Don't Fence Me In

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	Shooting animals in fenced enclosures is not a legitimate hunting experience.

Most people assume that the animal's physical inability to escape when approached by the hunter is what makes hunting inside a fenced enclosure incompatible with fair chase.

From this, they conclude that if the enclosure is large enough—say several hundred acres—the animals within it are, for all practical purposes, "free roaming," and the fairness of the chase is preserved. While it is true that shooting an animal within a corral or a fenced lot is a particularly heinous form of captive hunting, the animal's physical inability to escape is only one aspect of the unfairness of hunting within a fenced enclosure.

A large fenced enclosure on a managed game ranch, up to hundreds or even thousands of acres, can tilt the advantage to the hunter so dramatically that the animals within cannot be considered free-roaming.

Every hunter knows that in most states most years, nearly half of the deer killed during hunting season are killed on the first day. Partly this is because there are more hunters out that day, but mostly it is because the deer are caught by surprise. As soon as the sound of rifles begins to reverberate through the woods, the deer change their feeding, drinking and sleeping habits.

If they are able, they leave the area where they are being hunted. In more built-up areas, they go onto private land, and—when they realize there are no hunters—stay there. In wilderness areas, they go into deep woods and bed down under cover during the day, only coming out at night to eat.

Captive Animals Cannot Get Away

On a fenced hunting preserve—no matter how large the enclosure—the animals are not able to change their behavior patterns in any way that will thwart the hunter. Game ranches and hunting preserves employ "guides" whose full-time jobs are to be intimately familiar with the entire landscape of the preserves; to know where the animals are on the preserves at all times; to know where and when they like to eat, drink and bed down; and to know all their hiding places.

Unable to escape from the guide's backyard, so to speak, the animals are as much "sitting ducks" in a 500-acre enclosure as in a five-acre pasture.

A captive hunt will take a little more time and effort on 500 acres than a five-acre pasture, but the hunter's chances of killing an animal are about the same either way. All that the larger area accomplishes is to give hunters the illusion that they are actually hunting an animal when in reality they are simply slaughtering with a bow or a rifle.

If this were not so, hunting preserves would not be advertising "no kill, no pay."

Claims vs. Facts

In their public statements, operators of game ranches and hunting preserves often claim that a facility is a captive hunt only if the animal is shot at point-blank range in a cage or fenced pasture. In an interview that aired in March 2000, for example, Ike Sugg, who was then director of the Exotic Wildlife Association, told Dateline NBC that any enclosure of more than a few acres can provide a fair chase hunt if there is dense cover that makes the animal hard to find.

This may sound fair to people who are unfamiliar with hunting, but it ignores the role of the guide and the fact that once flushed, a fenced animal has no escape route.

Ted Kerasote, a columnist for Sports Afield magazine, makes much the same point, although he expresses it a bit more obliquely: "I would say that for hunting to take place there has to be a simulacrum for some original condition. Whether that's 20 or 50 or 100 acres is irrelevant. I think one can have a legitimate hunting experience on 20 unfenced acres in upstate New York as long as there is no enclosure or barrier to turn the animal back."

Guaranteed Kills

Captive hunt operators know that their clients understand that the fence and the guide are what ensure the kill while the size of the enclosure determines the realism of the illusion that actual hunting is taking place. And so they advertise both the presence of the fence and the size of the enclosure.

Cedar's Edge Game Ranch in Michigan offers "white tail and fallow deer, Russian boar, various types of sheep and upon request elk, buffalo and red deer" and has "90 acres in our enclosure with plans to fence the remaining 320 acres."

Davenport Game Preserve in New York boasts "an intensely managed 250-acre enclosure which harbors many record-class trophy Whitetail and Sika deer," while Michigan's WilMar Ranch has "over 100 acres enclosed for your enjoyment."

"Game-proof" fencing of the type used by game ranches and hunting preserves can also have a serious detrimental impact on the entire ecosystem in which the fenced enclosure exists.

According to a draft report by a working group of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, specific problems caused by hunting within high-fence enclosures include "substantial increase in risk of disease to native free-ranging wildlife [See "The Risk of Disease" section]; disruption and displacement of wildlife within their natural home range; animal densities that exceed natural biological carrying capacities; risk of escape by nonnative wildlife resulting in undesirable wildlife populations established in the wild; hybridization and even threatened elimination of some native species; and complications that inhibit effective enforcement of statewide hunting regulations."

Animals such as deer and bears that are displaced from portions of their native home range by fenced enclosures typically seek to replace the lost territory by extending their range or searching for a new home range altogether. This can lead to unfenced lands being stressed beyond their carrying capacity and to an increase in human-animal interactions, as displaced deer, for example, wander into suburbs looking for browse.

The ultimate cause of most unwanted human-animal contact is residential development encroaching upon natural habitat. Game-proof fencing constitutes a similar encroachment and can be expected to have a similar effect, with the sole difference that the unwanted contact will not occur where the encroachment exists, but in nearby residential areas and on nearby roads and highways.

The Primrose Path

Other, more subtle ways than a fence can restrict the "free-roaming" nature of animals and thus remove the element of "fair chase" from the hunt, assuring the hunter of a kill.

One is the use of "funnels." A funnel is a narrow area bordered by natural or manmade barriers along which an animal must move to get to a destination, such as a food source. A trail leading from deep woods to a cornfield with a steep embankment along one side and a creek on the other would be a natural funnel. A creek on one side of the trail and a fence on the other would be a manmade funnel. By setting up a tree stand overlooking the trail, a guide who knows the habits of the deer living on the preserve can give his client a guaranteed shot at close range.

To assure that potential customers have no fears of coming home empty-handed, deer hunts at Blackhawk Farms in Louisiana "are fully guided and tree stands, blinds, and rifle stands are the norm. These stands are strategically located over funnel areas, food plots, and cut-overs and are chosen based upon deer movement patterns and wind conditions." A cut-over is an area in which the mature trees have been cut down so that young saplings, whose leaves deer like to browse, grow up in their place.

By manipulating the environment, both natural and manmade, the hunt operators can then ensure a kill for their clients.

To read "Canned Hunts—Unfair at Any Price" in its entirety, download the PDF.

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