Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa High fencing the western USA along hundreds of miles of Highways

As many of you know me here, my business and profession, the discussion on multiple forums has come up regarding the high fence hunting concessions in Southern Africa.

I have an interesting observation from some experience over the last two years of my travels across the Western Half of the USA. My wife and I have driven over 14,000 miles this year pulling a 22' travel trailer across 18 western states and 2 Canadian provinces. 2015 was similar although a slightly lower mileage total.

During these miles of 4 lane interstate and 2 lane "backroads" across the more remote areas of Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, etc etc. we have been surprised to see the hundreds if not thousands of miles of 8' high fence lining both directions of the highways. In some cases as in Montana these are along I 90 and I 94 on the south and then on Highway 2 and 12 in the north.

The game in this area of the state is fenced from leaving freely north and south. In technical terms its still free to depart to the east or west. However in many of those cases a town, city, or developed area, or natural geography would block the travel. So the game is not completely fenced with a 360 deg high fence, although the effects are mostly the same. They cannot run free out of sight and be gone with a high fence that disappears into the horizon in both directions.

I know this is not apples and apples perfect comparison, however it is closer now then it was 10 years ago With the amount of road side high fencing increasing by dozens if not hundreds of miles a year across the western USA. It's becoming a nearly identical comparison to hunting game behind a fence. When you have a fence that is 10 plus miles long, that game is stuck there. It's not as if it's going to be chased into a corner in either RSA, on Texas high fenced properties, or "free range" elk and mule deer in any of the western states.

Does it really matter if you fence 10-30-50 miles of fence line to a side along an American Highway in the Western USA or Canada, or the same length of fence to a side in Southern Africa?

I'm not trying to stir the pot with a aggressive debate on this. Just that the situation seems so obvious now with these highways being high fenced for safety in the USA. This is also the same reason for plenty of fencing in RSA.

I worked on a farm 25 years ago in RSA that was fenced along two property lines. Both along main thoroughfares (gravel roads for heavy truck traffic) . The fencing was done for the safety of vehicles 70 years prior to this being a game fenced ranch. The third side of the property was fenced along a railroad track for about 20kilometers. This left the south eastern boundary open, for about 30 kilometers. These two roads were freight transport routes, these drivers would be "flying" at stupid high speed often with several trailers in tow. The only place I have seen this similar condition was in Australia across the outback with "trailer trains" screaming across the outback.

Three sides of this 50,000 plus acres was fenced for protection of lives and property, none originally as a game fenced property. That remaining side was fenced by the neighbor to keep his livestock safe from hoof and mouth transmitted by wild game. This accidental or coincidental set of conditions created the RR fence, and a state built roadway fence on two sides which completely made captive all the wild game inside.

When you have about 5-10 miles per side or more, and on many properties much more. It's not as if your able to hunt or shoot game in a pasture. I don't see this as a huge difference. In some cases no different then the way the western USA is building fencing along highways in many remote areas now.

JJ, not wanting to get into the high fence debate, but I do have a question for you.

How come the SA outfitters base their trophy fees on what the auction prices are in SA for those specific animals?

That is the only accepted standard of value. How much is an animal worth?

It's not a realistic way to set a price, and I don't know of any outfitter that uses that to set his prices for trophy fees. Who could afford to shoot a kudu if the price at auction for a 60" bull is 100,000 USD?

If you research the way Red Deer are bred and raised in New Zealand for antler mass, you can begin to understand the current trend or process in RSA going on now. RSA is probably 20 years behind New Zealand in developing supernatural trophies. Look at the whitetail farms in the midwestern USA that are shooting 100 point deer that score 400plus B&C! They are absurd examples of trophy animals. Have you ever seen some of the mega red deer in New Zealand? I do not know how they can hold their heads up!

A vial of frozen Red Deer Sperm is worth 10,000 bucks in New Zealand because of the genetics it holds for a new ranch owners herd. Some of these "super" examples of game are priced at insane levels of money. At one time in RSA this was for happening with Buffalo, Sable, roan and Rhino. It's grown now into breeding every species to supernatural sizes, and color strain. Well except maybe warthogs and Steenbok. I'm sure they are next!

We currently have on our property Blue Wildebeest that are as red as a Red Hartebeest. Thy have almost blonde manes. We are not hunting them, they are just cool looking. I'm not even sure I remember how this came to be. I do know that once we found one a bit oddly colored we darted it and kept it separate from the huntable population. This was then bred and the reddish calves were kept, the blue ones turned out.

My Business partner found another fella with a few of these he managed to select out of his property as well. They traded for genetic diversity and we now have about 100 of them. It's no different then the white Blesbok or Black impala. Once a unique specimen is found, it's bred for volume and purity of that variation.

On a scientific note, the quagga has been being rebred by the Museum in Capetown for about 30 years now. They have brought this animal back from extinction by breeding back the traits of the Quagga found in rare instances of the Burchells Zebra.

When a Burchells is found with the visual traits of the Quagga it's blood line is introduced to the herd. The now " new Quagga" is thriving in a breedable population of sorts. This is a rare stipe pattern that was gone from nature. However the original Quagga bred the Burchells on occasion so this genetic throwback has been cultivated back into existence.

Namibia has a similar program for the King Cheetah which is an incredible color variation of the common cheetah thought to have been extinct as well.

I've seen those fences in western states and it's not an apples to oranges comparison, it's apples to watermelons. The purpose of those fences is to keep the animals off the highways so they don't get killed and so they don't jeopardize the safety of people using the roads--not to contain the animals within a specific private property. If you noticed, in addition to the fences there are a lot of crossings built so the animals can get from one side of the road to the other--overpasses that have no pavement on them, just soil and grass. And there are earthen ramps constructed on the side of the fence facing the road, so that if animals do get into the road right-of-way, they can climb the ramps and cross the fence to get back out.

Not remotely comparable to a high fence built to contain animals on someone's private property.

Yep - interstate fencing is to help minimize car crashes with wild and domestic animals. And to dissuade two legged animals from accessing roads any place they see fit.
The comparison has no merit whatsoever.

It's a topic that can and will be debated around campfires -both real and virtual- endlessly.

I suppose for me it depends on the animal and the terrain and the area fenced. If the animals in question would estblish their natural range well within the area fenced in, then it is really academic at that point. Fence or no fence, they'd live in that area until moved out my overpopulation, predation, or search for food/water during drought.

Something that gave me pause to think about all of this can while doing a buff hunt in Zambia in game concession in GMA. No fences and a large area to hunt. I asked my PH how difficult it was going to be to find a herd and he chuckled. On his concessions, they hid up in the shade in one of two places, watered in the river, and fed in between in the early morning and late afternoon. He said he knew where they would be, and he did. Also, it turned out the lions knew their habits too, which made for intereting times.

I think I must not have written this as articulately as I should have.

The Country of RSA began the fencing operations along main roads and Railways identically to the way the USA is doing this now, and for exactly the same reasons. Collisions with game at high speed by all sorts of vehicles and the train travel.

In some cases the roads were high fenced on multiple sides of large 10-50 thousand acre ranches. This was entirely due to the routing of roads across country.

In addition to this, many cattle ranchers would deliberately high fence to keep wild game out of their lands. During the era of history that this massive fencing operation was done because of hoof and mouth disease.

So it was in fact the origin of high fencing operations. Few ranchers could have ever afforded to put up 100-200 miles of 8' fence. However the province was pressured to do so to protect the travelers and the game crossing roadways. Once the sides of a property were fenced it was not as big a job to complete the remaining sections.

I have seen this having lived through much of this era in RSA. it's a nearly identical model to what is being done now in the USA. It's not until you drive for hours across the western states and see the many miles of eight foot fence that you see the identical application and for the identical reasons.

regardless if your hunting "free range" game that has an 8 foot fence as a boundary, on any side, it's no longer free range. This fence which runs into the horizon while looking at it in either direction cannot be defined as anything but a barrier. Regardless if it's a fence along Interstate 90 across Washington, Idaho, or Montana. Or if it's a 10-30 mile section along the N-1 in South Africa.

I would disagree with that and say that it depends on whether the fence ever comes into play to either restrict movement or manage genetics.

I will drive out I-70 (CO) in a few hours to get to a bear hunting spot. It has high fences along some sections, including an area about 30 miles from where I plan to hunt. The fence will never come into play. A few bears from my hunting area may migrate down to the highway at one time or another but the vast majority will never come near the fence; there's no reason for them to.

The same could be said for most of the fences along major highways in western states. Yes, if you hunt right up against the fence or near it, it may come into play but the vast majority of hunting takes place far enough away from the high-fenced roads so that the fences don't matter. When you're pulling a trailer along the highway, you see a lot of high fence. When you get off the interstate, you don't.

To say that elk hunters in Montana are not hunting free range game because of fences along the interstate is ridiculous in my opinion.

Also as I said earlier, when these fences are built in areas where big game animals are known to migrate, passages are built to allow the animals to cross. Do they construct them the same in RSA?

Yep this is the same in South Africa on a high fenced property. 99% of the hunts occur in areas of the property where you will never see a fence in a week or two of hunting. The animals might come into contact with a fence over the course of their lives, but when your hunting on 30,000 acres of land which is about 45,000 plus square miles I think? it's big enough that the fence is not even in the picture. Many properties are far bigger then 30,000 acres as well. However, I could also mention that properties as small as 7500 acres ( about 12 square miles) are often times forested with bush so thick you will not see any fence and finding game is very difficult.

Having seen Kudu jump an 8 foot fence as easily as a house cat jumps up to a table or a 2000 lb bull eland clears an 8 foot fence on the run, shows that the fencing is a token effort in many cases. This does not even take into consideration how many Gemsbok and impala will squeeze under the fence where the warthogs go back and forth day and night.

I wonder how many people realize that the high fence is not the choice of the landowner to keep game captive? It's the requirement of the government to prevent the wild game of RSA from being shot on private land. The actual legal reasoning for the high fencing is to provide the ranch owner with a legal exemption for hunting seasons and limits. Once you have the game safely fenced to prevent wild game from getting onto your land you can be granted the season and limit exemptions. The government is the entity requiring the high fence, not the rancher.

The Rancher is now fully responsible for the population management and wildlife health, not the country of RSA.

Your math is off by orders of magnitude. 30,000 acres is about 46 square miles.

Still a lot of ground that most species won't cover in a lifetime.

Yeah, I'm not sure how the zeros came in after that 45?
I know it's not 45000 square miles some kind of crazy typo or spastic typing!

An 8 feet tall fence won't stop deer. It takes 10' to 12' fences to keep them out of the yards around here.

Off topic a hair, but...
Barbed wire fencing is a scourge overall throughout the West.
I understand the need for *some* of it. We have cattle and we have a single strand of barbed over Redbrand game fencing. After daughter and I found a young moose hung up in barbed wire, suffering and gasping it's last as the coyotes ate it alive, I cursed it.

Our cattleman neighbor has about 160 acres here and runs barbless, except for the top row.
He moved here from Utah where he had 1000's of acres. He told me that one year he pulled 40 (FORTY!) dead mule deer hung up on barbed wire around his place.

does size matter?

is an island a "high fence operation"?

is Prince of Wales "high fenced" for bears and deer?

Funny that you bring this up. I was a hunting guide in SE Alaska for many years. During this time I wondered the same thing.

Take Wrangle island for example. How does this fit into the mix. Folks are hunting a stocked non indigenous species there. Elk transplanted from Washington state. They are captive being fenced by the sea. Alaska fish and game transplanted these to the island. However there are elk shot on neighboring islands on rare occasion, Ak F&W as I remember had a no season no limit elk hunt on any neighboring island. They do not want them anyplace but Wrangle. They have been known to fall from a cliff, or just simply decide to swim? Maybe things have changed, I'v not been working there for 20 years now.

That's not all that different from the Kudu and Eland jumping an 8 foot fence at random. Whenever they choose to depart or when they smell something sweet during the rut.