Canned Hunting
Check out this article about elk “hunting.”
[John Martone] paid $8,000 to bag his trophy on the 1,200-acre Mountain View Elk Ranch, a private facility surrounded by a high fence where elk are bred to produce giant antlers and hunters are guaranteed the biggest elk they can afford.
Guaranteed? As in, you don’t ever go home without meat, guarantee?
I like this:
As hunter and noted author Ted Kerasote puts it, “‘Canned hunting’ is a misnomer. More accurately defined as ‘shooting animals in small enclosures,’ the activity has nothing to do with the motives that inform authentic hunting: procuring healthy, organic food; participating in the timeless cycles of birth, death, and nurturing; honoring the lives that support us; and reconnecting with wildness. No matter where one stands on hunting—vehemently opposed to it or seeing it as yet another way to live sustainably on Earth—one ought to decry shooting animals behind fences.”
Some suggest this:
“What is fair chase?” said Ken Sedy, a retired deputy sheriff from Arlington, Wash., who paid $4,000 to shoot a bull that scored 298 points. “If you don’t see a fence, it’s just like hunting in the wild, but you’re guaranteed to go home and eat elk meat.”
What is “fair chase” mean to you?
“fair chase” is NOT this nonsense!
The lines kind of blur between creating favorable game habitat v. baiting & posting your property v. fencing. If I plant a food plot, build a tree stand and post my property, then am I creating a “canned hunt” for myself? With high property taxes and less time to hunt (because we have to work more to pay the property taxes), there is just less time to put into scouting and hunting. So you got to do something to increase your chances of harvesting game. I think I would have a little bit more time to hunt if I could hunt on Sunday!
Gene Wensel has some good thoughts on our inconsistencies with ‘drawing the line’ with regards to hunting ethics in his book “Come November”. Good reading.
Just viewed a good debate on Outdoor Life channel about hunting behind fences. Larry Weishun pointed out that most of these fenced properties out west cover thousands of acres. SOME – not all – of these hunts are not “shooting fish in a barrel”, and the animals are free ranging, truly wild. You need more detail before you judge such activities.