Muledeer,
I think "most" of the filmed Whitetail hunts in Texas are fenced deer, as they usually discuss managment at the end of the show, and I personally know some of the owners also, and some of the Eastern hunts are fenced also.
However, I don't see a lot of difference in shooting a whitetail from a blind on open land or on a 10,000 to 50,000 acre fenced ranch in Texas..Lots of elk and deer are shot over salt licks and at water holes, rattled or bugled up, in the North so not a heck of a lot of differnce in my mind. Killing a bull elk in the rut with a bugle is about as easy of hunt as I know of. I know a rancher that bugles his elk up every year and shoots him from his barn loft.:)
I have an aquaintence that can show you pictures of huge bucks on his fenced ranch taken at blinds with cameras, but they never kill these really big bucks as they are totally nocturnal..I was amazed..My son hunted there by invitation and shot a nice buck but never saw one of those monsters and they got pictures of them during the time he was there. They tried really hard but no monsters showed..In five years the owner shot one and that was basically a fluke..For what it's worth and I thought it interesting.
Ray I won't argue that there are a lot of places fenced here and hunted.
But FWIW managment is starting to be a statewide issue, trying to get to older bucks, which actually allows more deer in areas and so on. We hunt on one place thats not fenced, and they manage on their small tract, but do so because the neighbors do too... Franks wife Ann killed a 173 there this last season.
Point is you don't have to be fenced to be managed. I know I've managed our small place for years now. I've shot one mature buck on it because I never had.. since I was old enough to hunt in the 70s, and beyond that its harvest does and kill the cull bucks. My boss has property less than a quarter mile away and it paid off for him this year shooting a nice mature 8 point pushing 150, had we not been managing,IE years ago, he shot the first legal buck he saw every year.....
Fences abound but managment is spread much further than that.
