Now I know this will probably create some controversy and I know it's been a topic discussed previously, but I thought I throw out some food for thought.
First of all, I don't have the money or the interest in a high fence hunt but some people do or high fence operations wouldn't be around. They made them illegal a few years ago here in Montana.
I'd never thought too much about them and like most people my impression was that it would be like shooting a prize bull in a pasture, but I happened to be on a caribou hunt a few years back with a wonderful old fellow who had hunted all over the world. He'd hunted caribou 9 times and his trophy room was 16,000 square feet (to give you an idea of his experience). He was 80 years old at the time and over the course of the hunt we visited a lot about the different hunts he'd been on and somehow or another the topic of high fence hunts came up. He said he'd been on a few and here's what he said he'd learned about whitetail High Fence Hunts. Keep in mind that they are not all the same, but this is what he told me about the ones he's researched.
In the high fence operations he researched, the fawns are separated at birth. The doe fawns are bottle fed and raised up so that they are relatively tame so they can be handled more easily. All are artificially inseminated. The buck fawns are put in separate pastures based on age....1.5 year old are together, 2.5 year olds are kept together, etc. As soon as the antlers are fully developed they are sawed off the first two years so that the bucks do not injure each other fighting, etc.. Human contact with the bucks is kept at a minimum so that they do not become tame. When they are 3 years old, they are released into the preserve several months before they are hunted. Within a couple of weeks, they revert back to how a buck in the wild behaves.
By fall, they act like any normal buck in the wild. Many are never seen during daylight hours and many are not even caught on trail cams. Some preserves use corn, etc. to lure the bucks out but others do not.
Some high fence operations are several thousand acres in size, while others are much smaller. One operation in Texas has 30 miles of fencing to maintain. Deer do escape... Many in the south have hogs and the hogs are continually rooting around and breaking the fences created holes were deer can escape also.
The gentleman who was telling me all of this said he hunted one high fence preserve for a specific buck they knew was on the property, but he never laid eyes on it.
As we all know, these hunts are not cheap. Most charge according to the size of the buck killed but some do not... Some charge a flat rate and you can shoot any size buck you find... Prices range from about $7,500 on up...
So, the question is why would anyone pay to hunt a high fence preserve? Other than the gentleman I have mentioned, I've never talked with anyone who has hunted a high fence preserve, so I'm not sure. This gentleman said he was curious about how a preserve hunt would be compared to a free range hunt. He obviously had the money!!! He said it was fun...much different than he'd envisioned it would be. I asked him if he'd done others and he said a couple, but he much preferred hunting free range game. When I met him he had 16 hunts scheduled around the world that year..5 of them in Manitoba. After our Caribou hunt we dropped him off at another camp for moose and then he was hunting whitetails there later in the fall and geese and he had a spring bear hunt planned!!!! What a life!!!
Most hunters frown on High Fence operations, but my guess is that 99,9% have never even visited one say nothing about hunt on one. Leasing and buying land specifically for hunting has become the big thing these days.... Is leasing or buying land, planting food plots in the middle specifically designed to grow large bucks and keep them on the property really that much different than a high fence operation? Bucks are basically grown up until they are fully mature until they are on the "Hit List". I'm just tossing that out there for food for thought...
Hunters these days travel all over the country, Canada, etc. in search of a large buck. Everyone seems to want to kill something bigger, and bigger, and bigger......Probably the reason high fence operations exist. I know a guy back east who traveled to Saskatchewan 4 times looking for "the big one" and never shot anything bigger than a 130" buck and he probably spent well over $20,000 by the time it was all said and done. Did he have fun trying? I really don't think so.. He sat in a ground blind from daylight till dark every day and froze his butt off... Not my idea of fun!!!
For me, I'll continue to hunt right here around home. I may travel to another state or to Canada to hunt deer, but probably not. We have good bucks, but generally speaking we don't have huge bucks. I don't have much interest in hunting Muleys because quite frankly they are no challenge at all... Many will disagree, but I see thousands of them each year and they just aren't anything that I find to be much of a challenge. For those who choose to hunt a high fence area, lease land and plant food plots, etc., go for it...... Any kind of hunting is better than watching tv, playing video games, etc. It's all about getting outdoors and enjoying ourselves and NOT judging each other.
Time for my daily walk.... Have a good one!!!
