I guess I'm guilty of fence hunting?

[HHI 812]

I attended a couple of the Sportsman Against Hunger Handgun Hunt at the YO ranch in Texas. It was a good cause, and after following Hal Swiggetts writings, I felt it wasn't bad. I met a lot of good folks there, and made some friends who now have passed on. Would I go handgun hunting there again? I sure would love to if I can afford it! Am I wrong ethically to want to hunt there though? I'm sort of tossed after reading some posts on fence hunting??? Anyway, this is an article about one of Hal's hunts. http://24hourcampfire.com/swiggett.html
Thanks,
Dennis

[countryrebel8174]

hmm are you ethically wrong to hunt animals that cant get away...i dunno....i guess it depends on how you feel about it.....if it bothers you dont do it.....heres a though , if you trap a fox and he cant get away is it wrong to shoot it? maybe but maybe not.....ethics are a touchy subject.....i say if it doesnt bother you then have at it.

[Lloyd Smale]

go far enough and theres allways a fence!!

[Redhawk1]

HHI 812, if you had a great time and enjoyed the new people you met, who cares. Sure you are going to have people not agree with you, but when have you ever seen 100% of the hunter agree on anything, ethics has nothing at all to do with fenced hunting.

The only problem with a thread like this is, you open yourself to criticism from the holyer then thou crowd. But that is a case of mind over matter. I don't mind and they don't matter. 

[MS Hitman]

Anyone who hunts in South Africa is hunting under fence.  Like Lloyd said, go far enough and you will find a fence. 
 

[358jdj]

Several years ago I was assigned the task of securing the meat for a pig roast party.  I shot a pig in the head with a Ruger Mark I .22.  The pig was sitting in a horse trailer.  I don't know if I was hunting, but then again I dang sure wasn't fishin.

Bottom line, if it is a domestic pig, take them the way you want to.  Guys at a slaughter house don't claim to be hunting.  Meat is meat.

My $.02.

[skarke]

I am a native Texan, but travel.  I have come to realize that there are many unique challenges to comparing what is ethical hunting in Texas, compared to, say, Wyoming.  Much of America remains as public lands, but not in Texas.  98% of Texas land is privately owned, and hunters must lease this land for hunting access.  Hunting leases are actually quite good for the Texas environment, because it provides land owners a big incentive to NOT plow his land from fence row to fence row.  The result is that we have habitat conducive to healthy populations of both game and non-game species.  Whitetail deer and Golden Cheeked Warblers both benefit from the existence of the Texas sportsman.  Some have chosen to high fence their property to enable better game management and healthier herds.

What a Wyoming elk hunter might find reprehensible behavior is common practice on a Texas ranch (feeder pins, permanent stands, etc).  I must admit that stalking a black bear through the gorgeous mountains of Montana would be an awesome experience for me, but I am resigned to the fact that 90% of my life's hunting memories will be secured though time in a bow stand over a feeder, or similar setting with my trusty Contender 30 30.

That doesn't make me unethical, just pragmatic.

JMHO, Dan

[flattop]

Hunting on 10,000+ acres fenced property is still hunting to me.  An area this large is still a challenge not only tracking an animal, but also getting close enough to get a shot.  As for hunting in a box blind overlooking a feeder, I've done it (I'm from Texas also).  All the same variables come into play, ie: scent cover, noise, wind direction, shot presentation and of course the animal has to show up.  All these factors have to occur favorably for the hunter to be successfull.
just my opinion.

Hunt every chance you get.

Flattop

[Lloyd Smale]

been to whyoming and montana more then once what was the first thing i noticed being from the upper midwest. The fact that so much land is fenced!! Theres miles and miles of fence as far as the eye can see in places. About the only fences you see up here are white picket ones arounds someones yard or a garden fence to keep the deer out! Dont let the guys that live out west lecture you on fenced in hunting in texas. Theres a good ammount of the hunting thats done there inside of fenced land too.

[drdougrx]

OOOOOOOHHHHHHH NNNNNNOOOOO........here we go again!!!!!!!

Fences are fine if you don't try to make them out be more than they are.  10,000 acres is quite huge (640sq acres is 1 sq mile I'm told).  They have become a fact of life in my book.  So, if it's edible, a better than average trophy and can be had in 2 shots or less......

It is what it is.

[Luckyducker]

Lloyd, you are sure enough from back east from where I am perched! Haw, haw

Anyway, I remember a few years ago that CW singer bought that black bear and shot it while it was in a small fence area and then tagged it for some kind of video he was making and he got in some kind of hot water over it, but I couldn't see what the big deal was.  It was his bear and if that was how he wanted to deal with it, well whatever.  That kind of thing isn't for me but I don't see how it could be considered unethical.  Unethical would be if he had shot it in the foot or leg and watched it suffer or something like that.  812 go on your hunt if you are so minded and enjoy yourself.

[corbanzo]

I think we should try and find out how many posts on ethics and hunting spanned from this pig thing....  I've sure its gonna get over a 1,000. 

Several years ago I was assigned the task of securing the meat for a pig roast party.  I shot a pig in the head with a Ruger Mark I .22.  The pig was sitting in a horse trailer.  I don't know if I was hunting, but then again I dang sure wasn't fishin.

Bottom line, if it is a domestic pig, take them the way you want to.  Guys at a slaughter house don't claim to be hunting.  Meat is meat.

My $.02.

I do love meat.

[ms]

I think fence hunting is a good thing to have famous people can't go out there like me and hunt in the open. I say if you have the money but not alot time then do it. 95% of the guys here would do it if someone was paying the bill.

[MS Hitman]

An acre is a measure of area and is 43,560 square feet.  There are 640 acres in a square mile.  You do not need to use square acres.

[MePlat]

I learnt on televeshun that a circle that are 1.1284 mile in dyemeter is 1 sq mile.  How be it arr true I can't conjer in my cranel cavaty how.  Do that indikate that most of the akers be square and the ones on the oughtside be slightly curvitated to konform to a circle?
As most noes I are of the televeshun and not noeful on tecknacul infermotion.

[Redhawk1]

MePlat,

No disrespect intended but, if your going to take the time to post, at least make it to where it is understandable. I find your post very irritating. JMO.

[MePlat]

I guess my attempt at jocularity did not work so I will be serious and retype my above statement with more understandable wording.
I learned on television that a circle that is 1.1284 mile in diameter is 1 sq mile.  How that can be true I can't comprehend in my cranial cavity .  Does that indicate that most of the acres be square and the ones on the outside be slightly curved to conform to a circle?
As most know I am of the television and not smart on technical information.

[Mikey]

Folks - look, here is what I know about fence hunting.  I have many fine examples of good fencing in my trophy room.  The most popular is barbed wire and I have a number of good strands on display.  I also have some electric wire I have taken and a few sections of stockade fencing (those were some of the tough ones, as they tend to dig deep and like to anchor themselves down) but the toughest of all were those fences that included one of my neighbor's large White Oak trees - that one just wouldn't quit and I thought it might get me once or twice but here it is in my trophy room right now, all lacquered up nice and pretty with its strands of wire nicely burnished and straightened out...........I'm tellin' ya guys, I'm proud of my fence hunting.  Mikey.

Oh yea, metplat - eye unnerstuud zakly whatcha ment bout dem dyeam-eaters an crannals cav - a - tees.....

[chazgin]

I'm not sure what you guys are really talking about. Here in Colorado you can find fence just about everywhere from the Flat Tops wilderness to agricultural land. The gov't (BLM & USFS) fences the land and allows ranching leases to use it for pasture control of cattle and sheep. What you won't find is high fencing except at game farms. Hunting 10,000 acres sounds like a lot but it depends on the terrain and the time of the year. Heavy snow in Oct on the Flat Tops and you better get to the low land because all those millions of acres are elkless, they're down on the Yampa and unless you have a ticket and permission you're done for the season. We hunt a sheep / cattle ranch that has 120k deeded acres and much more BLM and USFS that is landlocked (access not high fence) by the ranch and Dinosaur National Monument. Push the elk hard enough and you guessed it they're on the Monument thumbing their noses at you.
Hunting antelope on 10k would be marginal also depending on pressure. OK, if private limited access land not OK like on Pawnee National Grasslands where you need those million plus to follow them. As for feeders? That's not hunting thats shooting.

[NONYA]

Lloyd our fences are 4-5 tall and easily crossed by every game animal we have,the only high fences you will find here are the ones keeping the elk out of the haystack.Our fences do not prevent game from leaving an area.

[Lloyd Smale]

I realize that they dont hold back game that really wants out. But they do tend to keep game in an area. Ive hunted enough farmland in my life to know that a fence line is an ideal place to post for deer. Unless theres no food on there side or a hot doe on the other they will rarely bother to jump the fence. I dont know about most high fensed operations but the one im familar with the one my buddy has will not allow you to corner animals using the fence. Like ive said ive hunted there. He usually makes it cheap enough for me that i can get buffalo for the freezer cheaper then beef. Ive also seen buffalo hunting at its best in the dakotas and ive worked just as hard chasing around the swamp in that incloser for a good shot with a handgun  as your going to walking up to one on the plains and poping it  with a 4570 at 100 yards. Im not so vain as to claim that im any kind of great white hunter for killing something in an enclouser but i look at it like this. Most people go out west to hunt elk or ever deer and antelope and pay a guide to take them to a spot the guide knows that theres animals. Its a matter of walking around till you find something that is going to look good on your wall. For the most part anymore a guy cant go to a different state and hunt on his own. It takes to much scouting time and you never know till the season opens who else is going to be hunting your area. Now i see nothing differnt in a hunt like that. People call that hunting and encloseure hunting shooting. Well now how is it differnt. Is it different just because you had to do a little walking? I put on about 5 miles last fall trying to get a buddy from WI a shot at a buffalo in that encloser. Guided hunts are absolutely no differnt then an enclosure hunt. The success rate at any GOOD guide service is about 100 percent if you can hit what they tell you to shoot at.  Ill even go another way with this. Theres some of you that hunt in game rich areas. Areas youve hunted all your lives. YOu know where the game is and about know where your going to find the throphy animals because youve been doing the same thing for years. So you drive a few miles to your favorite hunting spot. Walk over a few hills to a nice ravine and post on a hill overlooking it and glass till you see a nice buck and shoot it at 300 yards and go home. Useually the first day of season. Now how much (censored word) skill did that take!! Are you some great hunting machine because there was no fence in sight. The fence was there. It was just invisible. It was the terrain and the food and the water. It kept those animals right where you wanted them and you basicaly walked up to the bowl and shot them. Same thing up here where bait hunting is allowed. A practice that may anger you that i use too. Why? because its leagal and in alot of places up here its the only way you can hunt and get game. Now i dump a load of apples on the ground and sit in a heated shooting shack with a radio in my ear and a pile of gun magazines to read in my comfortable chair and wait. A deer comes in and i shoot it. Not much of a hunt eh! I do it with a handgun and that impresses everyone at camp. Why it impresses them I dont have a clue. I get a rested shot at less then 50 yards and am not handycapped in any way using a handgun in my opionion. I switched to a handgun just because a scoped rifle is about a joke at those ranges. Aint to many people that strap a tent on there back and head into strange territory for a couple days and come out with there meat anymore. It really cant be done in most places. Maybe a few of the mountain states and alaska but thats about it. It isnt even done in Africa anymore. I know a couple people that have gone to africa in recent years and most all of it is high fence hunts or driving till you find an animal and shooting it. Id love to go to africa more then about anything but realize that it too isnt going to be no majical intense hunting experience unless a guy is stalking a cape buffalo or a big cat and most of us will never be able to afford a hunt like that.  I guess my whole point in this long babble is again. What is ethical. I can about pick apart anyones hunting style if i want. Starting with his choise in weapons.  There is very little really challanging hunting left anywhere anymore. Like i said other then some places in alaska or maybe some sheep hunting in the mountains. Why is it that if a guy adds one aspect to his hunt that i dont have, like say a 3 mile walk. Or a spot that just happens to not have a fence that he considers himself any more of a hunter then me. Is it any harder to kill a deer in that bowl with a 7 mag with a 12 power scope then it is for me to shoot a deer at 50 yards in a bait pile with a 45 colt?  Bottom line is we are both doing the same thing. We are collecting meat and if you want to make more of it then that then you are the type of person that the anti hunters really want to crusify. You are the type that likes to make a big deal out of the killing of the animal. Something again were all guilty of but few like to admit it. IF you didnt youd be buying your meat at the store. Nonya im totaly jealous if you have so many elk that you have to fense off heystacks but that kind of shows me that it cant be all that challanging to hunt elk there either

Lloyd our fences are 4-5 tall and easily crossed by every game animal we have,the only high fences you will find here are the ones keeping the elk out of the haystack.Our fences do not prevent game from leaving an area

[Redhawk1]

Lloyd, I wish I had your patients. You took the time to answer a lot of peoples question and made perfect since doing so.

I have been on self guided hunts in Alaska. It is a hard hunt and brutally cold there. I got my Caribou on the 3rd day. Do you want to know the hardest part of that hunt. It was packing that Caribou back to camp about 1 mile away. You are so right about peoples perception of fenced and free range hunting. Like I posted before, I have high fenced hunted 2 times in my long life of hunting. I don't see anything wrong with it. I hand hunted harder on them two hunts than I did on 90% of my yearly deer hunts.  I live in small Delaware, public hunting land is not very abundant and if you don't own land or know someone that does, you are out there on public land with all the other guys. Fortunately I have 2 farms to hunt, I also have my 20 Archers to hunt in West Virginia. I could call myself the great free range hunter and walk all the land I hunt on, and find a deer to shoot, but it may not be the one I want or I just may push the deer to the next farm for someone else to shoot. But it does not take long to walk 20, 40 or 100 Archers. So I guess my title of great hunter is out the window, because I did not hunt an area big enough to be called hunting.

What the guys from Montana, Colorado, Wyoming etc tend to forget is, a lot of use fellow hunter don't have access to vast open ranges and public lands to hunt. The other thing they tend to forget is the cost of going to the West to hunt big game. Non-residents get the big shaft and gouged when they come to hunt. It is very difficult of us to go out West and scout for game in the preseason, we can't just hop in the truck and drive there on the weekend.

Sure I could move there, but I like it where I am at and have a great job. The bottom line here is, we all have different opinion of hunting and we all have different styles of hunting. But for the love of God, why can't we as hunters quit criticizing others for the legal method of hunting?

[mk454]

two really really good posts.  kudos.

[SHOOTALL]

GEE ! all this time I figured the fence was to keep the anti gun crowd out ! Wouldn't want one to get hurt or something !

[NONYA]

They keep the livestock in they dont keep game in for 1 min.,get real.I have lived here my whole life dont tell me our barbwire fences keep game in an area.You really have no idea about the game here,you drove through once and some some fences,big deal,I watch them jump the fence behind the house almost every night to come down to the green fields,I guess they dont relize that fence is to keep them in?I hunt many areas for many days to find trophy animals,i travel to the eastern part of the state and constantly search out and scout new lodcations,dont tell me how i hunt when you havnt a clue,Id like to see you come out here and bag a trophy MD or an elk of any kind since its SO easy,lol you have no clue about hunting out here.I know you havnt hunted here and your ignorance of the area is understandable.

[terry]

 Everyone has there own ideas and beliefs and here in the USA I will not tell someone else how to live or run their life. Takeing care of myself is enough trouble for me. On fence hunting I really don't see a problem with it when done on large fenced ranches which animals are born wild on the ranch and which often have more land fenced than a animal normally travels in his life when you are talking about whitetail deer,pigs and such around these parts. A 5000acre fenced ranch around here would be alot more land than the average animal has to live and travel do to houses,cleared land and such not many big tracks of land left anymore. Now when you are talking about buying animals and turning them loose in a 80acre pen to hunt I feel much different about that. Some say it's the same thing because it's fenced but it fact that is really two different types of high fence hunting. The good part is I can't really afford to go pay $5000 to hunt a trophy whitetail on a fenced ranch so I guess I will just have to hunt at home.

[Lloyd Smale]

If you would have read my post with any kind of an open mind you would have seen that even i said that they dont keep in game. What they do do is channel game and make for some easier hunting along fence lines. Most animals would rather go around a fence then over it. No i dont know how you hunt and dont pretend to and dont feel i have any right to tell you how to do it or to tell you your doing it wrong if you were. Thats where we are differnt. I dont consider myself better then everyone here. Ive never seen a post that you have been involved in that you didnt raise some hell in some way. You must be a real joy to live around!! You may get some goats around here but you wont get this old goat. Ive been around a little and you wont stir my pot. Big differnce in you and I isnt the way we hunt its our attitude. Im hear to aquire knowlege and to share mine. Your here to show your ass. So be it but i aint seeing much.

They keep the livestock in they dont keep game in for 1 min.,get real.I have lived here my whole life dont tell me our barbwire fences keep game in an area.You really have no idea about the game here,you drove through once and some some fences,big deal,I watch them jump the fence behind the house almost every night to come down to the green fields,I guess they dont relize that fence is to keep them in?I hunt many areas for many days to find trophy animals,i travel to the eastern part of the state and constantly search out and scout new lodcations,dont tell me how i hunt when you havnt a clue,Id like to see you come out here and bag a trophy MD or an elk of any kind since its SO easy,lol you have no clue about hunting out here.I know you havnt hunted here and your ignorance of the area is understandable.

[jaybird]

The 5 major rules I follow when it comes to hunting:

1. Be safe
2. Follow the laws
3. Be proficient with your weapon of choice so you can make a clean kill
4. Respect other hunters in the area
5. Enjoy your hunt (this means different things to different people)

Except for the above list, I would never be so bold as to impress my way of thinking onto someone else.

Live, and let live

[Dee]

I learnt on televeshun that a circle that are 1.1284 mile in dyemeter is 1 sq mile.  How be it arr true I can't conjer in my cranel cavaty how.  Do that indikate that most of the akers be square and the ones on the oughtside be slightly curvitated to konform to a circle?
As most noes I are of the televeshun and not noeful on tecknacul infermotion.

I'm not having any trouble deciphering this post. Is there something wrong with me? Humor is a good thing. Isn't it?

[Dee]

The 5 major rules I follow when it comes to hunting:

1. Be safe
2. Follow the laws
3. Be proficient with your weapon of choice so you can make a clean kill
4. Respect other hunters in the area
5. Enjoy your hunt (this means different things to different people)

Except for the above list, I would never be so bold as to impress my way of thinking onto someone else.

Live, and let live

Live and let live should be # 6. Good post.