The Boone and Crockett Club’s Board of Directors and its membership have unanimously adopted and approved a position statement on “Canned Shoots” because of the growing concern among hunters and the increased public interest in the practice of “canned hunts.” Read our position.

A canned shoot is the practice of pursuing and killing any big game animal kept in or released from captivity to be killed in an escape-proof, fenced, put-and-take shooting operation, often called a “hunting preserve” by this industry. In canned shoots, the game lacks the equivalent chance to escape afforded free-ranging animals, virtually assuring the shooter a kill. 

Breeders of captive, native North American cervids, primarily white-tailed deer and elk, raise these animals to sell as breeding stock, as trophy animals for fee-based shooting operations, or to produce meat, semen, velvet, and other saleable parts. The number of farms, ranches and other facilities engaged in this business has been growing rapidly over the past decade, and breeding…

FAIR CHASE, as defined by the Boone and Crockett Club, is the ethical, sportsmanlike, and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild game animal in a manner that does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage over the game animals. 

First Adopted December 7, 2013 - Revised June 21, 2016 - Reviewed April 15, 2016 - Updated May 20, 2021

​Recipe from Wild Gourmet

Recipe Courtesy Chef Hank Shaw 

As a Boone and Crockett fellow and Ph.D. student, Chloe Nouzille studies mountain lion ecology in South Texas through the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University–Kingsville

By Chloe Nouzille
Printed in Fall 2024 Fair Chase Magazine