Too late to close the barn door now

What I find interesting in Texas is they don't own their deer.  The state still owns their deer as a "Public Trust".  I own my deer  and our deer are classified as livestock by state statute.   If the state owns their deer, they have no control if the state wants to come in and destroy them.  Also, if the state owns their deer, will they be eligible for indemnity?  


 


I feel sorry for them.  They have a rude awakening coming, but I think the Texans will stand up and now get in the CWD fight.  This bad treatment all needs to come to a head, and maybe now this will happen.  We have been getting picked off one state at a time, maybe it's time we get something done on a national level, and fix these problems, once and for all.  

Texas has almost no public hunting land. Therefore the only thing they can do is maintain ownership of deer and encourage landowners to manage them. They can gather up deer from low fence areas, breed them and release them later. I think though they should have something different for a high fenced place, where they do in fact own the deer. BUT because they can't bring any deer in, they would have to start with state owned deer.


Buying and selling deer for big bucks that you really don't own is a recipe for disaster! Now you've spent thousands on these deer and they aren't yours, the state can do whatever they want. In every other state it is private land and private deer.

If you ask the Missouri Department of Constipation 'they' own ALL deer in Missouri!

How can they own deer that were bought in other states? Or deer that someone has had for years and originally came from another breeder? That is just wishful thinking on their part. When a high fence operation goes up in Wisconsin all wild deer must be removed.

I have asked the same question.  When Texas was an open state, many deer up here were bought legally.  We own our deer and are classified as livestock.  These deer were purchased as "property" and "livestock" and taken legally into Texas.  How do those deer, or their offspring, become a "Public Trust" deer?   Haven't they heard of the 5th amendment?  Property cannot be seized by the government without 'fair-market value" paid to the owner.  If there was no compensation paid to the owner, they still own them, they are not part of the "Public Trust".  This is a very simple constitutional issue. 


 


To go a step further,  if you go back on the old deeds on your farms and ranches, many of these deeds pre-date statehood, or were granted by "land patents", everything was given to the land owner, this included mineral rights, water rights, natural resources on the land, this could be everything from trees to rocks.  I hear Wildlife Agencies claim that by some law that deer were classified as a "Public Trust", and they spew the "North American Conservation Model", and "Public Trust Doctrine".   All the rights and benefits of the land are handed down from owner to owner either by inheritance or purchases.  These property rights pass down to the next owner, and so on.  No where on our deeds does it show up that the state ever paid, or compensated, land owners for these deer.  Again, going back to the 5th Amendment, if a person has property taken away from them , for the public benefit, they have to be paid "fair-market" value for this.  If there was not, it is considered a "taking", and I challenge that the wild deer on my farm is our property, and not the states "Public Trust".  


 


This would make Department of Conservations head spin.  I would like to see them explain this at a public meeting.

Wild deer wander from property to property, so how do you know which are yours? Maybe it should be like Montana which is a free range state. Your cows or horses can roam free and if your neighbor doesn't want them in his yard he has to put up a fence to keep them out!