I have been a newspaper reporter for the last 30 years or so and am currently living in New Mexico. I wrote a story a few weeks back about a rather famous mule deer hunter who was operating a high-fence elk hunting operation inside the 40 acres he owned about eight miles from where I live in Grants. The owner, who wrote a well-selling book on mule deer hunting and got his butt in a crack in Colorado, came to New Mexico, got a state Class A Park license and began running the ranch. He buys old elk from people who raise them for one reason or the other and then, when he gets a so-called hunter paying the required fees, turns an elk lose on his land. The hunter goes out with his weapon and kills the elk in the 40-acre compound. I guess the hunter can go home and tell his, or her, buddies how the elk was chased through hill and dale and whatever. Anyway, the state requires a certain amount of record keeping. Seems there were two more elk than he allegedly had documentation for on his land. He reportedly told the game and fish investigators that the elk must have gotten caught up on his 40 acres when he was putting up the fence! From what I have been told the whole thing is still under investigation. I'll let you know as developments happen. This is also the same area where an outfitter was caught allegedly making bogus elk tags for unsuspecting hunters. I wrote a story about that as well. Seems the hunters had no idea they were buying alleged fake elk tags and were paying some high-dollar fees for them. That case too, is still under investigation.

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He reportedly told the game and fish investigators that the elk must have gotten caught up on his 40 acres when he was putting up the fence!

Might as well put it in a corral... Gee, how sportsman-like

Forty acres and ranch don't go together in NM. Not unless it is part of a development. Then I believe, even the developer goes on to use the word ranchette.

This sounds like someone who used to be a big name writer in NE NM back in the late 60s, early 70s. He was published nationally and a lot of his exploits supposedly took place near where I was living.
Local scuttlebutt was that fair-chase, legal and the guy would likely be MUTALLY EXCLUSIVE!

I hate when anyone besmirches the integrity of sportsman and hunters by running a cow pen where shooters kill a farm animal in a pen!

7x57mm,
I imagine you named the person in the newspaper article, why not here? Are you talking about Kirt Darner?

Yes, Kirt Darner is the man with the 40-acre hunting ranch. The fellow allegedly involved with the selling of bogus elk tags is a man by the name of Adrian Romero.

Penned shooting of an animal is not "hunting;" every time read about this type of controversy it amazes me that media try to tie it to hunting. If the person advertises it as hunting or if the people who participate in the activity want to call it hunting, so be it. Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire want to call what they have been doing as "training" but we all know the difference.

That being said I completely disagree with the practice of penned ranches on the grounds of disease procreation and in the case of some exotics, the potential to introduce deleterious genes into wild populations in the event of an escape.

I am not the slightest bit bothered by the fact that they "kill" the animals inside of a penned enclosue. If killing an animal that has been raised inside an enclosure to eat it etc. were so morally wrong, we would have a heck of a beef shortage on our hands. At least the person has the will to kill it themselves rather than go buy it in a grocery store.

But it is not and should never be considered hunting. Even though the media offer it as such, and even though the public perceives it as such.

Unfortunately, this persons actions are going to be lumped in with "hunting" (thanks to the media) and give our sport another black eye.

IV

Not a fair chase hunt by any means....

I don't mind a high fence but it should be at least 5000 acres of rough country, thats about all a man can hunt in a day or two and 25,000 ac. is a lot nicer...Some of these fenced ranches are a harder hunt then our Idaho forests, as the elk are hunted year around and wilder than a peach orchard boar...

Roping them might be fair chase but damn sure not shooting them.w/regards

I thought there was a new federal law on the books that high fenced hunting was a minimum of 1000 acres? Maybe the law didn't pass.

Kirt Darner? I haven't heard his name in a loooonnnngggg time.

I am with Atkinson, there are some fenced properties where hunting is surely HUNTING. Game may be plentiful due to contolled hunting pressures, but the animals sure are wild and have a bunch of country to wander around on!

IdahoVandal

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Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire want to call what they have been doing as "training" but we all know the difference.

I have a slightly different perspective to this to you, but let me first say that I am 100% against trophy hunts in such conditions.

To explain my perspective, here in the UK we have a number of "deer parks"..The origins of these date back many hundreds of years and most have their origins in two sources:
1) private hunting preserves for the local nobles. The preserves were sometimes called "chases" or "forests" and thats where the term "forest" comes from...nothing to do with trees just a hunting area.

2) The other origin usually of todays smaller deer parks were as larders for game-on-the-hoof before refrigeration came about again we are talking about the local nobility here.

As I say today there are still a number of these Parks left and they are normally associated with a Castle, Stately Home, or Manor House or other historic venues.

The deer are still kept but for ornamental reasons...The parks themselves are now generally smaller, most I guess between 50 and 500acres...

As a stalker in the UK, its quite common to be involved in culling deer in these Parks as their numbers have to be kept in check. The venison is sold and is a source of revenue for the owners ect. Sometimes the deer are head shot from 4x4 and sometimes they are stalked on foot.

The culling is not random and is very selective leaving the best heads on the ground for breeding ect.

Some owners are now selling these good animals, usually to visiting American or European hunters and they go for silly money. I heard of one American that was going to pay around $9000 for a huge, pure white fallow buck, but it was killed by another buck just before he came over!

That is the type of operation is that I am against as are most British stalkers I would guess...I have been offered the chance of a really nice buck as a "thank you" for helping with the culling operations, but turned it down as it would mean nothing to me.

Having said all that, what I do like about these set ups is that you can bring in a novice stalker and use the controlled conditions to get him "hands-on" expirience...You still have to stalk these deer as they can be very scittish so he/she can learn a little there. They can see deer in numbers, of all shapes and sizes and learn about the criteria for selection and again that is valuable in itself...Finally they can (usually) get a shot at a cull buck or doe and then go through the business of doing the gralloch and carcass inspection under supervision.

Where family's hunt together, I guess this is all father-to-son stuff, but in the UK stalking is growing in popularity at a rapid rate and many newcomers have no mentors in the family to teach them.

It is therefore a huge help for them to be able to take two or three deer under "semi controlled" conditions before venturing out and trying it for real so to speak...

Regards,

Pete

Pete:

Certainly a good idea to help encourage and introduce novice hunters. Although I believe the entire idea is to avoid having hunting ever come to that in the U.S. (In many cases it is already headed in that direction)

Any acceptance of penned killing of animals under the "banner" of hunting is (in my book) completely unacceptable. Period. We as hunters may completely understand that 4000 or 1000 or 50000 acres fenced in is often larger than many of the animals we hunt "home range size," the non-hunting general public who are often the undecided voters in most policy making decisions do not always see it that way. They hear "hunting" and "fence"- they make up their minds that it is bad. Granted, private land laws may be able to keep "ranch killing" as a viable alternative, but I believe if the push is made to keep this type of activity afloat, anti-hunters will use it to their advantage to further their anti-hunting agenda and eventually we will be relegated to nothing but such activities.

Again, I do not base my argument on some "moral" code, I could care less if someone wants to kill an animal in 10'x10' pen. It gives "hunting" a bad name with the general public. Unless millions of dollars are spent to educate the general public on what it "penned ranch hunting" (as they like to call it) really means, its a loser all the way around.

I am glad it works well in England, but with all respect, I am very wary of modeling anything after the Brits, we seceded from them 229 years ago for a reason....

Tally ho!

IV

I'm surprised at the elk hunters out there. You should encourage this type of "hunting". It keeps the Dudes where they belong, instead of out there competeing with real Hunters.

I used to consider Kirk the forth member of the godhead, and was his most ardent defender. I still consider his mule deer book the bible of mule deer hunting.
However, he is a deceiver, and now he trying to make money off deceivers. I'm surprised that he has sunk this low, or perhaps he never sunk at all.

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I'm surprised at the elk hunters out there. You should encourage this type of "hunting". It keeps the Dudes where they belong, instead of out there competeing with real Hunters.

Good point, but these guys could never compete against real hunters.

IdahoVandal,

I don't think we see things too differently...Any shooting I do in Deer Parks I see as "culling" not hunting and it was done purely for population control/management. Actually its very interesting but it can be hard work with the numbers involved..

Having said that, one of the most "fun" places I have ever stalked was an old walled garden for a big House that had long since gone...The garden was no more than 5 or 6 acres and was completely over grown with bramble and other shrubs. Over the years the wall had fallen in places and had been patched with bits of stocking fencing to keep out stock from the adjacent farmland.

At some stage, muntjac, (a small deer between the size of a jackrabbit and a lab say) had got in and established themselves in there...there racks (pathways) riddled the place and it was great to sit or stand some where and wait for a fleeting glance as they scurried across from on patch of cover to another. At dusk the bucks would start barking (they sound just like a terrier) to proclaim their territories and you would hear the bucks outside respond. I only ever managed to take the odd doe from there as literally as soon as you entered there would be an alarm bark from somewhere but it was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours on a summers evenning and a world away from my "usual" type of "serious" stalking in Scotland..

Regards,

Pete

there is a guy doing something similar here in utah. every one says he is a crooked guy. the thing that sucks is some wild elk and deer got into his place either by accident or on purpose, most are saying on purpose, and now all the animals that got into his place have to be killed. I personally don't think elk and mule deer should be allowed to be fenced in or owned by an individual

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operating a high-fence elk hunting operation inside the 40 acres.

For good reason, this reminds me of not so many years ago when pork prices were so low that farmers were losing $ on every sale here in Minnesota. A couple of them had the bright idea that they could sell pork directly to folks who wanted to kill their own pig. They offered the chance to go to a farm, shoot (with weapon of choice) a pig, and take it home gutted and quartered. It sounded great to me! Cheap pig!!! I wish we could get all farm meat that way, by cutting out the middle man.
However, animal rights activists and other BUSINESS INTERESTS dealt a death blow to the proposal. Seems that the packers, retailers, and animal rights folks all joined together (strange, huh?) to screw us out of a good deal. Its ok to kill them at a meat plant, but not as an organized shoot on the farm with bow or firearm. Of course, the farmer can still capture them and put a bullet in their head the old fashioned farm way. No way they could stop that.

The proposed (now illegal) pig shoots sound about like that 40-acre elk "hunt." Its ok with me if folks want to do it, but its even lower than having a guide find your animal for you.

Interesting........elk and to a lesser extent deer are a herd animal. If you have a number of them in an enclosure and open the gate the wild ones will enter the enclosure to be with the herd. It's very easy to increase your animal numbers. At 5grand a pop I could understand why operators would be interested in doing that. Thats one reason that I'm totally aginst farmed animal hunting or canned hunts. The only one I might be in favour of would be bison and they are pretty much looked at as a cow nowdays.

the chef

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Originally posted by SBT:
Are you talking about Kirt Darner?

Funny, I thought the SAME thing as soon as I read the initial post.

I lived in Montrose and Norwood back in the early 80's, shortly after his name started to get "tarnished". There were some guys that SWORE he was legit, that all of those big bucks were taken in season, fair chase, on foot, public land.

Now here it is 20+ years later, and the guy's still doing the same stupid crap....

He wasn't a "hunter" back then, and he's no "outfitter" now, but he still manages somehow to sucker people in and still makes money at it. Amazing.

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Originally posted by calgarychef1:
Interesting........elk and to a lesser extent deer are a herd animal. If you have a number of them in an enclosure and open the gate the wild ones will enter the enclosure to be with the herd. It's very easy to increase your animal numbers. At 5grand a pop I could understand why operators would be interested in doing that. Thats one reason that I'm totally aginst farmed animal hunting or canned hunts. The only one I might be in favour of would be bison and they are pretty much looked at as a cow nowdays.
the chef

calgarychef1,

I wonder if any of these elk/deer pens have "deer leaps" as part of the fence? Basically, you arrange a soil ramp or take advantage of a natural bank and the idea is that the ground on the outside of the fence/wall is alot higher than on the inside. The net result is that deer can leap into the pen/park but can't can't leap out as the fence is now "taller" once they are on the inside. The usual time for this activity is the run to and including the Rut when the ladies on the inside effectively act as "bait"..

Regards,

Pete

Shooting, not hunting.

I wonder if it is possible to shoot them while they are still in the trailer. It just seems like this would make it a lot easier to drag it out and haul ones "prize" to the locker plant. Made out of proper material one could also collect the bullets that fully penetrate.

When the constitution was written, free speech meant the right to criticize the government without being thrown in jail. Obscenity was not protected.

Now we have a situation where unless you own a media company it is illegal to write about the government, but obscenity is protected by the supreme court.

No wonder the press is confused about what a hunter does. And this is even before we get on to media bias.

Present company excepted, of course, 7x57.

I am new here. In fact this is my first post. I was born and raised about 25 miles from this high fence ranch is. I own and operate an outfitting business out there, and here in Tx. I have heard bad things about Mr. Darner. A guy that works for me lives just down the road from him. It sounds like he is always in trouble with the law.
Toby Joe