Are these common in your country?

I have noticed French hunting magazines carry many adverts for preserve hunts, what would be called park deer here in the UK. Similarly, you can stalk 'park deer' over here that cannot be found naturally in the British Isles, such as Pere David deer and Barasingha.

Are these parks getting more popular in other countries, or have they always been around? Are any of them sporting propositions, or mainly a way to collect big heads with little effort? While I have hunting in fenced areas in South Africa, I find it difficult to believe the same size areas are hunted in Europe. Any experiences?

Belgium is the only country I know of where these operations are illegal. Any others?

We dont have ANY of these. Not a single one. I guess the reason is that "normal" hunting is so acessible (despite this, only 0.1% of the population are hunters, which might be the reason for the acessibility in the first place) that no-one would visit such venues. Wouldn't be commercially viable to own such a thing. The closest thing might be a pheasant shoot, but there aren't many of those either. It seems that our hunters prefer "the wild experience". And who could blame them...

you can find them in denmark, they are not very big so i find them a bit put and take like. but it is the only way for you to hunt boar in denmark. but again then you could just go to sweden for that. to me it is just a shoot and as long people call it that, then to each his own.

peter

Bog.
As far as I know, they dont exist in Norway.
A few Zoos/parks with animals, both exotic and domestic, but all stalking, shooting and hunting is on free roaming animals and birds.

in central Italy, specially in Tuscany, we have a number of private fenced reserves. They are very small: from 50 to 300 hectares, sometimes with smaller eclusoures inside. They have Wild Boar, Fallow deer and Mouflon sheep. Sometimes even Red deer. See one:
http://www.agricolabrunelli.it/
Off course is not real hunting, but only a place where to go for a week end with buddies for fun. Normally the accomodation is very confortable in some old tipycal farm houses.
The prices are normally good for the does and the youg animals, expensive with a pijnt system for the bucks and the stags.
The wild boar hunting with hounds is good.

In Slovenia we have 3 bigger hunting reserves each measuring app. 1100 Ha - 2 are in southern part (mainly boars, fallow and mouflon) and one is in north (mainly red deer). They are all under state management (Ministry of forests). They also support the research work on wildlife for State University ect. Hunting (shooting) is possible - costly - but usually the only way for colectors to get a gold boar tusks for sure with litle sweat.

Hunting between fences is strictly forbidden in Belgium.