Van Schalkwyk puts brakes on hunting law

May 04 2007 at 03:44PM

Regulations outlawing canned hunting, which were to have come into force on June 1, will now only take effect next year, Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk's office said on Friday.

"After presentations by some provincial MEC's around challenges in implementing these regulations by June 1, the minister has decided [they] will come into force on February 1, 2008," it said in a statement.

The minister's office gave no further details of the "challenges" that had caused the delay.

The new regulations, announced by Van Schalkwyk in February this year, will, among other things, outlaw the hunting of captive-bred large predators within two years of their release on a property for the purpose of hunting.



At the time of the announcement, Van Schalkwyk vowed he intended "putting an end, once and for all, to the reprehensible practice of canned hunting".

Friday's statement said no further postponement of the regulations would be considered.

"The minister would like to call on all stakeholders to ensure that they are ready for the implementation on February 1, 2008," he said. - Sapa

Such as life in Africa. We never know what to expect next I wonder if this includes other changes such as using hounds to hunt Leopard, Caracal, Duiker and Bushpig? Rimfire cartridges on small game? Thanks for the update 500nitro. Good hunting, LDK

The words "CANNED HUNTING" mean different things to different people! To the anti hunter, it means any hunting, to the conservationest it sometimes means any animal hunted on private property. To the ignorant beyond redemption, it means any animal that IS private property, and is on a property that is surrounded by a game fence, no matter the lay of the land, or the size there of.

Too me CANNED HUNT means a tame animal dumped out of a cage or small pin, in front of a shooter, for slaughter, with no fear of the shooter, or any escape posible, even if he knew he needed to escape! IOW, open the can, and shoot the animal, like a steer in a slaughter shoute at a packing plant.

The results is eventually the same, as far as the animal is concerned, but the results is not the same for the shooter in all these DAFFYnitions. In most cases, to the innorant the results is the same no matter the way the phrase is used, so one must be carefull when makeing judgements on the SO-CALLED canned hunt, reported on by the leberal media. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies, by talking when we don't have all the facts, haveing heard only one side of the story!

Well said Mac.

This ban can cut both ways. The bad part is it could foster along other bans pushed by the anti crowd under the guise of stopping un sportsman like hunting.

The first benifit is the ban gives South Africa back some badly needed credibility.
Lets face it, there is not much hunting to be done in South Africa for the big 5 that is not canned to some degree lesser or greater.

Now before you flame me let me give my definition of canned...........

FOR A HUNT TO BE "CANNED"

1) The property must be fenced in a manner that the animal can not escape. Ranches that have a 4 foot tall barb wire fence for cattle does not qualify as canned. I have yet to hunt any game animal in any country that can not cross such a fence as easily as I step off the curb. However I don't care if your ranch is the size of Rhode Island, if the "game" animal cant leave you are on a canned hunt.

2) Any animal that is tame or otherwize domesticated and relocated to a "wilderness" for the purpose of "hunting" THIS IS CANNED !!!

THE WHOLE POINT OF HUNTING IS THAT LUCK, DEDICATION, AND SKILL ARE NEEDED TO BE SUCESFULL
and sometimes all these things stillhave you go home emptyhanded. THAT IS WHY IT IS HUNTING.

JMHO

UGLYSTICK, there are two questions I would like you to answer for me!

#1 do you have a pronghorn antelope on your wall, and if so where did you shoot him?

#2 Would you hunt on Kodiak Island, or Hawaii ?

If the answer to #1 is "YES" and you hunted him in Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, or west Texas, you most likely hunted him on a sheep ranch. Even on BLM public land in the most of prong horn habitat, the land is fenced with sheep wire 4' fence. A Prong horn will run himself to death along a 4' sheep wire fence, and will not jump a fence. If he can't crawl under it he is pinned! I find that 90% of those who take issue with the high fence, all have one or more Prong horn on the wall, or hunts under their hypocritical belts!

It the answer to #2 is "YES", then the hypocrit description name applies, because there isn't one of those Islands that is anywhere near the size of Rhode Island, and there is certainly a fence that is several thousand feet deep surounding all of those Islands. SO! I assume you think hunting Brown bear, and black tail deer on Kodiak is a canned hunt, and shouldn't be in record books. Here again, I'd bet the rest of my retirement, you would jump at a free Brown bear hunt on Kodiak!

Sir, a FENCE does not a canned Hunt,make! A broad brush statement like any fenced property is automaticlly a canned hunting operation, is not only iresponcible, but down right untrue! There is far more invloved in the makeing of a CANNED hunt, than a fence! Your statements, as you describe CANNED HUNTING are right out of the PeTA-head playbook!

As far as RSA is concerened, the fences are mandated by law, and if there are dangerous things like Rhino on the property, the fence has to be electrafied. These fences are as much to keep things out, as they are to keep things in, and many of the properties in RSA are 1,000,000+ acres in size, with everything on the property for an animal to survive without human intervention, and have cover that would hide a herd of elephant for weeks on end.

I agree that RSA has the rep of not being real hunting, and in some cases that take is correct,as it is for some High fence (and some low fence ones) operations, but there is far more involved than simple fencing, to justify being called CANNED!

Kodiak Island is over 3465 squares miles. If you chose to go brown bear hunting there I can assure nobody with any credibly could argue it wasn't fair chases!



All are credibility is lost as hunters if we try to defend canned hunting! It's a joke I been there and seen it. Lions born and raised in small 5 -10 acres electrified enclosures.. At 1 1/2 to 4 years old the are shot as " trophies" It doesn't matter if the animal is raised in South Africa, Texas or Alaska. If its raised in a small pen totally dependent on a person to be feed, Its Canned! The size of the pen doesn't matter.

quote:

Originally posted by Robert johnson:
Kodiak Island is over 3465 squares miles. If you chose to go brown bear hunting there I can assure nobody with any credibly could argue it wasn't fair chases!

I agree totally, and that is about twice the size of Rhode Island, but at 1545 sq miles Rhode Island is a damn big hunting area fence or not, and the fence wouldn't make a place that large a CANNED hunt, any more than the sea makes the islands Canned!

quote:

All are credibility is lost as hunters if we try to defend canned hunting! It's a joke I been there and seen it. Lions born and raised in small 5 -10 acres electrified enclosures.. At 1 1/2 to 4 years old the are shot as " trophies" It doesn't matter if the animal is raised in South Africa, Texas or Alaska. If its raised in a small pen totally dependent on a person to be feed, Its Canned! The size of the pen doesn't matter.

The fence isn't what makes it a canned hunt, it was a tame animal, dependant on people, being shot, even if it were turned loose in the whole of Africa, it would still be canned. It was the conditioning of that animal that made the hunting of that type of so-called wildlife, CANNED!

Robert,I see you live in Soldatna! I love Soldatna, and have a couple of frends there! Wayne Bell, now long gone to the happy hunting grounds, his son, Creig Bell (High Adventure), and his Mom, and Dave Silva (Reg Guide)and have hunted all over southern Alaska, and it is great that you have thousands of square miles of public, unspoiled land to hunt there. I would say there are more people in Joburg, and Cape Town, RSA alone than all of Alaska which is a as large as 1/3rd of the lower 48 states, but many places have no public land at all, Texas 252,000 sq miles, is one of those places, that is 98% private land, and the reast belongs to parks, and the US Army . SO, if you hunt in Texas you have to hunt on private property. High fence is not my thing either, but simply because a ranch has a fence doesn't make it canned. For instance white tail deer do not migrate, and live, and die within one mile of there place of birth, and there are many animals that are like that. The place where a large property that is fenced makes a huge difference is, with migratory animals like Caribou, and Elk. This makes hunting those animals Canned, IMO, because of the animal's migratory habits are interfered with.

The only thing I hunt in Texas is dove quail, and ducks, and Wild boar. No fence in the world will hold a wild boar for long. I hunt New Mexico (36,000,000 acres of public land), Wyoming,Alaska, Canada, and Africa, all except RSA. Simply because the ranch hunting in RSA, is not for me, that doesn't mean I'm saying it is all Canned,just because that some of it is not, indeed, fair chasse, because it is not, but the fence is not the one thing that makes the determination! I don't defend CANNED hunting, but I don't think what makes it canned is a fence alone! There are many things that must be present, before a hunt is canned!

IMO, credability is lost when folks paint anything they don't like as unethical, and give the antis, and the media, ammo to fire back at us, without knowing what they are talking about! As I said in my other post, in my 63 years of hunting on my own,I've found that, when questioned, most of the MOUTHS that scream CANNED, I find some of their own hunting is what they themseves call canned, and the prong horn Antelope, hunted on sheep ranches, is hunted, by them, under the same conditions they cuss others for. It is that they don't THINK! Because they see the prong horn as fair chasse,because they know it is, haveing done it, still call deer hunting under the same resrictive conditions, CANNED!

This is because a prong horn will not jump a 4 ft sheep wire fence, but these guys see nothing wrong with hunting him inside a large sheep pasture, but put down someone else who hunts deer in a high fence, where he is no more restricted than the prong horn in a sheep ranch, and the prong horn is easier to hunt than a whitetail, fence or not! This hypocracy, whether realized or not, does much unjustified damage to us all, IMO!

To me, there are conditions that make the recreational pursuit and killing of an animal more challenging, enjoyable, and rewarding than other conditions. Overall it is not knowing the outcome that makes it fun. It could be difficult or easy but you do not know going into it. I guess that is how I would define "canned"- a 100% certain outcome.

That being said, I do not care if someone wants to shoot an an animal in a cage. I do not think of it as hunting but more like someone killing their own livestock. What is the difference between killing your cow in the backyard and killing your lion in the backyard? If it is your property you should be able to determine its fate IMO.

quote:

Originally posted by Grafton:
To me, there are conditions that make the recreational pursuit and killing of an animal more challenging, enjoyable, and rewarding than other conditions. Overall it is not knowing the outcome that makes it fun. It could be difficult or easy but you do not know going into it. I guess that is how I would define "canned"- a 100% certain outcome.

I agree with you 100% on a true canned hunt, (shoot)you will always know the outcome. That is one of the misconceptions fostered by those who read adds for hunting ranches, and take the phrase "NO KILL, NO PAY", to mean if you hunt there you will kill an animal, or you don't have to pay, ANYTHING! This is a true misconception. This means exactly what it means when booking an African hunt. If you don't kill, or wound an animal you do not have to pay the trophy fee, but you do pay the daily fees, kill or not. It is exactly the same on a game ranch, you don't have to pay for the animal, but the daily, and guide fees are still to be paid. Again, on a ranch, or in wilderness you can kill an animal if you are just looking to shoot any animal, but if you are looking for a particular size, or measurement, then you will have to hunt for it, in either place, if the cover is good, and the place is large enough. If the animals are not tame, and are in a place where there are pleanty of escape routes, and water, and food is available to them. Some of the places you could walk all day, in any dirrection and never see a fence, and as long as the cover allows the animal to avoid you by getting out of sight, and change dirrections, he can elude you forever.

Back in the 1960s the animal rights idiots started a big crapfest, because of fenced properties for hunting. Saying that the animals didn't have a chance on some as small as 1000 acres high fence ranch where hunts were being sold. The ARAs, and the Eastern media, made so much of it that an experiment was done on the Aberdeen Army base, where there were thousands of whitetail deer. They high fenced 18 acres of thick bush, and released 18 marked deer into the enclosier. They were given three months to learn the habitat, which included pleanty of food, and water.

Then they gave cameras to 8 seasoned whitetail hunters, and gave them five days to take as many pictures of as many different deer as they could. The pictures had to be workable shots if useing a rifle, or they didn't count. At the end of those five days, all the hunters got pictures, but only four of the 8 hunters got pictures of shootable deer, with nobody getting more than three shootable pictures. Of the four hunters who got shootable pictures, three of the pictures were of the same numbered deer,one of a single deer nobody else snapped, and two more were of another deer. That is a known 18 deer in 18 acres, with good hunters, hunting for five days, during legal shooting hours, of deer that had never been hunted in their lives. That is four individual deer actually spotted out of 18 , and since all but one was spotted by more than one hunter, leads me to believe those four deer were simply the dumbest of the 18 deer behind that fence, and there were 14 deer in 18 acres that completely avoided 8 hunters for for five days. That doesn't sound like a sure thing to me, but I could be wrong, I was once back in 1941!

quote:

That being said, I do not care if someone wants to shoot an an animal in a cage. I do not think of it as hunting but more like someone killing their own livestock. What is the difference between killing your cow in the backyard and killing your lion in the backyard? If it is your property you should be able to determine its fate IMO.

I agree with the above, and as long as a person is raising the animal to slaughter, that is one thing, but it isn't hunting. If that same animal was hand fed like a milk cow, and sold to someone to "HUNT", then that would be a canned hunt, IMO as well, but that animal would be a slam dunk, no matter where is was released. He is vulnerable simply because he doesn't know he needs to flee, or hide!

All I'm saying here is, you can't say just because a property is high fenced, it is automaticlly a CANNED hunting operation. Some are, but most of the big ones are not!

I don't have a dog in this fight but I assure You that pronghorns do jump fences. I have seen it with my own eyes many times.

quote:

Originally posted by boatammo:
I don't have a dog in this fight but I assure You that pronghorns do jump fences. I have seen it with my own eyes many times.

Well you must have some unusual prong horn! I've been around them, and hunted them for 60 years, and I've never seen one jump a fence. Even where barb wire fenceing is used, they will run 60 miles per hour till they get to the fence, and at the last posible second dive under the bottom wire! In fact in area 72 in Wyoming there is a pile of antelope bones 3 ft deep where prong horn piled up in a the corner of a sheep fence, and froze, during a below zero winter storm. Not 100 yds on the other side of that fence, there was a stand of deasert willow, that would have given them shelter! I lived on the Fredricks 1111 ranch in Culberson county Texas, 140,000 acres of rolling grass land,at 6000 ft altitude, that had hunderds of prong horn on the ranch, and the only way I've ever seen them cross a fence is to crawl under it, where coyotes, and badgers dug under them. So maybe I've been around a different animal than where ever you saw them! I'd sure like to film that, because the sheep ranchers I've known, wouldn't believe it without film!

FWIW, I've seen one go over once. But usually I've seen them go through/under. One that I shot in NM had it's neck really messed up from, what I assume was, getting hung up going through/under a barbed wire fence.

-Steve

MACD37,

To answer your questions:

#1 I Have never hunted antelope. I have nothing against shooting one. It is just something I have never had the urge to do when I lived out west.

#2 I know very little about Hawaii, much less hunting there. HOWEVER Kodiak, I would hunt a bear there(especially if it were free)

I hope you did not take my rhetorical Rhode Island as a literal benchmark of size for a free ranging game animal to roam on.

Lets remeber, no one raised the bears in a paddock and dumped them out there to be shot.

We could argue that hunting elephant in East Africa was canned because the animals can't swim away into the Indian Ocean if we want to get uber retarded in this argument.

When it comes to canned hunting, I think what did it for me was the first time I was in a BASS PRO SHOP in Texas there was a deer call for sale that made the noise of a mechanical deer feeder. THAT IS NOT HUNTING IMHO !!!!

That being said I feel no law should be imposed on all the ranches that opperate as live fire ranges in Texas and other parts of the US and the rest of the world.

I am not trying to rain on your parade here. I hunt bears over bait. A lot of people call that shitty hunting. So be it. If anyone thinks it is a guarnteed hunt or an easy hunt TRY IT!
True, you can shoot any small immature cub off a bait real easy. Get a big one to come in in an area that is hunted during legal shooting hours and you are either the luckiest @%$# alive or you did everything right.

I think we all have our own deffinition of CANNED HUNTING. Set your benchmark and live by it. I don't feel the need to justify or apologize to anyone for how I hunt and neither should you. If you want to go shoot cattle in a chute I could care less, just don't try to sell it as hunting because the cows are moving.

If you shoot your 180 class whitetail under a corn feeder as you sit in a lazy boy recliner in a Texas tower with AC, heat and a with a shot bag rest, and you can mount it on the wall and look at it and call it a trophy more power to YA!

A six point whitetail that I tracked through cedar swamp in snow for 5 hours and was lucky enough to get a shot at is much more of a trophy than any monster shot under a feeder.

Gentlemen,

It would be interesting to see what each of you consider as "canned" hunting.

I suppose in its simplest form, any animal that has to be provided with food, rather than one that fends for itself, can be classified as a "canned" animal.

This would certainly apply to lions I have seen in South Africa, where they have been kept in a seperate area, and meat is delivered to them to feed on.

I had a person I worked for that shot a lion in South Africa. To this day he believes this animal was drugged. He ended up putting it in a drinking establishments rather than display it in his home. He only wishes he was many years younger so he could return to Africa and shoot another one.

quote:

practice of canned

I was not a personal friend of Wayne but I knew him. Of coarse we knew everybody in Soldotna twenty years ago! After Wayne's death his two boys Mark and Greg took over most of the flying for High Adventure. Both of the boys are good people and first class pilots. I took Dave Silva rainbow trout fishing about fifteen year ago, he caught a 16lb.- 20lb. rainbow that day . There is a picture of him on my web sight.I have not seen Dave Silva in years.


Mac
I agree with most of what you say about canned hunting, with one big exceptions! I believe we as sportsmen are far better to confront our problems instead of trying to hide them.. If we refuse the Ant's with the help of government agencies will step in and the outcome will damage sport hunting for year to come! My guess is 90% of the people in Africa do not hunt, But they do have the right to vote. If sportsmen as a group refuse to abide by some minimal set of fair chase standards our days are numbered .

Having hunted Pronghorns since 1981, I have seen on two ocassions Antelope bucks jumping over 4 strand barbed wire fences. All other times they dropped to their knee's and went under the fence. Most of the bare spots on a bucks neck will be the result of fighting during the rut, similar to Whitetail Deer. One year I met a young man from Wisconsin that had taken his first Antelope. He had caped the buck up to the neck and cut it off just behind the skull. The head was wrapped in a plastic bag and he had salted inside the cape. I advised him it would spoil before he made it back home (we were in WY). I caped out the head for him and noticed it was missing his left prong; a fresh break. The next day my friend shot a nice buck in the same field and upon skinning out the cape for him, we found the missing prong inside the right eye socket. Fortunately, we had exchanged phone numbers and we sent the prong to the guy in WI. He was greatful and couldn't believe the story until he called to inform us it fit his buck perfectly. IMHO, I do not consider hunting Pronghorn on the WY prairie canned hunting. Last trip it took me and my buddy 6 days to tag our bucks.

Posted by MacD37

quote:

Too me CANNED HUNT means a tame animal dumped out of a cage or small pin, in front of a shooter, for slaughter, with no fear of the shooter, or any escape posible, even if he knew he needed to escape! IOW, open the can, and shoot the animal, like a steer in a slaughter shoute at a packing plant.

I think Mac has hit the nail pretty much on the head. I would add that drugging animals also goes on that list.

Apart from that, the debate on what is or is not canned can go on forever. And trying to define it in terms of range size,
the provision of food, or avenues of escape is going to lead down a slippery slope.

Make the definition too broad, and it is likely to affect many accepted practices today. Heck, 50 years ago, some folks considered using a scope to be unsporting.

There are a lot of techniques and practices today that could fall within a borad definition of what is canned and what is not (I hate the term canned), such as:

1. Using feeders or feed plots
2. Trail cameras
3. Rangefinders
4. Game calls (both manual or electronic)
5. Decoys
6. Game scents
7. Hunting over bait
8. Archery hunting near a waterhole
9. Hunting with dogs (including birds)
10. Driven hunts

The list could go on and on. What about a 100 acre state gameland that is surrounded by development on all sides? OR hunting is a box canyon? Natural and man made barriers can have the same impact as fences.

On the larger operations, a fence is not there to tame the game down. It is there to protect the owner's investment in his game stock. Game does have an economic value, and it would be a poor businessman who did not take steps to protect his investment.

We all want to hunt the way things were 100 or even 50 years ago. But those days are gone. One of the points Mac made was that in the State of Texas, if you want to hunt in the state you are forced to hunt on private land. And the same is pretty much becoming true all over the world. The more the population increases, the less wild areas are left to hunt. And even those wild areas are being strictly controlled. Heck, look at Alaska. The residents there go through a lottery for the better areas. And a non resident cannot hunt bears unless they go through a guide and pay some major dollars.

Game ranches provide the benefit of creating some level of competition - there is a price point at which government controlled areas cannot exceed. And the various governments are indeed pushing the envelope.

It is common in Europe to pay a fee based on trophy size. We are starting to see that In Africa today. And then there are always the "trespass fees", the "lease fees", the concession fees" and so on that add to the cost.

This is causing hunting to be off limits to most people of average financial means. And that is a trend that is not good for hunters in general. Fewer new hunters will get into the sport. And even avid hunters of today may be priced out of hunting tomorrow.

And few of us of any means can afford to take 30 to 90 days off for a big game hunt. Two weeks is about the norm, with 3 weeks and above pushing it. No one is going to gear up for 2 weeks in the field without a reasonable chance of success. How many folks here would jump at dropping $15,000 and 2 weeks time with an outfit that advertised a 10% success rate for your standard dangerous game bag?

A game ranch provides an alternative, and with more ranches prices will be held in check. Heck, here in Texas you can hunt a blackbuck for less than a whitetail deer in some places. That was not true 40 years ago.

In my opinion, we need to stop using the term "canned". It describes nothing tangible and it plays right in to the anti agenda.

For me canned in South africa has this definition.

Pen raised animal untill mature
Released on a property even if it is over a 1000 hectares but still being fed.
Released on the property 1 months before the hunts started.
Bought at auction 1 week before the hunt
Dropped off at property from auction less than 1 month from hunt.
Any animal that has a human imprint on them.
Any drugged animal.

With plainsagme like impala and buying 20 from an auction and getting them delivered even 1 week before the hunt and then having a a proper impala count before on the property will not make a difference those animals are so skittish how would you know if it was dropped 1 week before or not. Not that I'm saying it's right but I'm sure it has happened a lot before.

What I'm trying to say is that we should actually get a list on certain species that could be canned or put and take and be unsporting to hunt.

For example a client who uses one outfitter trough all the years would like to shoot a Lichtenstein hartbeest in Limpopo. Tbe outfitter goes an buys the hartbees and awaits the hunter that is purely put and take. With only one Lichtenstein hartbees running around on the property.

But if the same outfitter went an bought 15 Lichtenstein's a year before the hunt and wanted to breed with them on his property and they survive and socialise on their own then what would you call it ? Finding one specific bull on a 1000 hectare propety to shoot is not easy even if he has been nominated.

Unfortunately RSA got a very bad reputation when it comes to put and take and canned hunting hopefully from now on the laws will change for the better. But still there are people coming for more than one trip every year just to go back home without that big kudu bull and coming back again to try again. Hunting involves a lot of luck as well to be at the right place at the right time.

Lets face it even the laws change who will be policing all the outfitters all the time and check on them ?

So one of our best weapons against put and take and canned hunting is Information and AR has got plenty of it.

Well stated Jim Manion, very well said. I'm amazed at how fast some are ready to pitch fuel on the still smoking embers of a recent "Outdoor Writers" fiasco where it only serves to "Divide & Conquer" in the eyes of the anti-hunting crowd. We should all agree to disagree but taking it to the level of public bashing only serves to divide our hunting community. There's no question unethical "hunting" practices should be disdained and frowned upon, but staying united for the common good of our sport should be paramount for all of us. Good hunting, LDK

quote:

Originally posted by Uglystick:
MACD37,

To answer your questions:

#1 I Have never hunted antelope. I have nothing against shooting one. It is just something I have never had the urge to do when I lived out west.

#2 I know very little about Hawaii, much less hunting there. HOWEVER Kodiak, I would hunt a bear there(especially if it were free)

I hope you did not take my rhetorical Rhode Island as a literal benchmark of size for a free ranging game animal to roam on.

Lets remeber, no one raised the bears in a paddock and dumped them out there to be shot.

We could argue that hunting elephant in East Africa was canned because the animals can't swim away into the Indian Ocean if we want to get uber retarded in this argument.

When it comes to canned hunting, I think what did it for me was the first time I was in a BASS PRO SHOP in Texas there was a deer call for sale that made the noise of a mechanical deer feeder. THAT IS NOT HUNTING IMHO !!!!

That being said I feel no law should be imposed on all the ranches that opperate as live fire ranges in Texas and other parts of the US and the rest of the world.

I am not trying to rain on your parade here. I hunt bears over bait. A lot of people call that shitty hunting. So be it. If anyone thinks it is a guarnteed hunt or an easy hunt TRY IT!
True, you can shoot any small immature cub off a bait real easy. Get a big one to come in in an area that is hunted during legal shooting hours and you are either the luckiest @%$# alive or you did everything right.

I think we all have our own deffinition of CANNED HUNTING. Set your benchmark and live by it. I don't feel the need to justify or apologize to anyone for how I hunt and neither should you. If you want to go shoot cattle in a chute I could care less, just don't try to sell it as hunting because the cows are moving.

If you shoot your 180 class whitetail under a corn feeder as you sit in a lazy boy recliner in a Texas tower with AC, heat and a with a shot bag rest, and you can mount it on the wall and look at it and call it a trophy more power to YA!

A six point whitetail that I tracked through cedar swamp in snow for 5 hours and was lucky enough to get a shot at is much more of a trophy than any monster shot under a feeder.

Uglystick, you missed my point all together! None of what I said has anything to do with what I hunt, or how! The examples I made were to dispell the notion that a fence automaticlly makes hunting behind it, a Canned hunt! It doesn't! I've only ever shot one anuimal behind a high fence in 66+ yrs of hunting, and that was a meat animal which produced 300 lbs of some of the best meat from an animal found in the world, an ELAND. After eating some of the meat from an Eland I took in Zambia, but couldn't take any home, I chose to shoot one in Texas for the freezer, and That hunt was not a slam dunk to be sure, even behind the high fence, but he wasn't hunted over a feeder, but stalked for two days in some of the tightest bush I've hunted in, and certainly tighter than the bush I took the one in Africa. That fence offered no advantage at all. When he finally broke from cover, he wa 200 yds away, and running like he was on fire, a .375H&H 300 gr soft flipped him end over end. I could have taken an Eland in ten minutes if I wanted ANY eland,because there were about 100 head, or so on the place, but the young ones were the only ones that showed themselves. A mature eland on this place was no dummy, and always kept bush between us, exactly as they do in Africa.

I hunt bear, and cats over bait, and so I know it is not a sure thing, and you must know your target very well to bait successfully for him. I also ran 16 Bear/lion dogs in New Mexico for years, and if one thinks that is a slam dunk, he has never followed a pack of hounds in the Pueblo wilderness of New Mexico.

I don't hunt deer over corn feeders, but prefere to spot, and stalk. In fact I don't like whitetail hunting at all, but prefere Muledeer in the mountains, and canyon country of west Texas, N.M, Col, and Wyoming. The only thing I hunt in Texas is Hogs, and birds.

The real thing I took exception to is the phrase you used that is right out of PeTa play book,

"It doesn't matter if the property is as big as the state of Rhode Island, if it is high fenced, it is a canned hunt!"

That is not only wrong but I think you know it is wrong. Statements like that are not true,but are ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST'S words, and will only endear you to the ARA's and PeTA heads of the world, because that is the simplistic thought process they live by.

I feel the same way about canned hunting as Justice Stewart felt about obscenity, so I will paraphrase his famous dictum in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964):

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of . . . [activities] I understand to be embraced . . . [by the term canned hunting] . . . [b]ut I know it when I see it."

quote:

Originally posted by L. David Keith:
IMHO, I do not consider hunting Pronghorn on the WY prairie canned hunting. Last trip it took me and my buddy 6 days to tag our bucks.

I don't consider it to be a canned hut either, but the game behind high fence are no more restricted than a prong horn in a sheep pasture. My meaning is, the FENCE is not what makes a hunt Canned, and of the folks who claim it is, think nothing of shooting prong horn in a sheep pasture, but put the other guy down for shooting anything behind a high fence, no matter how large or the way the animals have been handled. Stateing that anything shot behind high fence is canned is giveing aid& comfort to the Antis. That was my point!

Like all threads of late, it's getting ridiculous. Soooo, for all you on the high horse, don't do it. For everybody else, go ahead on. Let your conscience be your guide; can you look at yourself in the mirror after the deed?

quote:

Originally posted by MacD37:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Uglystick:
MACD37,


The real thing I took exception to is the phrase you used that is right out of PeTa play book,

"It doesn't matter if the property is as big as the state of Rhode Island, if it is high fenced, it is a canned hunt!"

I wasn't aware this was a direct Peta quote. I never intended to give fuel to the enemy. I also admit that some fenced hunts are difficult and some "free range " hunts are much easier.


Good points all around

I've also seen pronghorn jump a fence. I've also seen them go under a fence and I've seen them go through a fence. Just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean they don't do it.

My biggest problem with the whole canned hunt thing is that a lot of people have no problem with artificially growing the biggest set of horns/antlers with artficial feeding and supplements and then shoot the animal under conditions nobody could consider sporting and then having their name placed in a record book.

I have no problem with documenting trophy game, but it has gotten out of hand. I also have no problem with hunting a fenced ranch, if it is done on foot and away from a feeding station and the ranch is large. I've done some exotic hunting during the off season in Tx, but I insisted it was on foot and no bait involved. It was an enjoyable experience, but I'm not going to fool myself by trying to claim it is the same thing as hunting elk back in my homestate of Colorado. I refuse to be dishonest to myself or anyone else.

The original purpose of the record book was to document where the biggest individuals from eack species came from and to compile that info for management purposes. Boone and Crockett still hold to the priniciple of fair chase, but SCI no longer does. I'm a life member of both, but don't put much stock in the SCI record book. If they have to seperate the game nto "Free Range" and "Estate" catagories, it don't take very long to figure out that a bunch of those animals are probably from canned hunts.

Canned hunting operations could very well be the death of hunting. I don't care if it is lions or rhino in RSA, whitetails over a feeder in Texas or Red Stags on an estate in Europe. It all spells trouble for us in the future.

My 2 cents worth.

Mac