Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Guaranteed 7x7 ... $6,000.00

What a crock!<P>I just received a flyer in my mail today from an outfit in Missouri called High Adventure Ranch ... "Serving Discriminating Sportsmen Since 1983." <P>These guys make me sick! Listen to this: "On rare occasions we have to hunt by horseback, but normally it is by 4 x 4 with a final stalk on foot."<P>Who the hell ever heard of road hunting for elk?!!<P>It goes on:<P>"We had 100% success for the last 14 years. Who else can claim this? The longest hunt was three days for a 10x8 Monarch bull. This magnificent animal was taken by a lady hunter."<P> WHAT??? <P>It may have been taken by a lady, and we'll use that term loosely, but by no means was she a "hunter." I hope she didn't get her hair mussed when she stepped out of her carriage! <P>I can't believe these outfits even exist, much less make it economically for 17 years! What kind of a "hunter" can kill a farm-raised elk and display the mount as if it were some kind of trophy? What kind of a "hunt" is it if the results are guaranteed?<P>I tell you what. I'd much rather work my @$$ off for five days on Colorado BLM and take a raghorn every three or four years than EVER participate in anything like this schlock. You may as well pot cows in a pasture! <P>Call me crazy, or disagree, but I think all these operations should be BANNED! They give all us true hunters a bad rap.<P>Dan<P>

Montana just banned canned hunts and any new game farms.

I'm with you, Dante. I've worked plenty hard on some elk hunts, and go home with nothing but sore muscles more than I care to admit. But I can tell you that every elk is a good elk to me. <P>You're absolutely right, I'll take an honest raghorn over a "farm bull" any day!<P>Ban 'em in Wyoming.<P>Jack

The hard part about these farms is how it affects the perception of hunters with the rest of the public. I make it a point to expose my students to the scientific underpinnings of hunting, and to the necessity in the modern world of controlling game populations to prevent mass starvation and habitat destruction.<P>Also, I make the point that the purpose of hunting is not killing, but hunting. These game farms go exactly against this mentality. Here, killing and going home with game is the most important element, to the point of sometimes pre-selecting the animal and having him segregated from the herd. <P>How do you rebut this to impressionable high school students already barraged by a hostile and deliberately misleading media?<P>Sometimes, we are our own worst enemies.<P>Teach

The most disgusting thing I've ever heard of along these lines is some outfit in Maine that "guaranteed a bear, or your money back".<P>It seems that you drove out to a spot in the woods where they had a black bear in a big crate, and you sat in a truck while they released it. The poor thing, of course, is scared out of it's wits, so it climbs the nearest tree. Then, the "client" gets out of the truck and shoots it.<P>Just thinking about that makes my blood boil. Like others have posted, I've gone on many hunts where my tag wasn't filled, but it sure beats the heck out of plinking a tame bear.