The Boone and Crockett Club doesn’t like high fences and pen-reared deer.

How do I know? The organization recently passed a resolution saying it doesn’t want its scoring system used to score high-fenced deer.

They really can’t keep you from pulling out your tape measure and scoring a buck using their score sheet, you just can’t say it scored X number of Boone and Crockett inches. From now on it just scored X number of inches. Then give a little wink and everyone will know what system you used.

It is kind of like calling a Dr. Pepper a Coke as most people in Texas do. I guess you risk getting a letter from some law firm.

The vaunted organization has never liked the idea of high fences and hunting inside them. It has never allowed deer taken behind a high fence into its book of records, but just look at the proliferation of high fences over the years and that tells you just how much most hunters and landowners care about what B&C thinks.

That isn’t to say there are a lot of hunters in their camp, at least when it comes to their disdain of either high fences or deer farming, two similar but completely different issues.

Over the years I have come to peace with both high fences and deer farming because neither is going away. Why worry about what can’t be change.

My view of the two, however, is different from most. I find high fences the lesser of the two evils. No one outside a fence is ever going to be completely comfortable about what happens inside the fence. I guess it is the grass is always greener scenario. If done under the right circumstances, however, there really isn’t any difference between hunting within a high fence and low fence.

I have been on a number of high-fenced ranches over the years. The smallest was about 300 acres. The largest was close to 5,000 acres. If I hadn’t known beforehand they were surrounded by a fence I would never have known.

Most were put up for the same reason. The landowners wanted to raise big bucks and knew that without the fence their neighbors would be shooting bucks at 2 ﾽ and 3 ﾽ years old they wanted to see at 5 ﾽ and older.

I didn’t fault them and didn’t see protecting deer inside a high fence that much different when it came to a sporting hunt than using feeders as an attractor.

I know not all ranches are alike, and with the proliferation of game cameras there are ranches where deer are so well known they have names. I don’t want my hamburgers to have come from a cow with a name and I don’t want my deer to have a name unless I found them and named them.

The real game changer came with the proliferation of deer farming and the import of northern white-tailed deer genetics into Texas. Suddenly we went from allowing a native buck to fully mature and reach it capabilities to growing Frankenstein-like animals.

I don’t blame the landowner for doing whatever it takes to pay the bills. I just don’t have to help him pay them. I wished other hunters didn’t help them either, but as long as there is a demand there is going to be a supply.

Not sure where we jumped the track on the bigger-is-always-better thing when it comes to deer. Well, maybe I am. It was in the late 1970s and suddenly we were pushing management as a way to produce trophy bucks.

I have often looked back and said we should have been talking quality bucks because the term trophy raised the expectations of everyone. A friend says we should have been talking about producing mature bucks because a big 8-point that is 6ﾽ or 7ﾽ is a good deer and not a cull or management buck because of its lack of points.

Native Texas deer have the potential of becoming really good deer if provided enough food and allowed to mature. Not 300 inches or even 250. Maybe not even 200, but it is a relative thing.

We can’t compare Texas deer body weights to those in Minnesota or Saskatchewan because our deer don’t need the body fat to survive the cold winters. Ours are more worried about the hot summers.

Besides, I am not sure any white-tailed deer is supposed to grow as many inches of antler as an elk.

Back to the Boone and Crockett Club. The organization was founded in 1887, and at times still acts like it is looking at hunting then. This is the same group that earlier this year came out against long distance shots while hunting. Again I understand where they are coming from and don’t encourage anyone to shoot beyond their or their gun’s ability, but also recognize today’s guns and optics are much better than they were even 20 years ago.

These are no longer the days when hunters can just take off across the countryside for weeks on end collecting deer. Nor is it an era where there are more deer than hunters.

Maybe the organization is trying to make big news splashes in an attempt to remain relevant, but it comes off sounding like a bunch of old crotchety guys recalling their glory days.

There is no doubt it has lost ground to groups like Dallas Safari Club, Safari Club International and even the Foundation for North American Wild Sheep.

And with that in mind, if you get lucky enough to kill a good deer behind a high fence and want to placate B&C by not using its scoring system, try using SCI’s. It is basically the same, but doesn’t throw in confusing stuff that B&C needs to eliminate like outside spread and tip to tip measurements.

 

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