Food for thought
While I’m out at Coon Camp Springs, I want to toss a few ideas on the table that you guys can chew on and discuss (if you’re so inclined). Of course I won’t be here to throw my two-cents in right now, which is fine, because I’m kinda curious how ya’ll will respond, if you do at all. I’d rather read your ideas without injecting mine.
I hope these questions are “posers”, and that you’ll put some thought into them. This is probably not a recommended practice in the blogosphere, but I’m gonna do it anyway. Please be civil, as I don’t have a manners cop on hand to monitor the discussion
(If you are new to the HogBlog, your comments will be held pending approval. Please bear with us, and I’ll approve them as soon as I return. It’s the only way I can manage the SPAM attacks that are the bane of all bloggers.)
OK, so here goes. This first one is something I’ve been giving a lot of thought to, and my own conclusions right now aren’t exactly following “party lines”.
What is “fair chase” and how important is it as a consideration, both to you as a hunter, and overall to the sport of hunting? Where do you draw the lines and why? I encourage you to think your responses through, not only from a personal perspective but from a bigger picture. Consider the logical progression of your ideas.
Next is sort of a hypothetical point of view, brought on in some part by a discussion at the Thinking Hunter blog.
How effective are sport hunters at managing game populations, e.g. wild hogs, whitetail deer, snow geese, etc.? Are we doing the job we say we’re doing? What does it mean to our justification of sport hunting as a management tool? If you have specific details to support your responses, that would be a great addition to the discussion (and possibly save me some research later).
I look forward to reading what you had to say, and hope this keeps things interesting in my absence.
I think fair chase is pretty hard to define. From my own personally perspective I think that “fair chase” can still happen on fenced in properties, provided those properties have a decent acreage. That being said I’m not sure where, or if, there is acreage limit that makes it not fair chase. I think if you have a 25 acre fenced in area, that really isn’t fair chase, but I’m not sure where the line is drawn on acreage.
My two cents on that.
I’ll have to think about the other ones.
October 29th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Fair chase!
Should be no more complicated than the simple fact that “If an animal has places to HIDE from from its pursuers, then it should be considered Fair Chase!
And even then,the perceptions are purely individual. Some people believe that a “Sure Catch” stocked fish pond is fair chase while others would not be caught dead fishing one of those places.
Some people believe that “Placed Pheasants and Chukers” in a mowed and rowed field is fair chase while others do not like the idea at all!
Some people believe that it is “Fair Chase” if you hunt an Island, even though the only way for an animal to get away from you would be to swim for it.
Also, Some States have already adopted Minimum Acreage for High Fenced Hunting Preserves because of the differences in terrain, for instance, the state of ARKANSAS has a minimum of 500 acres allowable for such a venture while TEXAS flatland is set to a minimum of 1000 acres.
The ONLY legal hunting allowed in SOUTH AFRICA is within high fenced hunting preserves and only culled animals are allowed to be taken because of age or health considerations of the animal and herds.
Also a physically challenged person might very well have the time of his/her life by being allowed to harvest an animal within a preserve where their chances for success, are higher than if they were to be driven around upon public land for two days and HOPE that they MIGHT see an animal at all.
A very large portion of the hunting population in the Eastern part of the U.S.A. all can legally hunt from TREE STANDS at NIGHT over a BAITED area as opposed to here in the western states we cannot even think about such a thing or we risk being arrested and put into jail.
So FAIR CHASE to me simply means that if you sneak up on an animal and miss your shot or you are detected and it RUNS AWAY and HIDES and you cannot find it, then that animal has eluded you and gets to live another day.
October 29th, 2008 at 7:00 am
For simplicity’s sake, I feel that Fair Chase is the statement that is the basis of the Pope and Young and Boone and Crockett clubs. I will spare you reciting it but the particulars can be found at either organization’s website.
I don’t feel that all animals need to be hunted under those conditions. However I am willing to hunt within those guidelines for the 28 species of big game that those organizations recognize. In my personal opinion, there are animals exempt from fair chase . Those include “varmints” that pose a threat to the health, safety, and well being of my family, domestic animals, livelihood and loved ones.
In regard to sport hunting’s effectiveness as a management tool, I feel that it is the only cost effective way to manage a steady wildlife population within the carrying capacity of a given habitat. While areas without sport hunting have a predator-prey relationship, the populations have a much more severe boom and bust cycles.
Sport hunting can provide a cashflow to fund wildlife departments, while also allowing for a restriction or expansion of seasons and tags to reflect game and habitat conditons. It is not feasible with other large predators. Goverment funded sharpshooters to control game animals provides only an expense, and no income to the state or municipality.
Sport hunting also provides a collection method for specimans for monitoring wildlife disease. The spread of CWD would be less known if it were not for Voluntary CWD testing by sport hunters.
Sport hunting also gives value to the wildlife population. When small community economies benifit from the influx of out of area hunters, wildlife becomes an income stream for people who might otherwise view them as a crop eating pest, or road hazard.
OK,,, Now I have to write more on my blog…Thasnks for making me think.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Dear John, (Honestly,no pun intended with that opening)
Very good points made and I would have to agree with you on several but, Pope and Young as well as Boone and Crockett are not the be all end all of methodology concerning Trophy Measuring or the experience of the hunt. ie:Non-Typical or simply what one individual considers wall material, another person might think is just table fare and doesn’t really care how or where he killed it, just as long as it is dead and in his freezer.
I myself am a self taught musician and writer, there are organizations including, the Musicians Union, B.M.I., A.S.C.A.P. Musicians Institute Of Technology etc. etc. all of which have set standards and guidelines for people in the music industry to follow.
These rules and guidelines revolve around such things as: Standard Tuning for an instrument.
Guitarists, like myself, Edward Van Halen, Ty Tabor and many others just simply picked up a guitar and tuned them for the resonation’s that occurred and which sounded right for the instrument (different types of wood will resonate in harmony or disharmony with things like, attack and decay dynamics of the individual whom is playing that particular instrument).
Meaning that I could pick up Eric Claptons guitar and amplifier and I would sound nothing like Mr. Clapton and in fact, as accomplished as I might be on the instrument I might sound downright awful using his equipment.
Classical guitar playing has a very strict regimen which one must follow, Thumb in just the right position, Pinky finger firmly placed upon the flat top of the guitar, pluck the strings with first the thumb then index finger followed by third then fourth fingers.
You must even sit properly upon a special stool and then there is another set of guidelines just for the sitting position and a standard stool which must be used.
I can sit on a log in the woods and play classical music just fine and (Oh, horrors of horrors) I use a pick! and people seem to enjoy my classical playing quite well.
Take a Fender Stratocaster and plug it into a stack of Marshall amps and then gently place that guitar into the hands of a Trained Classical Guitarist and watch him try and make any sense of that set up at all!
I learned about that one from my producer at the time (Ronnie Montrose) not name dropping because I left the music industry quite awhile back but, he and I were conversing upon that very subject while I was recording one day.
Point being, that each individual will have his own special interaction and experience with Music,Life and Nature, no matter what organizations guidelines are the industry’s standards.
I really can’t add anything which you have said about hunters being a valuable tool for managing wildlife because, (using an old cliche’) you took the words right outa’ my mouth!
But, I do believe this, by using “only” that particular argument in and by itself, would be a very weak endeavor to try and convince the antis and the fence sitters that what we do is not such a bad thing after all.
We must hit them with several points all at once because they will bring up counter points which will include things like: The value to wildlife is being able to watch them alive and not dead!
or We have trained professionals to go and collect specimens for disease research.
And this one I like best of all: Cleveland Amory ( book: The Cat And The Curmudgeon). While Mr. Amory was alive he said “Hunters say that they provide a service to wildlife when they hunt, I say that they are a bunch of blood thirsty nuts who go out into the woods just to KILL period.
I laugh out loud every time I read that statement (no disrespect to Mr. Amory because I enjoy reading his works) but, he lived in a fantasy world and obviously never had the opportunity to fully enjoy the wilderness experience as a true carnivore should.
October 30th, 2008 at 5:43 am
My thought on Fair Chase is that it depends on a lot of things, most of them personal. If the situation in question doesn’t “feel right,” than it probably isn’t — for you. Modern hunting is all about humans limiting their advantages, otherwise we’d use infrared night goggles, bait, automatic weapons, etc.
To me the point of fair chase hunting is to see how few technological advantages you can use and still have a reasonable chance at getting your game. For some it’s a longbow and wooden arrows, for others it’s a Hawken rifle. Others may use a rifle with iron sights, or a regular rifle with a scope. Pistols, crossbows — even knives.
If it’s a high-fence place and you think you can easily bag something with a scoped rifle, trade down to something more primitive and the situation alters completely.
On bait, I am not a big fan. Yet I support “farming for wildlife.” To some, there is no difference. For me, making a hospitable environment for wildlife is different than putting a bag of corn grain under a treestand.
I am pretty sure no one gives Ducks Unlimited or California Waterfowl a hard time because they build marshes. Food plots are similar: You have created a space for wildlife that exists all year long, yet you hunt it — in the case of deer — once or twice a year. Seems like a fair deal for the critters.
Anywho, that’s my $0.02 at the moment.
October 30th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Very well put Hank!
I am so glad to see that someone out there understands the difference between “Habitat Enrichment” and simply placing a bag of corn on the ground every three days just to attract and kill a deer.
Most people do not mentally separate the two and blend them all into one category and just call it an unfair advantage, and then in turn, Not! Fair Chase.
For some people who have made the personal choice to follow Pope and Young or Boone and Crockett rules, that it is just what it is and only is, a personal choice.
For others, those rules are just a hinderance that will complicate their goals towards putting meat on the table.
Farming for wildlife is not an entirely new concept and Fish & Game Departments all over the world have been practicing this method for years.
As a matter of fact here in California our Fish and Game raise fish in hatchery’s and release them into the wild and also sell their (our) fish to “Sure Catch Ponds”.
But also here in California, (Totalitarian State that it is) they want to corner the market on this and try to thwart any attempts by the public/private sector to do exactly what they have been doing for several decades now.
I do not know all of the ins and outs of C.W.A. or D.U. but I can imagine that there are plenty of restrictions in what they do (State Imposed of course) but the end result is that the waterfowl populations are most likely ten fold now, as opposed to just a short 20 years ago!
And this can be directly attributed to Habitat Enrichment and our Sport Dollars at work.
Method of take is strictly limited here as well and most of the laws are set into place mainly for the humane aspect of the harvest and nothing more than that alone.
All, other States for instance, do allow Wild Hogs to be taken by: Baited Areas at Night by any means chosen!
Here, we can’t do any of those things and must use 30 calibre or above firearms or Archery only.
And this is again, a personal choice, albeit State Imposed, someone still made the choice to make these decisions and place them into law!
What’s good for the Goose is not always good for the Gander!
October 31st, 2008 at 1:01 am
Belatedly…
I think “Fair Chase” is a concept that hunters have used over the past century to set a standard that shores up our image among non-hunters. It’s a noble intention, but I think more often than not, it is used against us. HSUS pretends to care about fair chase; it only does so because it can say, “See, these fine hunters agree with us.”
In reality, hunting is a spectrum in terms of challenge, and I don’t think there’s a bright line between what’s fair and what’s not. Me as a new hunter, I want as much ease as I can get because I’m not that good. But I’d like to graduate to more and more challenging hunting as I improve. I’m pretty sure most people do that, except most people start as kids, not 41-year-olds.
I think the only thing that really bothers me … well, two things. No. 1 is hunters who hunt under less challenging conditions (over bait, in small enclosures) and pretend they actually went on some big challenging hunt. I really think it’s that sense of fraud that upsets the people the most – that’s the undercurrent of all the HSUS propaganda against high-fence hunting: Big bad hunters who have to have an animal effectively trapped before they can shoot it and brag about it. And this is a social problem, not a fair chase problem.
No. 2 is hunters who act like morons in any sense – littering, trespassing, taking heads and leaving carcasses behind, killing callously – kill after kill without regard to personal need or the resource. I think they’re in a tiny minority, but they do far more damage to hunting than people who hunt over planted pheasants (which I’ll be doing Saturday morning), people who hunt inside fences (which I did three times this summer) or people who hunt over bait (which I’d do if civilization collapsed and getting the most meat while expending the least calories becomes really important).
If this is a question about what should be allowed, I think we have to fall back on the bedrock question: Should it be allowed for humans to take the lives of animals for consumption? I think the answer is yes, and since 96.8 percent of the population eats animal flesh, I don’t think the answer can ever be no.
November 6th, 2008 at 6:08 am
Great insight Holly, as always you seem to hit the mark right in the bulls eye!
The one thing which I have tried to express to my fellow hunters for so many years now is, NO APOLOGIES!
First thing to remember is: What we do is entirely “legal” and, until they outlaw hunting, we should make no apologies for doing what has came natural to “The Human Carnivore” for thousands of years now.
Just take a look at what John McCain did, he pandered to his own party and tried to “not” offend anyone and wound up losing the most important race of his life!
Be honest about what you are and what you do and you will succeed in any endeavor!
November 6th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
[...] posed a couple of thought provoking questions while he snuck away to guide hunters at Coon Camp Springs for the next few weeks. Pretty soon my [...]
November 6th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
If an animal has to turn because of a fence it’s not fair chase. I hunted pigs at Hogs Wild once with a bow to see how fair this new “Fenced Hunting” was. It was steep tough country and the hogs knew how to dodge us bowhunters pretty effectively but in the end I saw one hog who got cornered because of a fence. The hunter missed but he never would have had the shot if the fence wasn’t there.
“Fair Chase”, as defined by the Boone and Crockett Club, is the ethical, sportsmanlike, and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild, native North American big game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper advantage over such animals.
What is free range for a fair chase? T. Michael quoted Arkansas’ and Texas’ 500 and 1,000 acre minimums for fair chase. I’ve personally chased bucks in MO that roamed off a 1,000 acre farm during the rut. One buck we had on game cam film only to hear he popped up 15 miles north of us. We went up and found him at night with the jacklights (back when that was legal) to see him with our own eyes.
I’ve watched and tracked big loner bucks that lined straight out for private CRP farms when the shooting started in rifle season, they can’t do that in fenced in property.
Another huge reason the fenced operations are not good in my opinion is CWD and other animal diseases. The CWD hot zones have all been around the put and take elk and deer ranches. It’s not natural for game to congregate in big numbers in small areas, when they do we’ve seen the disease rates go up.
We have other rules for fair chase the need to be in place like no shooting game while swimming in water. No live decoys etc. When MO floods up some years the MDC will stop hunting in certain counties since it’s nothing more than shooting fish in a barrel when the deer group up on high ground.
The bottom line is the game we hunt needs to be able to use whatever they can to escape the hunter. When the balance is tipped in favor of the hunter then it’s no longer fair chase.
November 10th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Hi Jesse,
What I try and explain and “hopefully” get across to people is that, it is all a matter of what the individual considers Fair Chase.
Although B&C and P&Y have set some standards, not everyone is willing or in some cases, can even physically adhere to those set of standards.
For instance, physically challenged persons should be able to sit in a stand within 40 yards of a feeder with a modified bow or firearm (to fit their handicap) and harvest an animal and not receive any disparaging comments about their method of take.
If you choose to use a long range, big bore rifle with scope to harvest your deer then that is your freedom of choice to do so. There are some hard core hunters who would say, that is an Unfair advantage and would rather use a long bow with homemade arrows and stone tipped heads to accomplish the same feat. Neither method of take is better nor less fair than the other just simply “A Personal Choice”
As far as C.W.D. being a probable source traced to Fenced Game Ranches/Preserves, this would be highly unlikely because each animal that is placed within a preserve/game ranch has to be blood tested and “Veterinarian Certified” before introduction into an enclosed area and as a result of that particular “legality”, the animal herds which live within these enclosed areas are of good sound health and disease free.
Some people believe that the use of dogs is not fair chase while others continue to vigorously fight any proposed legislation which would outlaw big game hunting with dogs.
Some people like to fish the sure catch ponds while others would not even step near such a place.
Some people would not hunt in an enclosed area no matter how large it is ie: (South African Hunting Preserves) while those very same people have not the slightest objection to hunting a small 200 acre island in Alaska, even though the only way for those animals to get away would be to swim for it.
In closing I must reiterate something which I have said time and again, The anti’s love nothing more than to divide us and, subjects such as, High Fence Hunting Preserves, stirs up so much controversy that, the antis WILL get their way simply by dividing us upon such silly things as ” FAIRE CHASE”.
Just as a classical trained musician feels compelled to follow a certain set of standards, does not mean that the self taught hard rocker is any less of an artist just because he does not adhere to a rigid set of rules like standard key or how the instrument is to be played.
It is all a matter of what feels right to the individual! The “blessings of liberty” and all you know.
The antis and their buddies “the extreme left” are knocking at your door to take away those rights and we ought’ not make their job any easier by fighting amongst ourselves.
November 12th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
Thanks for the excellent discussion folks! I knew you’d come through!
I’m working on a follow-up post to continue this “conversation”, and will have it up ASAP.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
[...] Food for thought [...]
November 17th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
One more thought on fair chase and the use of bait and other tactics that may be viewed as unfair and unsportsman-like by non-hunters. NorCal Cazadora rightly makes a good point about fairness, challenge and the use of bait. But consider that under the right circumstances, a bait hunt can be challenging and in keeping with fair chase.
I’m a Californian living in Michigan who’s had the opportunity to hunt black bear over bait for the last couple of seasons in Canada. For those who may think of bait as unfair, consider the following: terrain; method of take; and function of the hunt. I believe these three factors may make the use of bait challenging enough to constitute fair chase if practiced in some parts of the Continent, while being less challenging in others.
Unlike out West, Ontario is a flat and heavily wooded country where glassing for black bears and planning stalk to within bow or rifle range is nearly impossible. The alternative to bait (dogs) will lead to shooting a treed bear, which does not make us look good on film.
Hunting over bait in Ontario is about an 18 to 20 yard proposition. As Hank said, above, through in a longbow or a muzzleloader, and the situation becomes much more interesting. As with any stalking hunt, the bear might not show up, or he might not be a shooter. The bear could wind you just as easily from a stand over bait as from a ground stalk. A sow might show up with cubs, the bear might not turn broadside. You get the idea…
Unlike many parts of North America, in Ontario, black bears are plentiful to the point of over-population and nuisance. Hunting from stands over bait is challenging enough and serves the purpose of culling the population to the point where bears are no longer a threat to residential neighborhoods and garbage dumps. If bears were hunted from the ground only and without bait as some would suggest is required for fair chase, then hunting could not accomplish this yearly culling.
March 31st, 2009 at 9:44 am