Many of you guys must be confused with deer hotels on those dinky 60 acre parcels of "hunting preserve" operations. This was a ligit question and one that has no bearing on the ethics of hunting deer in the type of country and proportions of the ranch the original poster described. But there's a bigger issue here not fully explained or understood by many of you.
Dep214 said
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote<font size=1 face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>what is the purpose of the fence if it is fair chase. it is to keep the deer from getting out. i see nothing silly about fencing in animals to shoot them.<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face='Verdana, Arial, Helvetica' size=2 id=quote>
Actually none of you guys, including dep214, have hit it exactly on the head yet. I'll tell you the real purpose of a high fence. In the years before high fences huge ranches were poached to such an extent that most good deer were removed illegally and only inferior bucks remained. Law enforcement had too many vast counties of Texas brush to patrol to be effective. Naturally if you owned this much land and many times oil flowed up from it you could afford a remedy. The original purpose of a high fence was, and still is, to keep poachers and bad neighbors from killing deer illegally. Now there's another equally important reason for staking a high fence and it's not to keep deer in believe it or not. Rather the reason a high fence is built is to actually keep inferior deer
OUT so you can properly manage your herd remaining inside. The majority of high fence ranches have no imported genetics so there's no incentive to build a high fence only to keep deer in. The first and true reason to build a high fence on these huge ranches is to keep out inferior bucks and to help deal with poachers. Period.
Deer hunting is an investment for all of us. Some people with bigger bank accounts want to manage their own private herd. Wouldn't we all if we could? It would be fun! The description of this particular ranch of over 15 square miles definatly ranks as fair chase. The only problem I see is that many international record books may not admit an animal to their book because of the high fence issue. This is not a "hunting preserve" where bucks are bred to die for sure from a clown who buys a 100% percent guaranteed hunt. Let the original poster enjoy himself.