Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire THE DUMBEST POACHER OF 2019

Insurance company would love that idea......lol

Ted, all kinds of whitetail. More here on the rez than off.

Does feed all day long out in the open on our hay fields. Not uncommon to see 30-50 in a bunch.

Bucks....not so much....lol




Geno, we let local guys hunt but they gotta walk, no vehicles.

I've tried to get 'em to shoot does but it's a tough sell.





Dwayne, happy Thanksgiving to you as well!

Rez life....it's different.

But we get along.

FFS,

how far they gotta walk to get a doe or two?

And it's a riverbottom, no? Not like it's a scree slope or boulder field.

Sheesh

You haven't looked very hard then. I have lived on two of those reservations, Wind River and Fort Peck, and there were definitely sufficient deer for hunting.

Was married to an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Reservation and could legally hunt there--and did for several years with her grandfather, a noted hunter. Could always find sufficient deer to fill the freezer, even though it was a period with miserable winters, one getting as cold as -58.

Have also hunted on other reservations in the general region, from Montana to Nebraska, after buying a license, for animals from deer to upland birds. The hunting was always at least as good as areas outside the reservations, and sometimes better.

That said, I would not attempt to run a "game farm" on a reservation--but then would not run a "game farm" anywhere.

Geno, short walk, deer everywhere.

We had mule deer does last night in front of my house, in town.





It's all about the buck pics on Facebook. Meat hunters are few and far between.

Lost track of how many headless deer I've found over the years.

John,

Hope you, Eileen, and any four legged critters in the family had a great Thanksgiving Day.

I'd drive up there to shoot does and have a few beers.

Kind of what I was thinking.

Down here in Dixie you can't even keep a whitetail in a fenced enclosure...

In Alabama, keeping a wild animal as a pet is illegal - and not too smart
Updated: Mar. 28, 2019, 12:51 p.m. | Published: Feb. 27, 2011, 3:40 p.m.


By Michael C. Bolton
Fawn-0227-11.jpgA fawn is really cute, but it has no place in a human family. (The Birmingham News file / Joe Songer)
It seems harmless enough. You find what appears to be a helpless abandoned fawn in a meadow. Your first instinct is one of compassion. You take the helpless creature home with you and feed it and take care of it. You name it Bambi, of course, and your friends marvel at what an incredible pet it will be.

Over the past 25 years I've witnessed dozens of well-meaning people make pets of deer, raccoons, gray squirrels, flying squirrels, skunks and other wildlife. I visited a couple that had a female deer living inside their home, another that had a small buck that followed their kids around like a dog.

These stories rarely have fairy tale endings. One family had a fawn killed inside their home by the family dog. Another had a fawn killed in their yard by neighborhood dogs. Others have been forced to take deer away and release them after they became too aggressive. Others have been bitten by seemingly tame raccoons and squirrels.

A wise person talking about keeping wild animals as pets once said that ego plus denial equals death. That may seem a little dramatic, but maybe not. A recent incident in Cleburne County could have had fatal consequences. A 12-year-old boy that had a raised a buck from a fawn in a backyard enclosure was attacked by that buck. The boy was hospitalized with serious puncture wounds.

No amount of human kindness and loving can turn a wild animal into something other than what it is. Owners of such "pets" are often shocked when the animal turns on them, using a behavior that is the animal's normal behavior. Wild animals have short memories when it comes to how kindly that they have been treated by humans.

Keeping native wildlife as pets has been unlawful in Alabama for decades, but it has always been a fairly common practice in rural areas. Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries actually issued permits on a case-by-case basis for anyone keeping wildlife in captivity, but most of those with deer in backyard pens or a squirrel in their home ignored that step.

By 2002 the number of people keeping wildlife in captivity and the problems it was causing was so severe that the state ceased issuing permits. Now, any individual keeping wildlife for any reason is in violation of state law. Only zoos or wildlife exhibits can still receive permits.

White-tailed deer are probably the most commonly illegally kept wildlife in the state and they can be the most dangerous, especially in the case of bucks.

Bucks raised from fawns tend to be peaceful toward their human owner most of the year and likely consider humans one of them. That creates a false sense of security for the human. Certain times of the year it is natural for a buck to fight other bucks and that's when humans are drawn in. Since humans have no antlers or slashing hooves they stand no chance.

If you're considering skirting the law you might want to tune to "Fatal Attractions" on the Animal Planet cable network on Sunday nights at 9 p.m. The show details the lives of humans that have taken in wild animals as pets and the often fatal consequences.

It will make you want to get rid of your goldfish.

Mike Bolton's outdoors column appears on Sundays in The Birmingham News. E-mail him at mboltonbhamnews.com.

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And you cant keep an Indian Axis deer either. Interesting how the DNR laws vary from state to state.

That's good to hear.
It hasn't been my experience but I also haven't gone out of my way to actually look for critters on any reservations.

A fair few elk get shot in the Rocky Boy shidt hole. Lots of big bulls there too. If they could restrain themselves and manage it within their special “sovereign nation” bullshidt rules they could actually make money.

But they’d rather smoke meth and shoot elk when they get hungry.

I used to rent a small hatchery, the third oldest in the state, as a matter of fact, that was a private in holding on the res.

It was.....interesting. The people I rented from was a famous out of stater that didn’t even know they had bought property on the Rez until I told them.....

Usually, we deal with the enough agencies to get your fill, EPA, State DEQ, state water resources, corps of engineers on some construction projects.... then add another layer of tribal bureaucracy over the top of it, including TERO. Felt like being back in the old country, regulation wise.

I always thought John and Sam looked alike...

Sheesh,

I don't envy you that.

Love the criticism of high fences.

Guys bait, use stands, blinds with HVAC, use scents. Compounds and crossbows, expanding broadheads, carbon arrows, in archery season. Game cameras, radios, hunt from trucks/ATVs/snowmobiles. Use in lines, sabots,
Even smokeless powder in muzzleloader season.

All legal, somewhere.
Hopefully, where you all do it.

But let some one pay to hunt inside hundreds of acres fenced.
In a situation where a fence never enters the equation, and the
hypocrites climb on their pulpit and display their piety.

Hunted hogs in a fenced operation once.
My biggest complaint was being forced to use a stand.
It wasn't hunting, it was waiting. Then shooting a target.
I could have more engaged in hunting there, if allowed, then
many ever sctually do in unfenced areas.

The point is,
Shut the heck up, and let a man hunt as he sees fit. If it's legal.
If you know he bought a buck shot it in a pen, then claims otherwise,
call him out as a liar. That's fair.

But his buck is as good to him as your "fair chase" buck.
The one fed supplements, crops raised to feed him the best nutrients.
The one genetically manipulated, by systematic culling and even
importing bucks. Then you brag like it was a true product of nature.

Fugg him in the neck.

Dillon,

you make a lot of good points. But in regards to the OPs story, it is not clear as to whether a fence enters the equation or not. It does mention 7000 acres or something, and if not cross fenced and cross fenced again, then it would likely be more of a fair chase hunt ............but just for farm raised, stocked animals.

However, it is mentioned in the story that the fella in question paid, in advance, for THAT particular buck. And the "ranch" guaranteed he'd get it. 100% success rate. Which would lead a person to believe they either have him in a smaller enclosure, where they know they can get to him when the hunter arrives, or they have a tracking collar on him so they can find him in that 7000 acres of theirs.

So I'm thinking a fence of some sort is involved and that hardly seems like "hunting", not even similar to your hog hunt. I'd guess those hogs on that property didn't have to walk under your stand, and you might not have gotten a shot?

And by the way, I hope you had a Happy Pennsylvania Thanksgiving.

Deer season starting tomorrow? Or Saturday nowadays?

Lol

Mechanical broadheads = high fence livestock hunts.

You know my point.
And a comparison isn't a claim of equal.
Only examples in various ideas and pushing the envelopes.

It's about choosing your own standards within the law and ethics.
Ethics being the issue.


That point was exactly what is primitive hunting.
For most today. It's not. At all.
It's another opportunity.
With every technology advantage legal.


Here's one for you.
We used to butcher hogs and beef.
Often had a newbie show up on butcher day.
Most would want to shoot an animal.
Hunters, they had never killed a hog or cow.
Or anything in a pen.
It was the experience, I guess.
But it meant something to them.

That story reminds me of when a good friend of mine bought a Dodge Ramcharger from his father-in-law of questionable reputation.
We were checking it out under the hood when we found a strange out of place toggle switch on the firewall. Well, that tweaked our curiosity and started to check to see what that switch did.
Found out after quite a lot of trial and error that it completely disabled all tail light functions.
We named it the "game warden switch".

The FIL acted like he never knew it was there, Yeah right.