Study group: Legalize, regulate fenced hunting preserves

By Lesley Weidenbener
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Fenced deer hunting preserves would be legalized and regulated in Indiana if the General Assembly implements a recommendation approved Tuesday by a legislative study committee.

The group’s endorsement went beyond simply legalizing the handful of preserves that already exist.

Instead, the Agriculture and Natural Resources Study Committee voted 8-3 for a blanket recommendation that the state regulate preserves, a move that would legalize those already in operation and could allow new ones to open. The recommendation will be considered during the General Assembly’s next session, which begins in January.

Sen. Jean Leising, R-Oldenburg, said a visit to the Whitetail Bluff hunting preserve in Harrison County helped secure her support for the recommendation. She said she’d previously envisioned a preserve as a small fenced area with six or so deer standing around while a hunter picked out the one with the best antlers to shoot.

“It wasn’t like that at all,” she said. “We rode all over in Rangers for 1-1/2 hours and I saw a total of two deer in all that time. And we went up and down hills in tough terrain.”

Leising said she was “totally impressed” by the operation, which has about 60 deer spread over roughly 120 acres.

Whitetail Bluff is one of a handful of fenced preserves that give customers who pay a fee the opportunity to hunt for farm-raised deer.

If approved by the General Assembly, the panel’s recommendation would end a nine-year standoff between the preserves and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, which said in 2005 that no state law authorized the operations.

After the DNR moved to shut them down, the owner of Whitetail Bluff and other operations filed separate lawsuits, which led to conflicting court rulings. The Indiana Appeals Court is now considering the issue and the preserves have continued to operate under court order.

Meanwhile, lawmakers have considered bills to ban the operations and others to legalize them. Earlier this year, a bill that would have legalized and regulated the existing hunting operations passed the House and died in the Senate when only 25 of the chamber’s 50 senators voted yes. It takes 26 votes to pass a bill.

The fenced preserves are controversial among hunting groups, many of which consider them to be unethical. And on Tuesday, state Sen. Tim Skinner, D-Terre Haute, told the committee, “I can’t imagine anyone I know wanting to participate in this kind of a hunt.”

But supporters say the operations offer people who live in urban areas or those with disabilities opportunities to hunt they might not otherwise have.

DNR Director Cameron Clark told the study committee Tuesday that his agency does nothing to regulate the properties now because the court order doesn’t allow it. But he said conservation officers will occasionally go on the properties to see about a broken fence that can or has allowed a farm-raised deer to escape.

That can be problematic. State officials say those animals should not be allowed to mix with wild deer, in part to prevent the spread of diseases, including tuberculosis and chronic wasting disease. The latter is a neurological disorder that damages neurons, forming holes in the brain tissue of deer and eventually leading to death.

The study committee’s vote Tuesday came after a long discussion about the disease and how to prevent it.

CWD can only be confirmed post-mortem, as there are no current tests available to sample brain tissue from a live deer. The disease is suspected to be transferred through a deer’s saliva, urine and excrement and can survive for long periods of time in soil particles.

Indiana has not had a confirmed case of CWD, but has had deer transferred to farms from out of state where confirmed cases had been recorded. Several states in the Midwest, including Wisconsin and Missouri, have had deer test positive for CWD.

The study committee made no recommendations specifically about attacking the disease problems.

Lesley Weidenbener is executive editor of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.