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Good discussion about game farms, the money game.
Topic Started: Apr 6 2014, 12:35 PM (262 Views)
Renegade
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Atikokan, Ontario
Editorial: Pursuit of big antlers isn’t worth the risks

In one appalling case in Indiana, according to prosecutors, hunters paid a preserve owner thousands of dollars to stalk and kill deer inside a 1-acre pen. Some deer, according to witnesses, were drugged to make them easier to shoot. One deer, suffering from pneumonia, was so sick that it apparently was propped up so that a hunter crouching nearby could kill it with a rifle. The hunter paid $15,000 for the privilege.

All for the antlers.

And, on the part of breeders and preserve owners, all for the money.

The high-fenced hunting industry in Indiana has long raised alarming questions about sportsmanship, humane treatment of the animals and the disease risk posed to wild deer when out-of-state animals are introduced here. Animal protection groups and many hunters have pushed for stronger regulation of preserves, and for an outright ban, on high-fenced hunting, with little success.

Now, an investigation by Indianapolis Star reporter Ryan Sabalow and photographer Robert Scheer has revealed the dangers posed by the practice of captively breeding, transporting and then shooting deer inside fenced hunting grounds.

The market, loosely regulated, has developed because the deer have been bred to grow abnormally large racks of antlers. The deer are kept inside fences to ensure that wealthy clients have much better odds of finding and killing a prized buck. In some cases, hunters even select specific animals from online catalogs.

All of that makes a mockery of traditional hunting. Worse, it poses a health hazard for other deer, livestock and potentially even humans when diseased deer are transported across state lines.

In the case described above, the hunting preserve’s owner, Russ Bellar, served nine months in federal prison because of his operation’s excesses. But lobbyists representing deer farmers have pushed for the federal government to eliminate some of the rules that got Bellar in trouble.

State regulations, meanwhile, are all over the map. In Indiana, there’s legal confusion about whether farm-bred and -raised deer are classified as livestock or wildlife. Courts have issued conflicting rulings on the matter, and as a result the Department of Natural Resources has stopped regulating the four hunting preserves that operate in the state.

It’s incumbent on the Indiana General Assembly to clear up the confusion. Lawmakers also should finally put a permanent end to high-fenced hunting in the state in light of the serious abuses revealed by The Star’s investigation.

Congress also needs to set tougher standards for the interstate transport of deer, elk and other animals bound for hunting preserves.

The pursuit of big antlers simply isn’t worth the health hazards and ethical challenges the industry creates.

http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/2014/04/04/editorial-pursuit-big-antlers-worth-risks/7324021/

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There's nothing wrong with trophy hunting and if that's the standard people want to set for themselves and manage their land to increase their opportunities towards that...great!

What's wrong in regards to trophy hunting is the way it's taken over deer hunting. Just about every company in the industry, most magazines, and nearly every tv show push the trophy hunting mentality. Even QDMA's message is lost to many because they feel it's a trophy hunting organization. Here in Indiana, many deer hunters felt that the few were trying to push a trophy bow hunting agenda @ the expense of those who choose to gun hunt. It didn't pass a couple of years ago, but with crossbows legal now, and bowhunting harvest numbers rising in Indiana, I agree with many that gun seasons will eventually be moved and shortened in this state.

Regardless, this push for trophy hunting has led to people willing to spend huge sums of money to kill a trophy buck. And I agree it's their money and if they want to spend it in a legal manner so be it.

The problems start when it prices the average deer hunter out. Many will say..."tough, can't afford it, go bowling". And that's all fine and good until the sport of hunting loses enough participants that their power in the state house and Washington is diminished to the point that no one listens. Throw in the touchy subjects of preserves and game farms and many non-hunters who supported hunting in the past are liable to look @ hunting in a whole new light and are much less likely to support "trophy hunting". And with fewer hunters in the game and non-hunter support going down, plus the loss of license revenue and taxes from sporting good sales dwindling, I doubt hunting will have much of a future in this country.

As far as high fence preserves and deer farms go, they are gaining a larger foot hold in deer hunting every year.
And while many trophy hunters say they wouldn't step into these places for free, it sure isn't the "brown and down crowd" or "joe average deer hunter" keeping these places going.
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Shane
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Team Ontario Trophy Bucks
Nothing I myself would personally do but I'm not against an honest living either
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Posted Image Muskoka Whitetails
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Don't even know where to start with this one. First of all farmed deer in Ontario are governed by the Ministry of Agriculture which for all intensive purposes they are regulated the same as a cow, each individual animal is tracked. In the states they are regulated by the department of natural resources but they are trying to change it to Agriculture. Just as you have poachers in hunting, you have deer farmers that break the rules and don't practice good ethics which give the rest a bad name. (just as non hunters hear about poaching and think all hunters behave that way) As far as I am concerned all wild deer are also farmed deer. Man has changed the wild areas so much with preventing forest fires, logging, supplemental feeding, food plots, hunting regs and limits etc. that you are kidding yourself if you don't think Ontario is a big farm especially in southern Ontario.
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"A peculiar virtue in wildlife ethics is that the hunter has no gallery to applaud or disapprove his conduct. Whatever his acts, they are dictated by his own conscience, rather than onlookers. It is difficult to exaggerate the importantance of this fact."                                      Aldo Leopold
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trophy
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I think hunting within fences should be illegal. No matter the size.
Trophy hunting is just a way hunters figured out to spend much , much more time in the woods.
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Judge
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Saw an add somewhere that had the prices of each deer , started at $10,000 AND ALL THE WAY UP TO 1 MILLION DOLLARS.
\Just a little out of my price range.
And wow the racks were unbelevable
Amherstburg Ontario Deer ,Bear, Moose, Turkey, and Coyotes.

Hunting, ice fishing, hunting, woodcarving, did I mention, hunting.
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