I'm sure it's a blast. Welcome to the forum. If you are giving out free hunts I'm with you! If you are just looking for input then no thanks, I don't buy my trophies. Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk
Okay, the “opened a can of worms with his first post” award is yours. I’ve never hunted any kind of outfitter, be it fair chase or high fence, but I have often wondered about high fence operations. Say you have 10,000 acres surrounded by a high fence. If it were square each side would be four miles. 16 square miles. Would people really consider that hunting “penned deer”? They could release a herd of elephants in there and you’d be lucky to see one if you hunted a week on your own. Granted, these places have people who know exactly where the deer are and where to put you so it takes no hunting ability on your part whatsoever, but speaking as someone who has never been on a guided hunt, isn’t it pretty much the same situation when you book a hunt with an outfitter who puts you in a stand on private unfenced land? They know the patterns, the bedding areas, the food/water sources and the travel routes. Sorry, but I really don’t see much difference in the two. I’ve never been able to afford an outfitter and even if I could I don’t think I would do it. I just couldn’t be proud of a big buck I killed when someone else did all of the actual “hunting” for me. As long as there are wealthy people who like to kill trophy animals but don’t like to put in the effort or don’t know how to hunt then high fence operations will continue to thrive. If one of the clients show me their “trophy” I’ll say congratulations and shake their hand. It’s not for me, but to each their own. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t make it wrong.
I hunted with a guide in the Edmonton Bow Zone (Alberta), which is 1,600 square miles of archery only. You MUST be guided to hunt this area, as well as most of Canada. They'll put you on a stand site, but it's far from any kind of guarantee you'll kill a buck. In fact, I hunted there 5 times and only killed a buck two of those times. The only fence you might encounter would be a farmers three or four strand. FWIW... A whitetail can clear an 8' fence from a standstill.
some say it depends on the size/acres involved ... I say it aint hunting.... I will never do it... one of the worst cases that came public was Jimmy Houston and "Bellars Place" in Indiana ... Houston was filmed killing a drugged buck in a small enclosure and tried to pass it off as a 'real hunt' ... the 'outfitter' had to prop the buck up so it could be shot .... both Houston and Bellar are true scum IMO .... Indiana DNR catches a ‘big one’: Deer preserve owner pleads guilty to illegal deer farming https://www.kpcnews.com/article_b5e90559-4aa0-5ab8-9fc6-b197aaa3e777.html
High fence hunts do not exist… high fence kills do tho and like Fix said, only if free Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
In my opinion High Fence is like bowling with bumpers, is it bowling? yea........ kind of But no self respecting bowler is doing it, and if they do its because they are with a kid, or a special needs person, or are hammered out of their mind. I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with it but, I mean bumpers...
I don't know. I'd say you cannot call yourself a hunter unless you have hunted on every court known to man. I was once hired to kill six bull elk on a 1200-acre high fence ranch in Colorado. The fence was coming down and the Colorado Division of Wildlife would not allow this to happen unless the six bulls inside the fence were killed. I hunted three days (over the Labor Day weekend). I saw zero branched antlered bulls, and I hunted my ass off. I did see, however, 12 cow elk and seven spike bulls-none of which were supposed to be inside the fence. Apparently, the big bulls left the property while 19 other elk entered the property... how could that possibly happen? Fences keep things in and out, right? Fences make it easy, right? Two weeks later every elk within the fenced area was killed via sharpshooter from a helicopter. I shot a Columbia black-tailed deer on an island in Washington State which wasn't any bigger than three square miles in size, The island held over three hundred deer-all free range-the Pacific Ocean bound them, unless they had the desire to swim. It has been said white-tailed deer have a home range of just under a square mile. They need food, water and shelter. A good hunter can discern, in my opinion, where he/she should place an ambush stand and hunt within that square mile, especially if years and years of experience are brought into play. I really do not feel it is rocket science. What I really think, we each need to find that degree of difficult that suites our hunting, and our styles of hunting. We need to let others find theirs. When they are successful, we need to congratulate them. All of this really becomes obvious when you have a son who suffered a stroke in utero. It sucks carrying your son on your back to any stand-high fence or otherwise. I've killed 177 different recognized species around the world with my bow. My son is not me. He lacks my attributes, nor have I ever experienced his. When he kills a deer-any deer-I will proudly slap him on the back! Reference Isaiah 11:6
