check out the size of these breeder bucks

[RIHMFIRE]

these bucks are amazing

Watch as a 492-inch nontypical struggles to hold its head up under the weight of its moose-like rack.

1 1/2" old bucks scoring in the 150s

http://www.deeranddeerhunting.com/artic ... Whitetail/

[bdhold]

every good game ranch employs a biologist these days.
good for them - seriously, good for the ranch, good for the genetics of the herd, good for the hunter, good for the biologist.
http://shontoranch.com/whitetail.aspx
I fish occasionally on this ranch (Turtle Creek is all private water and loaded with trophy bass), really like C.D. and love looking at the big bucks, as well as the exotics.
But, no, I'm not paying $5000+ for a hunt.

[Mike D.]

Sorry, but "fake" deer interest me not. Sure, you can genetically engineer anything you want, but is it ethical? All for what, cash from inside the fence "deer hunters"? Pay your 100Gs, walk up and "harvest" your buck. HOGWASH!!!

[soon 2 retire]

Sorry, but "fake" deer interest me not. Sure, you can genetically engineer anything you want, but is it ethical? All for what, cash from inside the fence "deer hunters"? Pay your 100Gs, walk up and "harvest" your buck. HOGWASH!!!

What Mike D. said times 100. Someone ought to be ashamed; poor buck can't even keep his head up.

Bob in NE Indiana

[jeepnik]

Sorry, but "fake" deer interest me not. Sure, you can genetically engineer anything you want, but is it ethical? All for what, cash from inside the fence "deer hunters"? Pay your 100Gs, walk up and "harvest" your buck. HOGWASH!!!

Couldn't agree more. Ever notice the "hunting" shows pretty much are canned hunts these days. Today's "experts" probably couldn't find a deer in the woods, much less stalk and shoot one. And heaven help them is they don't kill it cleanly. They'd have to have some other "expert" track the darned thing, or more likely just walk away.

[Joel]

Franken-bucks? No thanks. I'll take a big fat doe


Can't eat the antlers

[rangerider7]

+++++Mike D

[TedH]

If you just consider them livestock, same as cattle or hogs, then yeah that's darn impressive growth. If you try to attach anything about hunting to it, then it's abhorrent.

[deerwhacker444]

What Mike D. said times 100. Someone ought to be ashamed; poor buck can't even keep his head up.

That's sad, looks like that buck would have a hard time eating, deserves better.

[RIHMFIRE]

What Mike D. said times 100. Someone ought to be ashamed; poor buck can't even keep his head up.

That's sad, looks like that buck would have a hard time eating, deserves better.

If you watch carefully towards the end....the buck is actually afraid to
lower his head to feed because the tips of his horns are tender.....
I dont think these boy are for hunting though...
I believe these are raise for breeding only....
I hear tell some do go for 100Gs

[O.S.O.K.]

To each his own. They are interesting to view but take nothing away from the nice 8 point that I shot on a friend's farm hangin on the wall in the family room.

[phc45-70]

It is a sad commentary on what hunting is for so many. I'm sorry did I call it hunting, cause it certanily isn't.

[spaceman spiff]

Disgusting.......... An awful existence for sure.
Just because it can be done does not mean it should be done.


spaceman

[FWiedner]

A wonder of genetic experimentation. A freak, in my opinion.

A breeder can do what he wants with his livestock to acheive any odd end, I suppose.

Look what folks do to dogs.

[kimwcook]

Pretty sad in my opinion.

[20cows]

Livestock on a deer farm.

[Marc]

The world has gone insane!

[Griff]

There were two statements in the video that pretty much sez it all for me... "...he got an infection in his antlers... we lost him last year..." & "...he was injured and we lost him..."

My cousin in NZ raises deer for harvest... not hunting... and massive racks aren't on his agenda... good eating' meat. And his deer are right tasty!

I don't have a problem with my cousin's operation... but this "rack farm"... seems wrong on the ethical level to me. I don't have a problem with "high fence" operations... as long as the harvest still consists of a "hunt"... even as we Texans define that... but a genetically engineered "rack farm"?

When you start losing animals due to health problems associated with rack development, I'd have to say you've gone a little too far.

[rjohns94]

the world is upside down in so many different ways. this is but one more example.

[bdhold]

Where there is a need that can be supplied and sold, someone will always step up to supply it.
It always cracks me up to see a fish I released in our tailwater a few weeks earlier show up in the newspaper and on some guide's website as the new state record. I've released more than a handful of state record fish of introduced and native (and endemic) species in my life and it just never meant anything to me.
Never killed one like that, though, because those are exactly the fish that should be in the river spawning.

What someone does with his private herd on his private pay ranch is his private business. If he can make money at it, pay his school taxes, and employ people - more power to him. In the long run, I don't see it having an adverse affect on the native wilderness herd. A possible exception might be the example of feral axis deer right here in the TX hill country.

Late in the 19th century, "game trains" loaded up in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, taking wealthy gentlemen and their leverguns to the west to shoot every wild animal they could see and shoot - bison, deer, porcupines - right from the train. A disgusting concept, but a need that could be met with some profit. There is obviously a market for $20,000 leverguns and a market for $10,000 hunts. If it's a market we don't want in, we just stay out of it.

this hen is an A-strain endemic Guadalupe bass - a threatened species; although, you don't hear much about TPWD stocking smallmouth in the 70s, which endangered these fish.
I wasn't going to kill her, I wasn't going to take her to the state hatchery for broodstock. I put her right back where I found her, hoping she will spawn where God put her.

[rjohns94]

very nice picture!

[bdhold]

thanks, I caught her in a waterfall plunge pool during a drought. There is a vent to a bat cave in a huge pool just down from there, so I suspect she got this big eating baby bats that fell in. The landowner there trotlines and catches 35- to 40-lb. yellow cats all the time.
She's about 4-1/2 lbs - most endemic Guadalupe bass are about a pound, so she's quite an exception

even this guy shows the copper sheen from smallmouth genetic dilution

oh, and this is the same waterfall from the photo just above, but about the time I caught the big bass