Something, somewhere, needed to die.

Atla

Atla

Pew Pew! Vroom Vroom!
Joined
Nov 23, 2010
Location
NC
My Wyoming hunting trip for pronghorns went to pot about 36 hours before we left thanks to Mother Nature.

So we scrambled to find somethings to kill and went to the Caryonah game ranch in Tennessee.

Going in, with lots of preconceived notions on how an exotic game ranch operates, I was concerned about it being like this:

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Figured I'd walk in, some critter would come over and suck start my rifle, then I'd walk out.

Instead, I was very pleasantly surprised that it wasn't like that at all. There was plenty of fair chase hunting and I took a beautiful ram while my father took a nice sow boar.

A Review of Caryonah Game Ranch

All things said and done, it was a good bit cheaper than Wyoming would have been. (Not counting the $800 in non-resident tags I ate.) But it was really weird to pull out cold weather gear and put shorts in my pack.
 
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Worthy of reposting from another forum. Because part of me feels the same way and I think a lot of folks do.

From Poster XXXX:

I always looked at it like going big game hunting at the zoo.
Click to expand...

My Response:

Pretty much. Except it’s a couple thousand acres, so things are in a much bigger enclosure.

There’s some stuff about it that rubs me wrong, but from the Capitalist and Businessman in me, I understand why it’s done that way. For example, everything but the boars are stocked. And everything stocked is male.

Which I suppose make’s sense.

If you’ve a certain size Elk Herd, you can only reasonably take a few a year that are produced and matured from the herd. That’s hard to run a hunting business on. Same for buffalo or red stags.

From what I gathered, they tried turning running herds of sheep once, because they can reproduce several lambs a year. But the coyotes kept wiping the kids and ewes out. It was cheaper to buy them and relocate.

That kind of bothers me. But it’s no different than going fishing in a stocked pond or stream. Where I grew up, the fishing demand for trout was so high that the streams had to be repeatedly stocked by Fish & Game or we wouldn’t have any left.

It’s a business. You have to have inventory. Easiest and most efficient way to do that, is stock only males. Few people will want to hunt a female or young one, and those animals will just suck up limited resources and eventually you will have to cull them out as the herd becomes unbalanced as only males are being harvested.

I don’t begrudge them for that. It’s the way it has to be done. But I also understand its not for everyone. Some folks like spending ten days back pack hunting through the Rockies. Go for it and hats off to you.

I don’t have that sort of time available. Then there is the non-resident tag prices.

https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Apply-or-Buy/Li…se-Fee-Changes

For Wyoming, non-resident moose are around $2,000 to put in for a drawing. Bison, $4,400. Mountain Goat, $2,600. Big Horn Sheep, $2,300. (Comparably, a Buffalo is $3,000 at Caryonah. Significantly cheaper than just the tags.)

And for most people it takes over a dozen years of applying before getting drawn, if even that. And I believe Mountain Goats are limited to 1 per lifetime.

That’s also money you’ve got to have upfront to apply with, if you aren’t drawn it’s returned to you six months later. That’s hard for most people to do. And you’ve got to have that money available year after year after year to rack up the needed points to get drawn.

Some critters, like Elk at $750 for a non-resident, that’s a much better deal than paying $6,000 at this game ranch. But you’ve still got to get drawn and most good areas (That produce big Elk) require a lot of points (which equates to lots of years putting in and waiting.)

Now as for the boar – They’re a money tree. They reproduce so fast, that they are a nuisance. But they are also the most sought after hunts they offer. So they seem to have a balance of sorts. But they require $0 investment. No stocking fee, no minerals or food plot costs to build up antlers. A lot of profit to be had there.

Just food for thought.
 
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