During my tenure at Academy, I attended a lot of hunts hosted by manufacturers like Strike King and Mossy Oak. The Mossy Oak boys do it right and still hunt the way I like to hunt. But I was totally turned off by a hunt hosted by StealthCam at the Nooner Ranch in Hondo, TX. Sammy Nooner is the first deer breeder to pay over $1Million for a breeder buck. I asked ahead of time and was told that portions of the ranch were free range and other portions high fenced. So I accepted. Turned out to be all high fence. Some "hunting" enclosures were as small at 100 acres. Total canned hunt in my opinion. I did the gracious guest routine and hung around camp, but no way was I shooting anybody's domesticated livestock under the guise of hunting. One of the invitees shot a 170" buck and StealthCam gladly paid the $9,600 trophy fee. A group of 180-class bucks were feeding behind the lodge while Sammy and I sat on the back porch. He said, "Don't you want to kill a buck like that? You are welcome to." I replied, "Yes sir I do want to kill a buck like that, but only if it is under free range fair chase conditions." To this day I have no appetite for Outdoor Channel shows built around this kind of "hunt."
You have better self control than I do.
I would have shot one and let them pay for it. I might even name it cow or something.
Then there was the hunt I attended at Ray Murski's ranch in Meridian, TX. His ranch was just about 6,000 acres high fenced. I accepted the invite based on my opinion that it would be fair chase hunting that size area. Well, by daylight the next morning I'm looking at 38 racked bucks in a greenfield. I turn to the guide and ask, "does every deer on this ranch have a tag in its ear?" He says, "Oh yeah. Every one of these deer is pen raised and then released." I asked if there was any place where I could hunt a free range deer, and he said yes. He took me to an unfenced area of the ranch and I killed a nice 10 point that is considered inferior by their standards, but I was glad to have harvested him on my terms. It turned out to be win-win because Ray graciously accommodated me and I didn't shoot his pen raised livestock.
