Dpsm in high fenced preserves?

Boy you can see where this is going.  Most high fence facilities have a high density for a limited time.  These animals aren't in there all year long so it shouldn't matter.  Premium feed with supplemental feeding will support many deer before they are harvested as it is the last place these animals will be alive before used as human food.  That question is like asking how many cows ethical should be allowed on a slaughter yard?  The only ethical question should be are the animals harvested ethically and killed with a humane method.  The method used is hunting methods and any animal slaughtered on property it is accustomed to would be more humane than harvesting these animals at cattle slaughter facilities.  

wow here in texas they want you to have at least 150 deer per 100 acres T&S

In the long run it looks like that would be used against every deer farmer on numbers kept.  Looks like they are trying to set animal numbers on acres.  Domestic animal numbers are higher and animals are rotated from pen to pen to utilize the forage to the best degree for production.  With my sheep I might put 50/75 head in a acre to eat the pen down fast after the deer have picked the best out of it so I can water it and graze it again.  I might get four good feedings a year out of the acre.


I would try to form the question into a humane harvest of our deer done with ethical hunting practices.  Hard for the wildlife people to look down on hunting methods as a bad way to harvest deer inside the high fence.

One of the needs of a preserve is to produce a harvest for the hunter that only has a few days or has limited capacities. We once had only 112 acres of recently logged timber fenced for preserve. The season started with 58 adult deer including 23 does and 35 adult bucks. We ended the season with 10 does and 9 bucks yet 3 doe hunters and 2 buck hunters failed to harvest. It is more how the preserve is structured than how big it is.

On the other hand , for many years we have hunted fair chase in Utah on a CWMU ranch all encompassing over 20,000 acres of no fence. We have harvested many elk , mule deer , and moose on the ranch in the last 15 years with firearm and archery gear. Almost every kill has happened in one honey hole drainage that encompasses a funnel area of less than 100 acres. Are we hunting with an unfair advantage that should be scrutinized by the same groups that are chastising high fence hunting? Are the animals so concentrated in this area at times that the Hunter advantage is unfair? When the whitetail come into our alfalfa fields on our fair chase farms often times over 100 at a time in the evening should we expect our hunters to pass as the hunt just became unfair? Unethical ?

Your clients won't be coming back if you don't have the numbers right.

That is right! Also the terrain plays a big role in the size of a preserve. Is it flat and open or hilly and forested? There isn't a one size fits all answer. Jack is right, harvesting an animal in a humane manner is the biggest issue. It is much more humane on a preserve than in the wild because if an animal is wounded you have a much better chance of tracking it down and dispatching it. This is especially true for bow hunters!


We all know that there are a lot of folks that wouldn't hunt at all if they couldn't go to high fence preserves because they just don't have the time or access to land. So is it better to have fewer hunters overall or keep the sport alive and growing by having those folks who want to, hunt at a high fence operation? Certainly the sporting goods stores just want you to buy product, and don't care where you use it. All that is except Bass Pro!!!

These Cheap Charley idiots should be in favor of preserves for the simple fact that if there wasn't any, the people that are hunting them now would lease up way more private land to hunt AND ADD MORE pressure on both private and public ground then what is already OVER PRESSURED anyways. People that hunt preserves are more then likely successful business people that know in order to have a quality product it takes a lot of time and yes MONEY and they are willing to pay the price because they know it costs a lot to produce a trophy buck. The liberal Wildlife Federation cry babies think everything should be a free for all for everybody other then the $40 hunting license fee, most still whine every time it has an increase. $40 wouldn't pay for enough feed to feed a barn sparrow for a year, let alone a deer!! Can you imagine if they actually had to pay what it costs to feed a single deer for a year in license fees, $350 minimum!! NOTHING in this world comes free. They just don't want to be the ones who pay for it. 99% of the public land that has abundant tags and is a public free for all isn't worth a crap. Open ground up for public hunting and it's almost guaranteed to be ruined within a year. SD issued an almost unlimited number of doe tags because some over educated under experienced idiot "biologist" read that its a good idea to shoot a buncha does. Now all the public ground is pretty much deerless. All the people from town went and shot every doe and button buck on the public ground for fun and donated the meat so they wouldn't even have to get their hands dirty. Now the same people are whining to the "biologists" that they don't have any more deer to kill. Nobody in this world thinks on their own anymore, they just read some regurgitated bull crap that some biologist wrote in a "study" and believe it without thinking of whats going to happen when you take out all the breeding does that produce the deer they enjoy hunting. You can't fix Stupid, not even with a whole role of Duct tape.