Vote: What's more fair chase?

What's more fair chase?

  • No fence with congregating food sources (plots or feeders)

    Votes: 11 36.7%
  • In a fence, but no congregating food source

    Votes: 3 10.0%
  • Epstein didn't kill himself

    Votes: 19 63.3%

  • Total voters
    30

SD51555

5 year old buck +
I hope this works. We might break the internet with this thread.

I think we may have stumbled onto something worth discussing. I have no dog in this fight, but I think these conversations are worth having if we're to evolve and preserve the sport in a world that is rapidly eliminating wild lands. So, let's dig in.

Thinking about what is fair chase.... cast your vote, and you can vote for multiple choices.

**Assume equal deer per square mile inside the fence as outside the fence, and high quality thick habitat, no state plywood fields.
 
50,000 acres high fenced is probably more fair than 30 acres high fenced. 50,000 acres high fenced probably has more get-away opportunity for deer than a lot of common woodlots being hunted around the country. Everything is relative.

Personally I don't like fence or bait piles, but I do like plots.
 
It all depends on the acreage fenced. My across the road neighbor has high fenced 1400 acres. That is over two square miles. No food plots. It is MUCH more difficult to see a deer on his place than my unfenced, but highly managed 350 acres. I think it just depends on the situation. I know some guys who have hunted on some large fenced properties in TX and did not see the fence in a week of hunting other than the day they arrived and the day they left.

Personally, as a hunter who baits, I feel baiting an unfenced property might even put more deer on bait than an unfenced property - I can draw deer from a much larger area than most non texas high fenced properties.
 
All your options are fair chase unless you throw Nosejammer into the mix, then none of it is fair. Can't jam an animal's prime defenses and call it a fair match at the same time. :)

I don't care how anyone else hunts. Seems to me it's the equivalent to caring how someone else makes love to their wife... none of my business what they consider fun (or fair chase, or sporting, or kinky, or taboo).
 
A 4th choice should be added ... rationalization is the 2nd strongest human drive ...
 
There is no scenario where a fence is fair chase. If it didn’t impact it why have it? 10,000 or 20 acres it’s a closed loop environment where you control things that a natural environment throws at you.

Bait isn’t for me. I’m my mind it’s not fair chase. I’ve heard every argument for it under the sun for it. I just can’t rationalize dumping a pile of corn and sitting by it. I’ve done nothing to “earn” that deer. I value wildlife too much to simply kill something by any means necessary.

I think hunting is getting to a place where the outcome is barley in question. It’s gross. Very few people want to know how to hunt or how to manage. They want instant gratification and the only way to achieve that is a fence and/or a corn pile.

It’s more of an accomplishment to me to kill a spike under free range conditions than a booner in a fence or over corn.

*probably not making any friends am I! Just know I don’t dislike you if you disagree!
 
There is no scenario where a fence is fair chase. If it didn’t impact it why have it? 10,000 or 20 acres it’s a closed loop environment where you control things that a natural environment throws at you.

Bait isn’t for me. I’m my mind it’s not fair chase. I’ve heard every argument for it under the sun for it. I just can’t rationalize dumping a pile of corn and sitting by it. I’ve done nothing to “earn” that deer. I value wildlife too much to simply kill something by any means necessary.

I think hunting is getting to a place where the outcome is barley in question. It’s gross. Very few people want to know how to hunt or how to manage. They want instant gratification and the only way to achieve that is a fence and/or a corn pile.

It’s more of an accomplishment to me to kill a spike under free range conditions than a booner in a fence or over corn.

*probably not making any friends am I! Just know I don’t dislike you if you disagree!
You're not offending me. We're all searching for something as close to real as possible.

I'd argue most will never experience fair chase without a fence.

If you've got negative external and unnatural pressures, you don't have fair chase, for you or the deer.

How fair is it when deer go nocturnal because they've been run non-stop by crack house dogs?
How fair is it when everyone around you takes their plot saver down from their 10 acre bean field that you cannot afford?
How fair is it when you feed the deer living on 3000 acres around you all year, but you only get to hunt your 80, while your neighbors do nothing and win because they stayed out while you toiled?
How about the guy that can afford extreme habitat improvement? The best cover, the best browse, the best water, the best blinds, the best access?

I would love to be my neighbor.

Nothing is fair chase anymore. It might as well be as close to real as possible.
 
I'm going to lose faith in you guys if option 3 doesn't win this poll.
 
You're not offending me. We're all searching for something as close to real as possible.

I'd argue most will never experience fair chase without a fence.

If you've got negative external and unnatural pressures, you don't have fair chase, for you or the deer.

How fair is it when deer go nocturnal because they've been run non-stop by crack house dogs?
How fair is it when everyone around you takes their plot saver down from their 10 acre bean field that you cannot afford?
How fair is it when you feed the deer living on 3000 acres around you all year, but you only get to hunt your 80, while your neighbors do nothing and win because they stayed out while you toiled?
How about the guy that can afford extreme habitat improvement? The best cover, the best browse, the best water, the best blinds, the best access?

I would love to be my neighbor.

Nothing is fair chase anymore. It might as well be as close to real as possible.

Yeah I definitely get what you are saying. I remember listening to Cameron Hanes talk about now that he has “made it” he doesn’t have to pack 10 days in to the backcountry and he hunts elk on private land that act like elk. You know, actually bugle and respond. That was interesting.
At the same time they are still wild.

Variables such as dogs and property lines and neighbors actions are part of an equation to a problem that we must solve if we want to be successful. I don’t want to tip the scales in my favor. I like not knowing the outcome, I don’t mind working and grinding and sweating and freezing and eating a tag because when it happens I promise it means something. And that’s why I do it. A guy could show me a 280” deer he shot in a redneck blind with a heater with his 300 mag on a sliding gun sled and his 10,000 acre Texas high fence, with a 2 ton feeder full of protein and corn and I would laugh inside. He may think he’s daniel Boone but to me my 8 year nephew could do the same thing.

But you could totally disagree and that’s fine! This was about personal opinions
 
It depends on the size of the enclosure. I understand fencing a thousand or more acres, and would if I could. Wanna talk fair chase, put up the firearms and go bow only. There are a million ways to look at "fair chase."
 
It depends on the size of the enclosure. I understand fencing a thousand or more acres, and would if I could. Wanna talk fair chase, put up the firearms and go bow only. There are a million ways to look at "fair chase."
Better not have pulleys on that bow Mr. :)
 
All your options are fair chase unless you throw Nosejammer into the mix, then none of it is fair. Can't jam an animal's prime defenses and call it a fair match at the same time. :)

I don't care how anyone else hunts. Seems to me it's the equivalent to caring how someone else makes love to their wife... none of my business what they consider fun (or fair chase, or sporting, or kinky, or taboo).
Once I discovered the power of gypsum, I couldn't in good faith call it fair chase any longer. It is improved chase though.
 
Once I discovered the power of gypsum, I couldn't in good faith call it fair chase any longer. It is improved chase though.
You make matters even worse now that you found the flax. There may need to be new regulations put in place to slow guys like you down.
 
Better not have pulleys on that bow Mr. :)
Training wheels? Want an equalizer get rid of the release... no triggers allowed in archery season!

Lots of non-hunters absolutely believe that none of what hunters do is fair chase, especially firearms (but many include bows in their opinion).

I go back to... I don't care what any of ya do.
 
I care what all of you do. If it's not exactly what I do, you're all immoral murderers. :)
 
You make matters even worse now that you found the flax. There may need to be new regulations put in place to slow guys like you down.
Great, now the secret is out. Hang on, because the flax episodes are going to start popping up from the habitat hustlers. This is how we lost our edge with acorn squash above the 46th parallel.
 
Great, now the secret is out. Hang on, because the flax episodes are going to start popping up from the habitat hustlers. This is how we lost our edge with acorn squash above the 46th parallel.
Just wait until I develop a awnless wheat that is cold tolerant to Canada and can be grown with flax! Nothing will be fair then.
 
Great, now the secret is out. Hang on, because the flax episodes are going to start popping up from the habitat hustlers. This is how we lost our edge with acorn squash above the 46th parallel.

I can see it now... get your BOB seed fortified with flax seed ... the heart healthy choice for your deer! :emoji_stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
 
Then try using a spear and watch the whole world come down on you. Haha. Can't make everyone happy.
 
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