Photo by Jim Robertson
Tuesday, January 28, 2014 BY ALLIE NASH TheStatehouseFile.com
INDIANAPOLIS — A Senate committee passed legislation Monday to legalize the state’s existing fenced deer hunting preserves — and allow new ones to open.
Senate Bill 404 now moves to the full Senate for consideration.
The vote comes four months after a Harrison Circuit Court judge ruled that the Indiana Department of Natural Resources didn’t have the authority to regulate a Southern Indiana fenced deer hunting operation. In previous years the Senate postponed action on similar bills while the lawsuit had been pending.
Another court ruling sided with the DNR, which had moved to shutter the operations.
Sen. Carlin Yoder, the bill’s author and chairman of the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, said with conflicting lawsuits, the General Assembly needs to step in.
“It’s the Wild West out there,” said Sen. Brent Steele, R-Bedford.
But opponents of the bill say they are concerned about the ethics of hunting deer in fenced-in areas. And they are worry about Chronic Wasting Disease, which is found in deer and elk and causes small lesions on their brains. The disease can only be detected postmortem.
The committee sought to resolve some of the ethical issues with an amendment that passed 6-1. It imposes a number of restrictions, including a 160-acre minimum for new preserves, a prohibition on the hunting of game birds within the preserves, and a requirement for a 50 percent escape cover for a released animal. It also would prohibit hunting an animal within 150 yards of a feeding station.
“Indiana residents don’t want this unsporting mockery in our state,” said Erin Huang, Indiana director of the Humane Society of the United States.
And opponents also said that an infected deer population could mean a big cost for the state.
“Wisconsin spent over $50 million just trying to manage Chronic Wasting Disease to protect their wild deer hunting business,” said Barbara Simpson, executive director of the Indiana Wildlife Foundation. “So this is an economic concern that we don’t often think about.”
Simpson said deer and elk hunting brings in $50 million annually to Indiana and wild deer hunting brings in $314 million. And, she said the sport employs 1,600 people.
Rodney Bruce, who owns one of Indiana’s four shooting preserves, said he has the same concerns.
“No one is more concerned about disease than we are,” Bruce said. We “totally believe in fair chase ethics and oppose canned hunting. We want to help start a dialogue so that we can coexist.”
Supporters say that fenced preserves could also be an economic boon. Since Indiana law does not allow deer to be imported from states with CWD – and that includes most states around Indiana – shooting preserves could be a boost for Hoosier deer farming businesses.
Myron Miller, a deer farmer, also believes that everyone can work together. “If we do this the right way we can complement each other.”
Exposing the Big Game 
If anyone truly believes that someone who owns and runs a canned hunting facility is going to concern themselves with following laws like; not killing next to feeding stations, providing escape cover for deer, and not shooting game birds, they are clearly deluded.
If these people had morals and ethics in the first place, they would not be profiting off providing deer in fenced pastures for incompetent hunters to kill.
Good point
States are getting desperate for money it seems. A canned hunt by any other name is still a canned hunt. Perhaps legalizing recreational marijuana and legalizing the world’s oldest profession aren’t too far behind.
The proliferation and legalization of fenced hunting preserves so that recreational killers don’t have to overexert themselves and can be assured of “bagging” something, anything is yet another wrung on the downward spiral to total moral degeneracy. Added to this is the fact that these deer and elk “preserves” have insidiously spread chronic wasting disease into wild cervid populations around North America so that this exotic disease, never seen in the wild before the 1970’s, will now never be contained. You’d think that fact alone would be enough to deter state legislatures from allowing these “preserves” to exist on their territory. But we seem to dwell in a society hell-bent on an ethical race-to-the-bottom. No human “freedom” or desire, however perverted, is to be denied; and apparently anything will be stomached provided “market forces” suggest that it might be profitable. The currently popular zombie movies have become a reality; a majority of Americans are now moral zombies, roaming around degrading or destroying everything they touch. Such a society (American society) has become the secular equivalent of Sodom-and-Gomorrah, deserving of no understanding or sympathy, an embarrassment and disgrace to all right-minded people, and ripe for the fire. Far from being wacko, Reverend Wright pretty much had it right.