High-fence hunts are a blight on our sport because a true hunt includes the concept of fair chase, and in this effort, there’s no chase.

 The Late Tony Dean

Fair Chase Defined

There is an alternate universe of fenced game animals in North Dakota, a world where bucks are bred for antler size then sold by the point for big money to clients too lazy to hunt in the wild. In that world, Remington and Thor, the bucks pictured above, are valued for their antler size, and for no other reason. Deer raised inside a fence lose their fear of man, yet the Canned Shoot operators insist that the deer in their shooting galleries are as wild as any free ranging deer. Take a close look at the picture. Are those deer wild? Is this a world we want in North Dakota, hand raised, hand fed animals shot under Zoo like conditions? Shooting deer like Remington and Thor in a fenced pasture isn't Fair Chase hunting by any stretch of the imagination.

The late Tony Dean wrote: "I have written and talked about this issue in the past, and each time, I receive a bevy of e-mails and letters from owners of such places. Apparently, they believe the public shouldn’t know what goes on behind that fence."

Members of the Fair Chase Committee learned just how right Mr. Dean was. The Canned Shoot operators were quick to assert their right to advertise their business to prospective clients, and were just as quick to threaten a law suit when the Fair Chase committee used that same advertising to point out to the people of North Dakota that Canned Shoot operations exist in this state.

Most Canned Shooting operators dispute the universal concept of Fair Chase. They argue that it is up to each individual to define Fair Chase. A deer breeder recently told a statewide radio audience that high fence operators do, “Fair Chase hunting inside a fence”. That is a total disconnect from reality.

The Boone and Crockett Club, a conservation organization formed by Theodore Roosevelt and the pioneers of the conservation movement, defines Fair Chase as “The ethical, sportsmanlike, and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild, native North American big game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper advantage over such animals.”

That is the standard Fair Chase hunters adhere to. A high fence eliminates all possibility of free-ranging. There can be no Fair Chase inside a fence.

To make Fair Chase as clear as possible, North Dakota Hunters for Fair Chase present the following footnotes to the Boone and Crockett definition:

 · The animal decides how far to run, walk, or sneak to escape the hunter, not a surveyor laying out a fence line. A fence eliminates any possibility of escape. No escape, no Fair Chase.

 · The animal feeds and waters itself in its natural habitat independent of any human action.

 · The animal breeds at will and at random. No artificial insemination, no selective breeding, no embryo transplants, and no cloning.*

 · On a Fair Chase hunt, contact with a game animal is unpredictable. The hunter does not choose a trophy buck or bull from a price list posted on a web site with the foreknowledge of the exact piece of fenced real estate the animal occupies.

 · In a Fair Chase hunt, the animal has the advantage of speed, stealth and wit. The hunter attempts to reduce the animal’s advantage using knowledge and skill. It doesn’t take any skill to kill a deer or elk inside a fence pasture. And the only knowledge the “hunter” needs is the web address of the Canned Shoot operator.

 · In Fair Chase hunting, the game animal has a chance of dying from natural causes. The Canned Shoot operator’s business model does not allow for such a loss. Old bucks used for breeding or semen collection will eventually face a firing squad when they reach the end of their prime breeding years and antler size starts to shrink as a result of age.

The deer in the picture above have lost their fear of man. The two bucks may be used for breeding, semen collection for artificial insemination, or they may be offered to a client willing to pay big money to kill the deer for their antlers. What the two bucks will never offer anyone, for any price, is a Fair Chase hunt. The real estate they will die on is preordained.

*Scientists at Texas A and M University cloned the first Whitetail buck in 2003.

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Fair Chase Defined

The North American Model of Wildlife Management

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Endorsements

Editorials in Support of Fair Chase

The Wildlife Society On Hunting

The Wildlife Society On High Fences