders regularly. My wife says the feeders are OFF LIMITS, as she likes to watch them as they feed.:D
 
Differences

While doing 20 years in the Army, I got to hunt a lot of states with very different regulations. A lot of our personal feelings about how to hunt are tied very deeply to how we were taught to hunt. People who have been raised around stand hunting over feed stations (baiting) don't perceive it as negative. I hunted this way on a small Army facility outside San Antonio. The rule was, to hold your place (the map was divided up), you had to keep food coming all year. Bowhunting only. If you wanted to get a higher choice on spot location, you could come in and work on the guzzlers or other projects. I thought it would be a slam-dunk way to hunt, but got shut out there 2 years running. I still shudder to think about how much I spent on feed corn and labor.

I got to hunt upstate NY (Ft. Drum area), my first state where I could hunt multiple seasons. I grew up in Oregon, so just assumed that you could only chose 1 season per species everywhere. Had to learn blackpowder in a hurry.

Hunted Maryland, where the bag limits just blew my mind. Started supporting Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry while there.

Along the way, I learned a certain level of respect for someone who can sit in a stand all day in the freezing rain. Coldest I have ever been in my life! I am just lousy at sitting still, 12 feet in the air, and waiting.

There are certain issues that bother me personally, and I support efforts and organizations that try to shape the game regs. But the regs and an individual's choices are the final say. If it is legal, but I chose not to, that is a personal choice. I have heard too many traditional archers disparage compound shooters (I shoot a compound now after a long stretch of recurve shooting) to do the same to people that are hunting legally, just different than I do.

I know that personally, I would get no satisfaction from a canned, high-fence hunt, and would not be excited to see someone's trophy bull taken in such an operation. But hunting is a very personal thing. Maybe someday I will have a big bull on the wall and maybe I won't. If I do, I will know that it came from hard work and long miles and a lot of time in nature, with a little skill, luck, and divine intervention thrown in the mix.

Hunting season is coming, can't wait!!
 
I am too lazy to take time to sit and read all of the posts, but I would like to see anyone on this fourm take out and go stalk a Deer in the south Texas terrian. Sitting at a stand in south texas or in any state is just fine. Most ranches that this is done are greater than 5,000 acers there is no way that a deer will even ever see all that proptery, Hunting fact in Texas a whitetail ussaly will not move out of a 1/2 mile area of where it was born. Other fact whitetail deer in other states will not ussaly move out of an 3 mile area of where it was born. Well guys 5,000 acers is way more than 3 square miles. It is fair chase. :D :D :D
 
Gunslinger:

Many animals have been saved from extinction by hunters. Texas ranchers and others have paid big dollars to export rare and exotic animals from dwindling populations. Pere David's deer, Eld's deer, addax, symitar horned oryx, and many others have been "saved" from eradication in their 3rd World native lands.

Are hunts for these animals canned? I for one do not care to know about it.

But I'm very pleased that these animals are born wild on large ranches instead of small zoo cages.

I agree that unification is the way to go.

Jack
 
Scathing, VA, scathing. Even by my standards.


At days end, I'll second unification since I don't HAVE to step inside the fence.
 
i have never entered texas, but i dont want to hunt deer in herds and just pick which one i want, like shopping. same for any other animal. GOD doesnt want it done that way. i will always hunt fair chase type hunting, some people dont see it that way but i cant see what the thrill is of hunting herds of semi-tame animals from a heated building would be. alot of texas hunting is on 20,000 acre ranches. those are free roaming deer. im talking about the 500-1000 acre ranches with 10ft fences and herds of deer and elk like cattle. its just dont fair to the animal and i look at it as no better than poaching...
 
im talking about the 500-1000 acre ranches with 10ft fences and herds of deer and elk like cattle.
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I hunt south Texas every year and have never seen anything like you describe.

Oh yeah, you've never actually been here. You must have read about it in a magazine.

And as far as tame animals running around the South Texas brush country:D :D :D :D ROFLMAO.
 
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