Where do you draw the line ?

[Tom]

In their links, they link to this.
www.nwhc.usgs.gov/research/chronic_wasting/etiology.html

Its a good scientific type article that gives two theories for how we got CWD.
1. It spontaneously developed, prions changed for the bad.
2. It was tranfered to mule deer and then elk from other species.

BHR, I think your take on my answer is based on something else. You would loose the bet, based on my experience down here. People who hunt like a trophy and like the meat. Most usually get both or if not, they get some meat, or if not, a good experience.

We've had what people up there call game farms for 60 years down here, yet we don't have CWD. NY doesn't have it either. See the map in your link. Harping on game farms for CWD is like crying the sky is falling to me. It would be much better to work on better management of game farms than to get rid of them for that reason. Seeing all the species we have to hunt down here because of them, and seeing that we don't have CWD (at least yet), really puts a different perspective on attacking game farms for CWD.

 

[BHR]

Tom,

"It would be much better to work on better management of game farms than to get rid of them for that reason."

I agree with you, and would be in favor of keeping game farms in Montana if they were all required to be double fenced. We have already had captive elk escape into the wild, and it can not happen again.

Is this a compromise we can agree on, or is it to harsh?

Paul

 

[Tom]

I'm not in Montana, so I can't really say what would work there. We don't have double fences here though.

We've had that problem where red deer escaped a high fence place mix with elk. I see that as a major issue in Montana that needs some special laws to control, but don't know the best way to do it. Double fence would help that issue, but I think I would rather just kill the escaped red deer. If they escaped to much, then double fence might be required of the guy who's red deer escape.

We don't generally see it as a problem if whitetail in a high fence here escape outside here to breed with the whitetail outside the fence. Do people think elk escaping in and out is a big issue there?

I remember some guy stole some wild elk, but they got him. We can high fence in wild elk and/or deer here, its permitted, and is usually done to let them get older and bigger because the neighbors shoot every buck they see. Those neighbors here might just find a high fence on their border when they do that.

I guess a double fence seems extreme to start with for me, but it would help the red deer/elk crossbreeding, I see that.

 

[elkfarmer]

original post

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The controversy of "is it hunting" has been raging as long as I've been on the Internet, but every different situation is different. So where do YOU draw the line.
The extremes;
It's -20% and Greenhorn hikes fifteen miles, on public land barefooted in the snow, climbs fifty feet up a tree and then jumps on the back of a 400 class bull and kills it with chopsticks. THATS HUNTING

I win the lotto, and go to a farm in a non-elk state, and pay 20K to shoot an identical bull in a fifty foot square pen while it's eating out of a metal feed bin. THAT AIN'T HUNTING ( I don't care what you say )

But in between, there's everything from fenced Indian reservations that cover thousands of square miles, guided and non-guided hunts on private ranches that range from a few hundred acers to a few hundred miles.
"Wild" animals that are so used to the farmers truck that they don't move a muscle when he drives up with a hunter each fall.
A friend of mine recently went on a guided elk hunt on a ranch that borders an Indian reservation. The reservation holds lots of bulls, but dosn't have much water so the ranch has several stock tanks within a half mile of the fence and plants the border fields with alpha. Hunters are placed on stands overlooking trails to the tanks. Needless to say, he tagged a nice bull. I shook his hand and said congratulations, but it didn't sound like that much fun to me.
How about you ?
[ 01-17-2004 02:05:


boy have we gotten off track here or what, anyways i am done with this topic and this debate. you want to call it unethical, wrong, or whatever go ahead. everyone classifies a troghy in thier own way and lets leave it at that. you might not agree with them in there way of taking, but it sure isn't going to be hanging in your house, so why even worry about it. trust me on this, hunting preserves are not going to destroy our hunting rights, never going to happen.

 

[Washington Hunter]

ELKF'R, Hunting is a right?

 

[Tom]

WH, Maybe some states where you have the right to own the elk, not just the king, you have the right to hunt them too?