HIGH FENCE
This is a subject that will never has a definitive answer because everyone wants to assign one thing or another as to what constitutes fair chase. Just like the title of this thread, “High Fence-how big is big enough?” This assumes that if the property is large enough then it will automatically be fair-chase. The fence is only the most visible thing, so is what people zero in on. Then if the fence is to be used they want a minimum size behind the fence to make it fair-chase behind that fence. So there is the question of size. Then they assume the animals inside no matter how large, are tame, so how can it be faire-chase? Then if one are all of those things don’t get it closed, they start with the question of are these animals fed high protein? If they’re exposed to the cattle-feed on the high fence ranch that sometimes they feed on it, then they are not wild.
This is the simplistic formula that the anti-hunter uses to chip away at our heritage, and 90% of the excuses they use to discredit us are gleaned from threads like this one.
The fact is the size, within reason, doesn’t matter if all conditions are right. The judging of a place for hunting fair-chase has to be the whole of the place not just a fence, or just where the game came from, or if they occasionally feed on farm food, or that they are not indigenous to this place, has absolutely nothing to do with if a hunt for them is fair-chase.
We can take a small example for the convenience of control of the differences of a place that is, and is not right for fair-chase hunting. For this to judge size assuming all examples are high fence. Understand that I’m not recommending 640 acres but just to make a point by both places being the same size. If you want you can multiply the two sizes by fifty if you want, but in either there many place where that is all you will hunt in just a day hunt, no matter the size of the property.
We take two small places both surveyed to be one section in size, or one square mile (640 acres) Both pieces of land are perfectly square with four equal sides.
One piece of this land is as flat as a tabletop it is covered only with one-foot high grass. Any way you look at this place from the exact center of this place, your longest shot would about 880 yds, with nothing to stop the bullet but poor shooting. This place no matter what large animal was fenced in this would be a CANNED so-called HUNT. About the only things that could avoid a hunter would be snakes, mice and ground squirrels. In this case the one section is not big enough, not only because of the fence, but because of the lay of the land, and lack of cover in conjunction with that fence.
Now we take another tract of land with the exactly same surveyed size with all four sides exactly the same length as the first one. However on this piece of land, though surveyed as exactly one section of land, this piece has small hills gullies, seep creeks, a spring, rock outcroppings, briar thickets, good forage, and bedding places, and bush so that an animal could move a max of only 40 or 50 yds in any direction to be out of sight. This 640 acres is actually a lot larger than the first section, If this pieces was ironed out flat, it might be as large as twice the size or 1280 acres, and as long as the animals inside this section were not over populated for the carrying capacity, of the land, and a hunter hunted for the best he could find on this place, on foot, this piece would be fair-chase even with the fence! Now the larger the place gets, combined with the bush conditions of the second place, the more animals can live inside, and more hunters can hunt it at one time, and still be fair-chase. Like some of the properties in RSA where 1,000,000 hectares (not acres) is common there is no real way to tell if you are hunting fair-chase but I think a real hunter can recognize whether a PH is on the level or not. In most cases in RSA you may hunt for a week and never see a fence, even though you are inside one, those damned places are just too large. They are so large in many cases the animals rarely see the fence either, unless one is near their individual range. IMO the only animals that are effected by the fence on those properties is a species the naturally migrates, to follow food sources as they get low. All others are fine inside a fence.
So what these two examples are meant to show is the size and/or the fence is not what makes a piece of land behind high fence fair, or not fair-chase. The danger we pose to ourselves with a thread that asks how large does a place behind fence have to be to be fair-chase, is a very dangerous thing, and actually has no answer that means anything. We all know when we are hunting fair-chase, and when we are not, and because of that each man decides what is or is not faire-chase for him personally. And no one has the right to interfere as long as he breaks no game laws, and follows the rules of the land-owner his ethics are his own, and he should apologize to nobody. Nobody requires anyone to hunt behind high fence that is a choice! If you don’t like them don’t use them but how is it your business if anyone else does hunt there!
The deciding factor here is what YOU do in relation to YOUR ethics, not what someone else does, as long as neither break the rules! However make no mistake threads like this one will find their way taken out of context, to the anti hunting websites, with a little added comment of something like “See even the hunters say hunting fenced ranches is CANNED HUNTING”!
I have been on many high fenced places, but only hunted on one for meat, but I hunted on foot, and with an iron sighted double rifle, for a cull hunt of young Eland over population of a 1000-acre block. I went there to blood a new to me double rifle, and to fill my freezer with some very good meat, not trophies. That hunt was not a snap for sure in the Yaupon holly so thick you had to crawl through 10 acre patches that would hide an elephant till you bumped into him and bent your nose, and that was only 1000 acres. If that place had been 100,000 acres I could have hunted in there for a year, and never seen all the animals there.
Just because there is a fence means nothing as long as there are other factors as well. Like Kelly, I love the vast open of Alaska or most places in Africa, or north Australia, but that doesn't necessarily make a high fence operation a cage!
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