Here is what I think is a fresh angle.

1) I doubt and hope that they never make a law against high fencing your own property, and I doubt many of the people opposed to the high fences do either. Do you really want big brother to start telling you what you can or can't do on your own property?

2) I would not think high fencing would be necessary if there were limits put on property as to how many deer/bucks that could be taken off. In other words, as per the oringinal question, a guy with 5 acres next to this big ranch could now legally kill as many deer as crossed his property. Would it be eithical for him to kill 5 bucks, 10, 20, 30? If they would issue "buck permits" which were based on your number of acres and the deer density, then there would not be any need for a high fence.

This question is not hypothetical, it happens all the time in my neck of the woods. Some developer will buy a ranch and split it up into 5-20 acre tracts. Since all the land in this area is full of deer, all the land owners put up a couple of feeders and blinds. If this happens next to my ranch, I am going to high fence it, at least on that side. They should not be allowed to kill more than their fair share. I define that as what their property will support.

Even though we have a ton of deer in this area, the biologists recommend taking no more than a buck per 50-250 acres to have a good ratio of bucks/does for reproduction rates, etc. I would be for a system that would limit the number of bucks by issuing buck permits for each property. In most localities, this would be 1 buck per 50-100 acres.

Is it fair that a "land owner" take more than his fair share? Should he be able to kill indescriminately? I say no, and we should not allow someone with 20 acres to kill more than 1 buck a year.

I also realize that this system might have to be modified due to area differences. Example: 10 acres of woods surrounded by 200 acres of farmland. In that case the 10 acres could support more permits. However, in my area it is all rocks live oak thickets and cedar trees, so the range can't support more than about 1 deer per 5-15 acres.