10/01/2023
Shared from our friends to the north, Virginia.
Hound Study – 4th meeting Glen Allen, Virginia
The 4th meeting of the 2023 Hound Study concluded on Friday afternoon. The main theme of the meeting was more directed toward hunting with dogs and the other unrelated topics were not brought up.
DWR Law Enforcement made a presentation of how the data collection process works. This was referring to how DWR gathers statistics related to hound hunting complaints. During the presentation, it was revealed that the process wasn’t perfect. Many complaints against hunting with dogs also involved other non hunting breeds and there were complaints of other non-related issues that were also included in the statistics. Like any process it needs improvement even though it is a better system than most any other state have. The good news is, a better process is being implemented that will give more reliability to the actual statistics gathered.
Actual laws relating to our sport were also discussed with 18.2-132.1 “Dumping Dogs on private property” being raised up again as an issue. Ryan Brown addressed the committee members concerning this law and he stated that he got a feeling from the input of the committee that at best, the law had some ambiguity in its wording. The law only addresses dumping dogs directly onto private property but it does not address deliberate intent when a hound owner drops dogs in a legal location but the purpose is to get the dogs onto someone’s private property. I think it would be honest to say that just about everyone was agreed that this can be a problem and presently, the law doesn’t address this action. In fact, I was victim to the very practice several times last year by a group of unethical hound hunters.
Ryan will be meeting with the Attorney General and his staff in search of the proper wording to possibly amend this law.
Nelson Lafoon – DWR Biologist made a presentation concerning research that had been done with other hound hunting states. Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, S.C., N.C. , Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and New York. Regulations and restrictions were compared along with the statistics on hound hunting participation. It was clear that Virginia and North Carolina were the two largest hound hunting states with Virginia being suspected to be the largest.
When you look at some laws that have been passed in other states, it was easy to see where bad hunting practice and unethical behavior will take our sport. The real shame is, those that are reading this are not the problem. Those of us that are fighting to keep this sport alive are not the problem. The ones that are causing this are not plugged in to what we are doing to keep our heritage alive. I am not one that takes the position that we have to police our own to get things corrected but, we should be bold enough to call them out and let them know, we won’t tolerate them drilling holes in the boat any more. This is forcing everyone else to bail out the boat in order to stay afloat.
A couple of times there were some strong worded exchanges between hound hunters and land owners, but the passionate outburst were iced down in the end. I did have an observer approach me after the meeting and shared that in his observation, the representatives for the hound hunters have been more professional and more willing to discuss the challenges head on and have been more willing to offer up ways to resolve the problems than the land owners. For some land owners, it seems that only implementing more laws is going to satisfy their agenda. This was the same sentiments expressed in the 2008 study.
In my opinion, there are all kinds of complaints against our sport. The most passionate ones are driven by a misunderstanding of land owner’s rights. No land owner has “Absolute” or “Exclusive” land owner privileges. The only way to have that is to erect a fence around your property, install a security system and stage armed guards behind the fence. Unless that is done, animals are going to enter the property. I recommend that you memorize this paragraph. You may need this information in the future.
Keep in mind, INTENT changes the entire argument
