Originally Posted By: abolt300
Originally Posted By: TtownBuckMaster
Originally Posted By: Neutral88
Originally Posted By: TtownBuckMaster
I have "hunted" in a high fence 2,600 acre farm and even with that much land - I can assure you it is not hunting. There were three of us in a "condo" shooting house and deer started coming into the field immediately. I finally decided to take a doe with my shotgun. After I shot, we went to go find the deer. However, I must have missed as I was using iron sights on the shotgun. The three of us trampled all over the woods looking for that deer. Finally, we decided we would get back in the shooting house and hunt a little more. Not 10 minutes after getting back into the shooting house, huge bucks started coming back into the field. It was something that would not of happened in "the wild." My buddy finally shot a cull buck and we went out into the field again and dragged that deer up to the shooting house. I might add that he shot twice at that deer. So, with a little daylight left, we got back into the shooting house and deer began to come into the field AGAIN! It was really pretty dumb. Felt like you were in a petting zoo.

I'm not against folks having high fence areas and I don't think it is the government's job to tell you one way or the other but if I ever make it big - I'll put my money towards more land, not high fence.


So were you trying to say it was easy? Cause you shot three times and only killed one deer


Yeah, I was trying to say it was easy. What part of that do you not understand or find fault?


Did you ever bother to think that maybe the reason that the deer acted the way they did was because they were well managed, well fed and not pressured. Pressure is the key. I hunt free range but have assisted with herd managment (doe shooting) in a couple large (1800 and 2800 acre) high fenced properties in central AL. The first couple years after they were fenced, the deer were still pretty hard to kill. Then 5-7 years later, they were much easier to see and shoot. Why, because the guys that owned them kept the pressure way way down. Most deer in AL are hunted everyday from Oct 15 to Jan 31. That's 109 days of being chased. Now, I know for a fact that between the two properties, there may have been 20 days of hunting pressure and then it was only 3 or 4 people (this is why they brought 6-8 of us in every year to kill does by the truckload). Unless they were bottle fed and aclimated to humans, in your situation, it probably wasnt that they had special easy to kill deer. You saw deer acting in an unpressured relaxed setting. Problem is, very few people in AL have ever seen or hunted a well managed unpressured herd. I've also been blessed with the opportunity to have hunted well managed privately owned, low pressure, free range land in AL and the deer were just as easy to kill there as they were in the fence. The ones that have can attest. Heck yeah it's easier to kill them when they arent pressured to death. AL deer are pressured and hunted so much that they are by far harder to kill than just about anywhere else in the US.


Not saying your wrong, but not sure that makes total sense. We hunt 1600 acres and it gets hunted around 2 days a week on avg. buy 2-3 different hunters on avg. That is not much pressure at all, but our deer are by no means easy to pattern, see or kill. We have more mature bucks now than 15 years ago, when we leased it to a club, but as for bucks being easier to kill and hunt, I don't think there is any difference even though pressure is about 1/10th of what it used to be. Pressure is definitely key but if you experienced deer being easier to kill after 5-7 years on less than 2000 acres then I would say that if anything, that is more evidence to show that deer in a fence are easier to kill, cause they are in a fence and don't have the free range factors to deal with and learn from. For example we would never shoot a yearling buck on our land but say that yearling that lives 90% of the time on our property decides one day to travel a mile or so to a club where they kill all age class bucks, and let's say a hunter shoots and misses this buck. That buck then comes back on our place with a bad human encounter, become a little more knowledgable and skittish and therefore become nocturnal most of the time at 2 years old and 99% of the time at 3 years old and older. Those kinds of situations could never occur in a fence. I think it makes more difference than people think. IMO