From today's Indianapolis Star...

The Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that state wildlife officials overstepped their authority when they attempted to ban high-fence hunting preserves a decade ago.

The ruling is significant. Today, the House Natural Resources Committee is likely to vote on a bill that would set rules for high-fence hunting preserves in Indiana.

The three-judge appeals panel ruled 2-1 that the Department of Natural Resources went “beyond the express powers conferred upon it by the General Assembly... to manage Indiana’s wildlife,” when the agency tried to shut down hunting preserves a decade earlier.

The appellate court ruled that privately owned deer on preserves are exempt from the DNR’s regulatory authority.

The opinion also calls on the legislature to end a stalemate over high-fence hunting in Indiana.

In 2005, the DNR issued an order attempting to shut down the state's fenced deer hunting preserves, after a case in which deer bred for big antlers were being shot in enclosures so small that officials called them “killing pens.” The preserves sued, challenging the order.

In 2013, a Harrison County judge ruled that the DNR had no authority over captive-deer hunting because the animals on the preserves were privately owned. They are sold as part of a boutique agricultural industry that breeds deer with antlers sometimes twice as large as the record for animals killed in the wild. Valuable breeding bucks and does can command six-figure prices.

The status of the animals remained unclear. Less than a year before the Harrison County ruling, an Owen County judge tossed out another case challenging the DNR’s authority.

The justices affirmed the Harrison County decision.

Here is the court document's....Long read but interesting!!!

http://t.co/zp5E1DSm6i

Item 36 seems interesting....

[36] Because IDNR may protect and properly manage the fish and wildlife resources of
Indiana—regardless of who owns them—I believe that IDNR has the authority to
regulate high-fence hunting under our current statutory scheme. Therefore, I would
enter summary judgment in favor of IDNR.