Haven't watched it yet, but if high fence ranching collapses, maybe normal people could buy land

We own and operate a ranch (with game) but we do not sell hunts, it is for our own management and enjoyment. We have other sources of income to fund it, like the cattle, for instance. Frankly, everything I see in that video, is what I consider "standard business risk". I don't know of any game ranches that have collapsed due to the 'stuff' that guy mentions in the video, but I don't see why he would be lying. Most ranches I know of collapse because someone comes in an offers $80,000 per acre for it and aging owners are happy to be rid of their 300-1000 acre job they've worked on since they could walk.

Otherwise, big game ranches very well might be on the decline, but so what. Business is cyclical as time moves on, so if you have all your eggs in that basket, knowing the risk (and they DO KNOW THE RISK) then, like I said, it's just the cost of doing business. I do know for certain that any time the government gets involved, there is nothing 'fast' about it. If you are over extended on your loans to make your high risk operation viable, then that' just poor business planning. I have no doubt many of those ranches business plan is "bring expensive stuff in and a lot of people will pay a lot to come shoot our livestock." That's the business model. But again, I can kind of see how that novelty is beginning to wear off with CWD issues.

There is a lot of land out there that isn't worth the dirt contained in it's fence lines except for the value of trophy hunting. That did transform a lot of land from being worth a few hundred dollars an acre to 10k+. That could be a problem with LTV if if goes belly up.

Interesting video, nonetheless, and a good topic for discussion, thanks for sharing!

FIFY

TLDR: Accusation - Texas is causing a lot of hardship on deer breeders.

Even though certain deer breeders have brought it on themselves.

The video is strange imho. They are saying the ranches are collapsing due to their whitetail deer herds and all the regulations and entire herds being put down and losing all their investments because of the CWD issue.
Then don't buy deer and don't raise them in pens to sell or hunt.
Lots of high fence ranches do just fine on exotic sales and hunts and native whitetail hunts……and many have never purchased or brought in outside whitetails. They learn to manage their whitetail herds and rangeland to grow good animals without importing them from breeders.
Also there are more high fence ranches that are used strictly for the enjoyment of the landowners and their families….that do no commercial hunting at all than most people realize.
This video, to me, seems like a slant to make folks think that it's going to decimate the Texas economy if whitetail breeders go out of business. At least that's how interpreted it.
The normal high fence places that don't mess with importing or buying whitetales will be just fine.
That's my take anyway.
In our 29 years of owning our ranch I never once brought in or purchased an outside whitetail. So not having WT breeders would have not made a difference to me.

SanAntoneAg said:

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FIFY

TLDR: Accusation - Texas is causing a lot of hardship on deer breeders.

Even though certain deer breeders have brought it on themselves.

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Have your high fences and exotics all you want but breeding & selling whitetails or native species should be illegal.

I have never understood the compulsion to shoot genetic freaks instead of deer

I can't give enough blue stars for this Canyon.

He has never liked actual hunting and prefers to shoot domestics livestock in a baited pen and making it appear as though he's hunting.

That's not really true. I have known Keith since the 1980's when he and his brother started the "Fishing Texas" show. Keith has done a lot of legitimate hunting across the world of many different species and lots of fair chase hunting.
Don't know about his hunting practices now and not advocating his present positions on WT's etc. but there was a time he was doing it right.

ETA: His daughter Mattie is a graduate of TAM.

CanyonAg77 said:

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I have never understood the compulsion to shoot genetic freaks instead of deer

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Me too. Hunted my whole life. Give me a great low fence buck over the high fenced, manipulated variety any day. To each their own I guess.

Totally depends on the high fenced property. Native born non pen raised whitetails on a large high fenced property ranch that doesn't have box blinds and hunting over feeders and no WiFi game cameras and utilizing spot and stalk changes the game.

Listened to the posted video, and it appears to be fear mongering at its best. Seems to imply that all the revenue brought in by hunting is done solely by the high fence game ranches. No mention of the small, low fence ranchers that just lease out their property to folks that just want to share some family time, or friend time, and take some deer as an added bonus. And the way it speaks of "growing" the next state record was just all wrong in my take. To grow such a deer in the way that Gunny describes, I would have no problem accepting. But to pen raise it, and then release it, and call it a new record, no, sorry. And as far as not being able to auction them off, well, cry me a river. Beef ranchers have been at the mercy of the auction market for forever. And I'm sure there are enough deep pocket people that want to kill a large racked freak deer that they will still pay to do so. I'm not sure if being locked down by the state doesn't mean you can't kill one for the rack alone. Just my 2 cents.

You know ive seen both sides. Ive hunted public lands alllllll over the United States. Hunting public land Illinois is much much easier to kill big whitetail with a bow with no feeders and no trail cams etc then hunting most high fence ranches in South Texas with feeders on ever sendero with whatever long range rifle.

Now for those who frown upon high fence hunting.... consider yourself lucky that you dont need to hunt like that. You probably get to hunt often every year. The people these hunt/kill box operations are after are not like that. The demographic they are after are usually non hunters that go one ONE hunt every decade or so. They sell the whole package experience for the guy that may only be able to go once. Ever. So be happy that you are not that customer but also be humble that those customers want a "hunt". Even tho they miss out on the lifetime pursuit that you love.

So consider yourself lucky that you get to hunt often.... some people dont. So dont poo poo there hunt opportunity. No heck no it ain't for me. I hunt real hunting on public land or lucky enough to get invited.....ive never owned a feeder or a trail cam or a box blind. But im glad those guys get to go experience some kind of a hunt once every decade or more or even once a lifetime. In that regard it has its place. I would be miserable if I dont get to hunt as much as I do. But for the guy that only hunts one day one time that is the experience the lodges are providing.

SGrem said:

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You know ive seen both sides. Ive hunted public lands alllllll over the United States. Hunting public land Illinois is much much easier to kill big whitetail with a bow with no feeders and no trail cams etc then hunting most high fence ranches in South Texas with feeders on ever sendero with whatever long range rifle.

Now for those who frown upon high fence hunting.... consider yourself lucky that you dont need to hunt like that. You probably get to hunt often every year. The people these hunt/kill box operations are after are not like that. The demographic they are after are usually non hunters that go one ONE hunt every decade or so. They sell the whole package experience for the guy that may only be able to go once. Ever. So be happy that you are not that customer but also be humble that those customers want a "hunt". Even tho they miss out on the lifetime pursuit that you love.

So consider yourself lucky that you get to hunt often.... some people dont. So dont poo poo there hunt opportunity. No heck no it ain't for me. I hunt real hunting on public land or lucky enough to get invited.....ive never owned a feeder or a trail cam or a box blind. But im glad those guys get to go experience some kind of a hunt once every decade or more or even once a lifetime. In that regard it has its place. I would be miserable if I dont get to hunt as much as I do. But for the guy that only hunts one day one time that is the experience the lodges are providing.

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I get that and while I'm not a fan of those sorts of high-fence/canned hunt operations that doesn't bother me nearly as much as the manipulation of the genetics and the risks to the native herd & environment from the breeder operations.

If you want to high-fence and feed the hell out of the deer and manage for bigger racks that's fine but the treating of them as livestock is where I personally draw the line.

Ive never understood hunters bickering back and forth on what "real" hunting is…. I know guides and landowners that get $10,000 for their high end game and Ive know guys that public hunt and we can all sit around the campfire and still swap great stories about hunting. I'll likely never sit for a $10,000 deer hunt but if thats your thing…… what do I care??? Enjoy how you get to be in the woods instead of trapped in the concrete jungle. The more hunters squabble the easier it gets for the anti's to put wedges in.

I think it is important to separate the high fence issues from the privatization of a public resource issue. There are legit reasons to high fence all or part of a property for management reasons that have nothing to do with trying to protect "my deer" from others. There are also people who high fence so they can sell deer to the highest bidder. I am mostly fine with the former, but hate that the latter exists. White tailed deer in Texas belong to the people of the state. Nobody should be able to sell an individual WTD, either to load into the back of a trailer or to be shot and mounted on the wall. All of the bad things about deer breeding today stem from that ability to put a specific price tag on an individual animal.

Landowners should be able to sell access to their land to hunt, but shouldn't be able to put a price tag on an individual animal if that animal belongs to the people of the state of Texas. Yes, it is a semantic difference, but it is an important one. If a landowner manages their land well and feeds a ton of protein, people will want to spend more to hunt their land. They can sell different kinds of hunts (ie access for 1 week and right to kill up to 2 deer, with 1 being a buck 8 pts or greater). But they shouldn't be able to sell animals. Making that simple distinction would take a lot of wind out of the sails of the breeding for genetic freaks that is going on now.

You will never convince me that CWD didn't make it to the breeder ranches in Texas via illegally imported deer from the upper midwest or Elk from the rockies by somebody looking to breed bigger freaks for hunters to kill in Texas. The recently uncovered illegal breeding activity just reinforces that belief for me. Even knowing that CWD was a thing and knowing how tightly things were being scrutinized, a large number of these idiots thought it was a good idea to falsify records, poach deer illegally, transport deer around and release them illegally, etc. for what? Thousands of dollars from somebody looking to kill a monster buck that had his ear tag removed a week ago and would gladly eat corn out of a bucket from your kid if you gave it a chance?

schmellba99 said:

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alvtimes said:

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Ive never understood hunters bickering back and forth on what "real" hunting is…. I know guides and landowners that get $10,000 for their high end game and Ive know guys that public hunt and we can all sit around the campfire and still swap great stories about hunting. I'll likely never sit for a $10,000 deer hunt but if thats your thing…… what do I care??? Enjoy how you get to be in the woods instead of trapped in the concrete jungle. The more hunters squabble the easier it gets for the anti's to put wedges in.

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I used to think this, but over the years I've gotten more and more anti-high fence. That doesn't mean I'm going on a crusade against them or even bothering to spend 30 seconds writing a letter to a state rep about them, but definitely not spending any money on one of those operations.

The reason being that the "let them hunt their high fence and be happy" is great....until we wake up one day and there are nothing but high fence prison operations to choose from because that is where the money is and that is how you apparenly keep your neighboring landowners from shooting "your" deer. And then shooting a white tail doe will cost us $5k and we'll all wonder what happened to hunting.

If you want to high fence exotics, more power to you. I still think that in order to high fence a place you should have to pay the state to do a survey and there should be a formula to determine the cost to you to buy the state's deer over the next 5 or so years to make it equitable. After that, they are livestock just like whatever exotics you put on your place are and you can do whatever you want with them. If you want to sell them, there should be an open market that is regulated by the state and you have to do it within that 5 year window (or something along those lines).

Just my .$02

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I disagree vehemently with the bolded part. Allowing private ownership and sale of a native game species blurs the line entirely and it will become impossible to identify which deer are private and which are public. And based on recent events, the owners of the private deer will be totally willing to cheat and falsify documents because our game code penalties amount to not much more than the cost of a few bags of protein pellets when they actually get caught and convicted. We should never have allowed any type of financial arrangement that allows somebody to put a native game species in a trailer and sell it to somebody else for a profit and we should not go any further down that road with any changes we decide to make going forward.

shalackin said:

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I think it is for two different reasons.... one is business, and those high fence ops have been around a long time. The other is people that are sick and tired of idiot hunters and poachers. I think if there weren't so many stupid hunters around, there wouldn't be as many small high fence placers. Just my opinion. It's probably both of those and more.

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Disagree with this part. I'd bet that 75% or more of the high fence places, especially the smaller ones, are there because the landowner gets all buttsore about blinds on what they think is "their" fenceline or being pissed that a neighbor shot "their deer" that they feel is theirs because they fed protein and corn to it all year long (never mind that the neighbor probably did too).

Are there stupid hunters? 100% there are. But there have always been stupid hunters and always will be. It's the relatively modern concept that deer somehow belong to a landowner on one side of the fence or another that has created the high fence situation we see today, IMO.