Originally Posted by
Muley Hunter
10,000 acres would be a small area for elk. You would still have a huge advantage over public land. I assume we're talking about high fences that can't be jumped over. It wouldn't be hard to corner the elk.
Another thing to consider is on a lot of ranches the elk are used to seeing humans, and they don't have the same fear as a real wild elk.
On a ranch it's not hard to pattern where they feed, water, and bed down.
It's much easier hunting, and not fair chase.
I guess I would have to disagree with you on that statement Pete, as that's almost 16 square miles, as well as saying they wouldn't be hard to corner. Unless it's flatland with no escape cover, IMHO that area is more than enough acreage to have a fair chase hunt whether B&C considers it one or not. The public land mixed with some private property where we hunt in Wyoming every year is less than 10 square miles, so we're talking about less than 6,000 acres. However, with the deep canyons and lay of the land with rolling, covered hills, etc., it's more like double that size and you couldn't cover it in a month of Sundays. You can't even glass a lot of it from the highest spots in the area. I can guarantee you that with all other circumstances being equal, if you high-fenced that piece of land that it would be just as much fair chase than it is now with just a few low fences to keep livestock in their assigned areas. That's why these high fence discussions can be very argumentative when you're talking about different terrain, different animals, etc. and why I've pretty well decided to not get into much debating about them. Now if you're talking about a piece of property where the animal has no chance of escape because of flat terrain, lack of cover, or maybe it was raised in a small pen and then released immediately before hunting you're getting into what most would consider a "canned" hunt and that's another story in and of itself. That is really what I and most others call shooting/killing, rather than hunting. However, the problem is that it's filling a niche for people that are just interested in killing or those who may be disabled and looking to stay active however necessary and seek those kind of places out. There is millions of dollars in it and money, as we all know, talks! IMHO it sucks and should have never been allowed, but its' legal and too late now to stop it with the thousands of places and big money that's involved.