by Luke Clayton
...There is a fence war of sorts going on today and from what I can determine, it’s very much like the fence war on the open plains that took place back in the 1870s and 1880s. Today’s war is a nonviolent one that will be fought in the courts between landowners that construct high fences in order to better manage wildlife and the faction that are opposed to the practice.
First, let’s take a look at the previous fence war that occurred over 130 years ago. The term “war” very accurately describes this conflict of the early days of Texas.
Cattlemen ranged their herds on the open plains, allowing cattle to mostly fend for themselves on the abundant wild grasses of the prairie. When the country was opened to settlers, both farmers and ranchers, and barbed wire was introduced by Henry Sanborn and Joseph Glidden, conflicts between the free rangers and low-fenced property owners were inevitable.
The first big ranch in Texas to be fenced was the Frying Pan Ranch, up in the Panhandle in the 1880s. Just over 150 miles of low fence were constructed at a cost of $39,000, which ultimately contained 15,000 head of cattle. The necessary fencing of this big parcel of land obviously obstructed the travels and to a degree, north-to-south migration of the cattle herds during the winter months.
With the Frying Pan as an example, the XIT Ranch, also in the Texas Panhandle, was formed in a trade of sorts from the state of Texas to the capital syndicate of Illinois. When the state capital building burned in 1881, the state joined into an agreement to transfer title to three million acres in the Panhandle (to become the XIT Ranch) to the capital syndicate. The syndicate took on the duty of constructing the new capital building as payment for the land.
After precedence was set by the fencing of these two huge properties, ranchers and farmers with large and small tracts of land followed suit, fencing their properties. Fences were a natural progression to economic growth of the period.
When the once-wide-open plains were owned by private citizens who had different land use desires for their prospective properties, barbed wire fences became commonplace and necessary. If you stop to think about it, fences were as necessary to a newly developing country as were the hedge fences on the old English hunting estates hundreds of years before.
From the late 1800s, let’s fast forward to present-day Texas. About 30 years ago, the practice of construction high (game-proof) fences became popular in Texas.
The reason for building these high fences was to create an environment where the overall quality of the animals could be improved. A landowner with a few hundred acres in Mesquite and Oak brush out in the Hill Country or the same amount of land in the Piney Woods could high fence his property and decide exactly which bucks he wished to harvest each season and assure that he had mature bucks to harvest in upcoming years.
If he so desired, he could remove management bucks, allowing the heavier antlered animals to do the breeding. He could also stock his property with exotics to provide additional hunting opportunities. Keep in mind, these landowners that decided to high fence held deeds to their land and there were obviously no restrictions as to whether the fences they constructed on their properties were 5 feet high or 10.
It seems absurd that the question of “how high can I build my fence” would be questioned by others. But questioned it was.
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