Life long hunters know, understand, and appreciate what they have when it comes to the wildlife they pursue.  Not only is real hunting a tradition, but it's a challenge, adventure, and way of putting natural food on the table.  Today, high fence game parks are threatening all of that. They seem to be springing up in every state with new ones opening every year. These parks are nothing more than vanity stations, generally for rich men to act like they achieved something. When in reality all they did was shoot a caged animal that was raised by humans, it's not hunting at all in fact. These "hunts" cost thousands of dollars and are a prime example of American greed. They threaten the great tradition of real hunting and even pubic saftey in a few ways. 

 The first is the spread of disease. Here in Ohio all transmission and detection of chronic wasting disease has been in captive deer populations in these parks.  This is common thtoughbthe US.  It's only a matter of time until CWD spreads to the wild population. This would be catastrophic for hunters and the hunting industry as a whole. This disease is fatal every time to deer that gets it. Their is also new recent research that shows CWD is able to spread to primates, although no humans have reportedly contracted it yet.  I feel this is only a matter of time until it happens since CWD is highly mutatable. These parks need stopped now while we still can. CWD is similar to mad cow disease, it's a bad way to die, if human were to contract it, the disease would no doubt be fatal for us as well.  Their is research available that says since this disease is so mutatable that it's entirely possible for animals we raise for food to contract it, especially cows. CWD cannot be removed from an environmentent once it's introduced. Its not actually alive so it cannot be killed. Its not a bacteria, virus, or parasite, it s what's know as a prion disease. Its not a well understood disease at this point, only that it is unique, deadly, and to the point impossible to irraticate.

The second way these parks are ruining the land for real hunters, is that they simply occupy large tracts of land that used to be used by the real hunters and habitated by animals that belong there. Anyone that hunts here in OH know that finding a place to actually do it can be a real challenge.  Normally when anyone buys a piece of land, the animals are still free to use it.  This is not so in the case if hunting preserves. It's general practice to fence off large tracts of land to keep their very expensive store bought animals in and natural animals out. This is not good at all. Tracts of land sometimes in the thousands of acres range are being converted from a natural ecosystem, to a quarantined zone of man controlled ecology. Its a form of habitat loss for animals that have lived here for millennia. Everyone except the rich "hunter" and the game park lose in this situation.

Game parks are an ugly situation in this country. Their is no honor or challege in killing a caged animal raised by people.  Just because a a person paid thousands of dollars to kill it doesn't make it a trophy or achievement.  Unfortunately the greed of money and vanity, and the illusion of status, has the potential to bring down or at the very least, severly diminish a long standing tradition of hunting and providing food. As well as crippling a very important part of our economy. The hunting industry contributes  tens of millions of dollars to our state economy every year. As well as jobs and state income for our parks through revenue of license sales. And if the diseases spawned by game parks actually spread to our farms we are in more trouble yet.

This may not even be on most peoples radar but it should be, and will be become a larger and larger problem as time goes on.