There is quite an interesting TOPIC going regards cape buff in SA and some referance to canned hunting and the likes ....

I dont have an axe to grind BUT this subject continues to rear it head and we often cant seem to get any generally accepted agreement naturally as we all have an opinion across the spectrum from the HUSAS people through to the avid trophy hunter ..

Therfore playing (devils advocate) and for simple clarification I ask the following

With specific referance to hunting in (South Africa PER SE) for the purpose of the debate I ask the following ...

1) Can the guests please tell me SPECIFICALLY what legally constitutes a (canned hunt) not necessarily for cape buff but for plains game species as well

2) If there is no legal criteria, then in what (minimum size) ZOO/Enclosure/Farm or whatever fenced area you care to call it would you personally consider to be canned hunting !!

3) And my follow up question is, if a bow hunter per se hunts game in the middle of the DRY SEASON where there might only be say (one or possibly a maximum of two) waterholes in the region he is hunting, and he sits in a (hide or blind) at that water hole, does that then constitute a canned hunt or not !!

Cheers, Peter

For me it's canned if the animal can't escape detection. Canned "shooting" would be a more appropriate description of this pastime. Having said that, small ranches where you must look for the game but leaving the game only a slim chance to avoid detection is not much of an improvement. It's simple for me hunting becomes hunting when the game you seek has the ability to completely evade you should you make a mistake in the hunt. This is usually accompanied by an instinctive feeling or a knowing immersed in your head that you will not lay eyes on this animal, now nor in the near future.

I have no problem with the opportunist that waits at the water hole. I liken this kind of hunting with Mr. Croc, he lays there bored and bloodthirsty for hours but when it comes time to play it quickly gets very exciting for all involved.

To each his own, if someone tries he can find something wrong with anything, or something great about the same thing. So if you don't like long range shooting or fenced hunting don't do it.Shooting an arrow over bait or ambushing from a tree stand on a known game trail, don't do it.Shooting from the truck, shooting tame elk or deer in a national forrest don't do it. Having a guide lead you to an animal you don't know anything about don't do it. On the other hand if you love all types of hunting without judging this or that; have fun in God's Great outdoors ,Happy hunting Rug

For the purest and most difficult hunting I would suggest hunting Cape Buffalo in Idaho. You will be able to hunt forever. Now mine you you may not obtain your quary.

I think Ray words it well: if you make a mistake, can the animal completely evade you?

I think what Ray says is pretty good. As long as the animal can evade you. That does not say that no hunting behind fences is allowed, the land just has to be large and diverse enough where the animal can escape. Also, I see nothing wrong with a hunter shooting from a blind at a waterhole, this is about the same as hunting whitetail from a stand. Also, if one choses to shoot from a truck that is his choice and if he enjoys himself have at it.

I would not think that many people would fly across the world to walk up to a restrained impala and hit it in the head with a pipe. So if that is an extereme on one end, and hunting in unfenced wilderness is the other, there should be plenty of room in the middle for some fun and sporting experiences.

A canned hunt is any hunt where the probability of locating a specific animal on any given day is 100%. That does not mean locating any animal of that species, it means locating a specific animal (coloration/horns etc).

This is usually implemented in practice by releasing a specific animal, earmarked for a specific hunter, into a small enclosure of 500 acres or less.

Ranch hunting as widely practiced in SA (and Texas) is not canned hunting. There is nothing unsporting about hunting animals located within a fenced area provided the area is larger than the animal's natural territory, and also of sufficient size that the hunt is not repetitive. In arid areas, this means roughly 10,000 acres. In thick brush, 2,000 acres is sporty enough.

Put and take hunting is a related practice that is not necessarily the same thing as canned hunting. But it's not too far removed from same.

I like Russ's definition. A lion bought to be hunted, released in a 300 acre enclosure that has a dead donkey hanging in a tree is "canned" to me. I also agree the size of the enclosure and its ability to provide a sporting hunt is directly related to the type of enviroment in the area and density of cover.

Mark

This is a hard question, but I agree with Russ' ideas.

I have typically relied on Justice Potter Stewart's famous quote, paraphrased here: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of hunting I understand to be embraced . . . but I know canned hunting when I see it . . . "

Good job Russ!

What is or isn't has been eloquently summed up above. I agree that size AND habitat type in conjunction with specie is what makes the difference. I do not agree with those who condeem any hunting behind fences. Under these criteria an adequate ranch can offer a truely sporting experience. Waterholes... I have mixed emotions here. Those with physical restrictions certianly rate concessions - hides, shooting from vehicles, etc. I'd rather afford them this than denie them any hunting. What amazes me is the people who denounce African ranch hunting but will pay $10,000 to shoot a whitetail deer from a hide at a feeder!

You kill them the way you want to, and I'll kill them the way I want to. The dead animal doesn't know the difference.
Ethics are in the eye of the beholder.
I've got mine and you've got yours.

Fair chase has a number of traditions that are regional in character, species specific, and which change over time. The movement tends towards defining actions that take advantage of human setups, such as bait piles or fencing installed to limit animal movements, but doesn't include blinds, or even of some natural conditions, such as waterholes, as not being fair chase.

There's grey areas. In southern NY, there's lots of stone walls in the woods that used to mark field boundaries before the woods grew back. Glaciation mixed lots of stones into the earth which would be expelled by freeze-thaw heaving, which farmers would have to remove every spring before plowing. Those stones were used to build the walls. Those walls now serve to form funnels that hunters can take advantage of when they hunt deer. Those walls were built generations before hunters were in a position to take advantage of them. Hunters hunt near corn-fields, too... but it isn't baiting. However, hunting over waterholes, when water is scarce, can be construed as non-fair chase. One thing I might consider a grey area is whether hunting an established game trail that runs near a game fence -- and is maybe present in part because of the fence (just like trails that run along those old stone walls) -- constitutes a non-fair-chase practice. In this case, a hunter is taking advantage of an established habbit of the animal rather than using the fence to corner an animal.

Also, in some US states, baiting whitetails with food and/or mineral licks is legal; in others, it isn't. More so with bears. Lots of states allow baiting of predators. States that used to hold pheasants, but whose numbers in the wild have dwindled due to habitat change (farms reverting to woods), now release them in the fall for the tradition of pheasant hunting. Is that fair chase? It is traditional... Pheasants were not indigenous to the US to begin with; they came from China. The use of dogs varies. People used to debate whether hunting deer by using jacklights or by driving them to water and taking them from guideboats was the more sporting/fair-chase way to do it... no longer. These standards evolved over time, and will continue to do so.

It strikes me that RSA is not unique in facing this question. As land access and premiums for good hunting opportunities increase, this question is likely to become much more common internationally... just as it has been common practice in Europe for generations, now.

Dan

Fair chase to me means that a animal must be able to sustain itself on the property it is living, it must be able to breed and the animal must be able to escape the hunter.

Sometimes we set double standards. It is not fair chase to hunt a kudu or what ever animal over a feeder, but it is fair chase to hunt a Lion or a Leopard over a bait.

It is not fair chase to hunt a animal that lives behind a fence, but it is fair chase to hunt animals on the new green grass after the grass was burnt.

Ethical hunting is a personal thing, I cannot blame somebody that have different principles than me. All of us must go to bed and wake up, one or other time you have to look in the mirror, if you are happy with the face staring back at you so be it. Each of us must live with our own concience.

I don't mind fences as long as the animals are free to cross them. It's only fair that land owners have a way to demarcate their property lines, but to "contain" the animals is where I draw the line. I do not approve of put and take type hunting either. I won't even hunt pheasants that way.

Anyone whose done much African hunting has probably hunted behind some kind of fence - myself included. However, a huge concession lends itself less to the "canned" description than a smaller one. Nonetheless, I prefer no fence hunting, even if it leads to fewer animals in a salt.

I also would rather shoot one wild pheasant than a dozen game farm birds. I have no problem with property that has the common livestock fence of 4 strands of wire except for pronghorn that seldom jump fences and prefer to slide under them. As long as the bottom wire is 18" off the ground such a fence is no impediment to their travel. High fence is another matter entirely. I would look long and hard at any high fenced property as to it's size and amount of escape cover before I would hunt it except for uplnd game and waterfowl. I do find shooting game at feeders or from a vehicle to be abohrent. Also if the property only has one or two waterholes and the game must come their to water. Seems like a very unfair advantage to take of them. I would add one further restriction in that animals would have to be there through at least one year and at least one full breeding season after their release on to the property. Those are my restrictions and believe that we all have to live with whether or not we took unfair advatage of our quarry.

465H&H

Gentlemen, the defination of canned hunt is, different with everyone you ask! The only TRUE canned hunt is the ones done by the park rangers in Yellowstone park, where elk are driven into cattle pins, where the rangers sit on top of the fence and shoot them, to thin the herd down to a carrying capacity of the park. A necessary practice, but that, my friends is CANNED HUNTING, or better discribes as CANNED SHOOTING!

For example, because of it's size being easy to phathom in your mind. Not that it constitutes anything other a comparison of two properties, of the same size.

640 acres is one square mile, and is called a section of land! Now lets look at two of these as exactly square in shape.

Section #1 is flat, and treeless, with only grass for grazeing, and there is one source of water in the middle of this section. Habitat wise, this will sustain one whitetail deer per five acres, or 128 deer on the property.IMO, any shooting of game in this property is a canned shooting, not hunting.

Section #2 is hilly, with creeks, and rock outcroppings, thickets of wild plumb, muskidine grapes, and dotted with oak trees, Yopon Holly, and briar, is everywhere. The creeks have water running completely accross the property, and seperate springs that feed the creek. Though this property will sustain more deer than the other as far as food and water are concerened, from a food stand point alone, we will say it also has 128 deer on the property.

Both are legally 640 acres, by outside measurement, with #1 property haveing exactly 640 acres of surface, because it is flat, and the food/water supply is far less than #2, The cover to hide the animal is nonexistant, there are no escape routes, and a good long shooter can take his pick of animals on this property without any effort at all. Both properties are surrounded by high fence, and in the case of property #1 this is a killing pen, much like the cattle pens the elk are driven into, at yellowstone. No animal has any chance of escape, or even staying out of range of the shooter, in #1 property!

NOW! lets look at property #2, though it is 640 acres by outside measurement, those meastrements do not tell you the surface area of this property. Ironed out flatt it may be ten times the surface area of property #1, or 6400 acres of surface. Add to that the veried food supply, and the multiple sources of water alone, with cover, and multiple escape routes, and bedding areas, and you have a far different 640 acre piece of property.

What I'm saying with all this crap is, you can't simply use the outside measurement of a piece of property, behind high fence, to say if it is fairchase or not! Top this off with the fact that Whitetail deer lives and dies withing about one mile of the place he was born,fence or no fence, but I can assure you, he knows every square inch of that mile in every dirrection from his drop spot, and if he has cover, and food and water where ever he goes in the area, with that cover, he can elude you till your old and gray! Multiply that 640 acrea by 3 gives you 1920 acres on #1 even if flat as a pancake, and the #2 property's actual surface area by 3 is now 19,200 acres of surface area, behind fence that on the outside measurement looks like 1920 acres.

I have hunted deer on Islands in Southeast Alaska that are smaller than 1900 acres, and they seem to be able to elude the hunter quite well, and the heavy current in the sea around the island is a higher fence that you will find in RSA, or Texas, yet the same guy who looks down on all high fence will gladly pay big money to hunt the little blacktails, or the huge Brown bear in THAT 1900 acre pen!

Every property has to be judged by it's own, not painted with a broad brush! Besides when a rancher owns animals that are worth several hundred , or even thousands of dollers each, the fence is not only to keep the animals in, but to keep other animals, and people out. The one rule I'd place on all high fenced areas is, hunter, and guide taken in, in the hunting car, and all hunting there after would be on foot! If suplimental feeding stations are needed, the the section where these feeders are should be in tight cover, and be off limits to the hunter, even on foot!

Nothing is all black & white! things have to be looked at from many angles before you make a flat condimnation without thinking,and judgements made on an individual basis!

No lions in RSA would meet Jaco's great requirement of "self sustaining population". The economics of game ranching and the lions dietary requirements make it impossible. I have recently heard a new term used by Boddington and others, that being "previously captive". I got a kick out of that as it surely tries to be "Politically Correct". Each to his own but paticipants in RSA lion hunting should be up to speed on the "PC" nature of that hunting.

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Originally posted by crane:
No lions in RSA would meet Jaco's great requirement of "self sustaining population". The economics of game ranching and the lions dietary requirements make it impossible. I have recently heard a new term used by Boddington and others, that being "previously captive". I got a kick out of that as it surely tries to be "Politically Correct". Each to his own but paticipants in RSA lion hunting should be up to speed on the "PC" nature of that hunting.

Even if legal in RSA, I don't think it would be advisable, unless the lion is all you wanted to sell hunts for, because they would finish your plains game fairly quickly. In Texas it is illegal to release African dangerous game into the wild,for any reason, or into any enclosier to be hunted.

I agree with Crane, I don't see lion hunting inside enclosiers where they don't have enough room to sustain themselves, as hunting at all. That opinion is not to say even a tame lion is not dangerous in a pen, but to say it isn't my idea of lion hunting, if it were free of charge, and it AINT FREE YA'LL!

Wild lions trapped and relocated to another part of the country where there were lion before, and are simply to replace lion there, is not canned,or PC BS, but good game magament.

I once herd the expression that if your neighbors' wife will sleep with you for a million bucks, she's a whore. Whether it is less money or not is simply a matter of price negotiation...she is still a whore. I think the whole thing of canned hunting, high fence hunting, etc, is nothing more than semantics. Someone is trying to make someone else feel that their experience in the field is less than worthy of their own. Come on people...how many real wild places are left in the world. Any hunt in Europe or east of the Rockies could be said to be not "hunting".

I have hunted some of the wildest places on earth and I've hunted fenced places too. It's all great if you respect the quarry, make a clean kill and don't waste the animal. Who are we to judge anothers joy or personal expression of the hunter inside us? We are all at different levels in our maturity as hunters. This debate will eventually divide the hunting community and PETA or USHS will eat us for dinner. As land runs out and all the wild places disappear in the not to distant future...a high fence may be the only hunt around. Food for thought!

Dr. Tim Burkhart

quote:

As land runs out and all the wild places disappear in the not to distant future...a high fence may be the only hunt around. Food for thought!

Dr. Tim Burkhart

Not trying to hit any nerves but...

The hunters going over to Africa are usually well-to-do coming from first world countries where there are paved roads, McDonalds on every corner and no shortage of any wordly thing. They want a wild experience in Africa and argue about the wildness of it all. The people over there live in mud-huts, wear tattered clothing and their idea of fast food is a rabbit. Would these proponents of no-fence hunting trade their experience if it meant that those people can enjoy a big Mac too?