Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Opinions on high fence hunting

I don't know. We have bobcats and lots of coyotes and bears here. The coyotes and bears in particular are rough on fawns. We also have a lot of fishers. They're vicious little predators and I suspect they kill some too. Our coyotes are much bigger than Texas coyotes, hunt in packs and can and will pull down adult deer, particularly when snow is deep and deer are yarded up.

Thanks for the honest answer Hanco. I don't think you're alone. I suspect many Texans have hunted very little under completely wild conditions for completely wild deer.

Thankfully, not many lions around, but big boars, and coyotes are a big problem IMHO.

However drought, Anthrax and now CWD have taken their toll. I would not doubt that the harshness of the land and lack of water and groceries sure don't help.

A bud and I have close to 20 cameras set out on the 1700 acres (out of a 60,000 acre low fenced/no fence ranch) we hunt. I can count the number of fawns we saw this last year on one hand.

A few random shots.......




















ya!

GWB

Eight of us on 1,700 acres (surrounded by 100's of thousands of acres of undeveloped ranch land) took two culls (6pt, no brow tines) on our lease last year. We do not shoot does.

I'm "afield" more than 60 days a year. Mainly hunting hogs and varmints at night, running my traps and snares in the daylight hours. Turkey in the spring and fall, doves in season. What keeps me going is the solitude and the harsh beauty of the land. I'm six miles from the nearest paved road, and 20 miles from the closest source of light pollution. I can be there for 3 to 5 days, no power, no live water, no cell service, no sounds other than planes flying overhead, the wind and the critters, and no people. If I need it and don't have it, whose fault is that!

Ya!

GWB

How many deer psm in your area ?

A high fence will let the deer mature, even if deer with superior genetics aren’t brought in. The bucks kill on my lease are 3 yrs old, never seen a mature buck in 13 yrs. We let the small 8’s and 10’s go, but if there are meat hunters across the fence, those we let go are shot. No offense to the meat hunters out there intended. We kill the long spikes, freaks, and does if we want meat. I’ve been on leases with meat hunters. They kill the first thing that walks up, got to get their two buck, two doe limit as fast as they can. If you don’t keep an eye on them, they sneak up there, use wife and kids tags to get more than the lease agreement allows. I wish our lease had a high fence. We would see better bucks, because we could let the bucks with potential grow.

Is there anything wrong with that??

Hunters filling wives/kids/girlfriends tags is very common here as is group hunting. Meaning one hunter in a group sees a buck he shoots it even if he already filled his tag and somebody else in the group will tag it. It's illegal but very commonly done. The deer camp I sometimes hunt out of here is 160 acres with normally six, sometimes seven people hunting it. It is plastered with cameras every year. We get many pictures of bucks over the course of the summer/fall. Rarely are there any bucks over 3.5 years old and many years none over 2.5 years old. All surrounding properties are heavily hunted and there are no antler restrictions except it must have a spike over 3" long to be legal.

Not in my book Hanco. You are right on the money. Fence is the only way to be in control but also comes with lots of responsibility.That being said if I could I would.

I waited several years to get a lease on a well known Texas ranch. The Welder - Doby . We had already set up camp waiting for the season to open. The ranch foreman called and said the ranch had been sold.
Knowing I had no place to hunt a friend offered to let me hunt on his ranch in Starr county. 2200 acres high fenced.
Everything was fair game except his breeder Buck.
Early in the season my saw a 10 Pt. With split brow tines. She deceided to pass him. Later on she had hunter regrets.
She stated hunting him hard , but no luck. No one on the ranch saw him the rest of the season
She finally killed him the following year in the middle of the season. Unfortunately he had stated down Hill and was not as good as the previous year. Hasbeen

LMAO.....he's too busy posting pictures.....Wait....nevermind.

.....says the loser who's never hunted anywhere except his backyard. LMAO!!!!!

One thing is for sure you kill little young Deer you won't see any big old Deer, that's the problem all over the U.S. controlling the # of hunters and what they take off makes a big difference in the size, age, and # of the Deer on your lease or hunting area, the excuse for killing young Deer is I'm a meat hunter, that's B.S. they just want to kill something, and will kill anything they see.

You can be sure if they had nice Deer in their hunting area, they would shoot all they could until all they had was baby Deer again, the Antler restrictions in East Texas, are keeping hunters from shooting Fawns, and saying they are meat hunters. it's the same every where. the meat hunter get between 20# and 45# of meat out of every Deer they kill, the people that say the meat is free, place no value on the time it takes to recover the Deer and butcher and wrap the meat, freeze it or make hamburger or sausage, as they say {there's no such thing as a FREE lunch} meat hunters my ASS Rio7

Meat hunters will fuuuck a deer lease up quick, seen it happen several times.

My wife told a meat hunter one time. Every big set of horns she ever killed had a big chunk of meat below them.
Hasbeen

Well said an all TRUE

To follow up my above comments, we kill a lot of Deer and Exotics here every year, we fill all the ranch hands and their family's freezers with meat, and give processed meat to Guest hunters, last year we gave away 6000# of processed meat to 2 different Churchs And our County Food Bank. YEH we are MEAT HUNTERS ALSO. Rio7

Meat hunters will shoot a property out, then bitch, because they aren’t seeing any deer. “ Duh, what happened to all the deer”

Yes but you know how much you can kill and still maintain your deer herd.

Along the same lines.......



I called this guy Lucky 13. On this low fence ranch any buck that was less than 6.5 year old and had more than 8 points could not be shot. I aged this guy at 5 to 5.5 as did the powers that be. This would be in December 2020. I am no longer on that ranch but am in touch with the guys that are still on the lease. He has not been seen since the 2020 season.





Here is one I've had at this one spot, which I call #5. This season (2022) was the 4th year I have him on game cam. I call him the freak due to his antlers. Neither I nor any other of the members of our group have ever seen in the flesh. He only comes out at night, as do most of the mature bucks. Do not have him on any other cam.




I also am of the opinion that deer in our area have a spring/summer and fall/winter range.

Come bow season, you won't see him again until March or April.

One more I did manage to take.




This one ranged. Had him at night only on three different cams in a mile square or so area over a 3 year period. Very distinctive as he had a golf-ball size lump/growth at his throat. I called him "The Claw". Never saw him in the flesh till I nailed him on my birthday. Should have bought a lottery ticket. I got a turkey, this deer and found a knife I had lost two years before on the same day.

Never can tell what's gonna wander through in the Texas Hill Country










ya!

GWB

Very similar scenario to what i have witnessed as well.