Is it possible to have a fenced area large enough for a given species that a hunt there could or should be considered "Fair Chase"?........DJ

yes, absolutely. A hunt is what you make of it. Fences come in different forms. Is if fair chase if you hunt with a river on one side and a cliff on the other? Or like in parts of Tanzania, where hunting areas have population fences around their boundaries. Or how about when hunting a wood lot in Ohio with a subdivision on one side and a divided highway on the other?

I've hunted hay meadows in Wyoming, bait piles in Ontario, and water holes in Africa that were much easier "hunting" than chasing a particular pig around 80 acres of high fence.

I hunted the Pangola game reserve last year as guest of a South African friend. They have sveral pastures that are high fenced. They are around 12,000 acres each.

It seemed pretty fair to me. Though I do have a stigma about high fences it was a pretty good experience. I'd recomend it for a family hunt. My wife and kids had great time...

I did not get a shot at a zebra a warthog or a kudu which is baisicaly what I had come to hunt. The zebra were plum spooky the kudu out did me and I didn't see any warthogs that I wanted to kill.

The only reason that I bring it up is that a high fence does not equal a game slaughter.

Yes indeed. Particularly considering the animals are likely to have seen a hunter or two before and are thus very alert. As long as the fenced area is not too small (say 2000 acres minimum, larger in open country), you can have an excellent hunt. Do yourself a favor and make it an even fairer chase by hunting on foot. I would say that the vast majority of hunters don't, riding around on the back of a landcruiser instead. That, in my book, doesn't qualify as fair chase even without fences. In other words, that's the primary determinant of the fairness of the chase, not the existence or absence of fences.

I will add that fenced ranches do tend to have more game that open concessions. That's a key difference that some don't appreciate. It allows you to take a half dozen species in the space of ten days. There was a reason that the traditional safaris in East Africa were month-long or longer affairs: it takes more time to find a trophy in a vast concession where game moves with the seasons.

Yes. I've hunted a couple game ranches in RSA and both places were so large that I honestly don't think the animals themselves has any idea there was a fence.

The first game ranch I hunted was Frank Bowker's Thorn Kloof ranch near Grahamstown RSA. This is a ranch comprising 198,000 hectres. Any interior fencing was just 2 or 3 strand barbed wire because they still run a few sheep and goats on the place. It is surrounded by the ranches owned by his brothers. All 4 ranches make up what was the original homestead. That makes somewhere around 275,000 hectres at 2.47 acres to the hectre. Not exactly what you would call containing the animals. I also saw kudu and eland jumping an 8 ft game fence on the perimeter of the ranch when we were leaving. So the fence is somewhat a moot point anyway.

The second game ranch I hunted was Silent Valley which is located near Thabazimbi RSA. This is a conservatory that is made up of 27 different ranches bought by one guy and combined. I have no idea how big the place is. We hunted it for 10 days and I never saw a fence except when we drove in. And we only hunted the same place twice in order to continue chasing a huge eland.

I've also hunted a government hunting concession in Cameroon and it was more restricted in land than either of these ranches. The concession was comprised of about 200,000 hectres, but was surrounded by tribal land. Kind of an island of habitat in a sea of grazed out pastures. It was a great hunt, but the animals couldn't leave the concession. Nothing for them to eat outside it.

Both game ranches I hunted butted up against other game ranches. If a kudu or eland etc... got out of one, it would still have habitat available. I think most times the fences for a game ranch are to keep people out, not keep the animals in.

Mac

Mack, what did you hunt on Thorn Kloof? I stopped there for Blesbok in 2001. Very nice people.

I�ve hunted on concessions varying from 2000 up to 30 000 hectars. While planning my first hunt I was very sceptic to fenced areas (in Finland we have no fencing at all) but thought I�d give it a try. No regrets on my part, the hunts are very fair as long as they are done on foot. I went for zebra this year and they had us running around like crazy! The concession was 15 000 hectars.

MAC - I have also hunted at Frank�s - Bontebok. Great folks and they should be credited with saving the Bontebok species.



While I do not like to hunt behind high fences, it is pretty much the norm in RSA. Most of the uninformed tend to believe fences = canned hunting. That simply is not the case.

I hunted a ranch in Namibia last year that is almost 93,000 ac. It is big enough for the animals to get away from you, trust me.

George, that's a great Eland! What part of Namibia were you hunting?

As far as the fence debate...I think many people who didn't grow up around "acreage" or such just don't know how much land an acre is. They read internet forums and newspapers and such, and come up with some subjective number of acres that make a place "big enough."

We have a 660 acre place in the mesquite-flat rolling plains of Texas that is covered up in feral hogs. That's not a very big place, but you can hunt it all day for several days and never get a glimpse of one. In thick stuff, 1/10th of an acre can hide a herd of Eland.

When you start talking about 10s of thousands of acres, especially in rolling or well-treed country, it doesn't make a damn if there's a fence around a place. 90% of the animals on that place would never see that fence, anyways. Keep this in mind. A 25,000 acre ranch is about 6x6 miles square. You would have trouble walking across that place in a long day!