Thursday, October 11, 2007
Stories of hunters that do -- and don't -- foul their nests
Bill Cochran
Recent mail
BILL: I have been keeping up with the letters that have been coming in about the bear hunters in Virginia. My dad started taking me bear hunting as soon as I was able to walk. By now, I have 20-plus years of experience of how bear hunting used to be and how it is now.
Through my years of experience, I have hunted with a lot of people and got close to some of them through hunting. In my younger days, I was oblivious to the “bad” side of what some of them were doing; for example, shooting undersized bears and taking bears after dark. To say that this kind of thing doesn’t happen would be ridiculous. I have gotten rid of some of those “close friends” that haven’t corrected their ways. There haven’t been many.
As time has passed, those people have matured greatly, most of whom have grandchildren now. They have realized that killing the bear isn’t the most exciting part of the hunt. It is seeing their children and grandchildren in the outdoors, enjoying being around the dogs, and their adrenaline rising when they are pursuing a big bear.
Ultimately the goal is for the young kids to catch up to the bear and kill it. But this isn’t the blood-thirsty drive that has been portrayed by some of the responses in your Mail Bag. It is the thrill of seeing those young kids get excited about being in the outdoors that gets them going.
When it was argued that bear hunting now is done in trucks and it is a race to where the bear crosses the road: no question, that happens. As our society has expanded, more and more people are living in the mountains these days. This is the reason for all of the roads being cut through bear country. The younger guys that once did all of the “bad” things when they were hunting are now older and can’t get around easily anymore. So it’s true that trucks are a big part of bear hunting. It’s the kids and grandkids that are now being run ragged through the woods trying to keep up with the dogs, not the old guys in the trucks. They are there for support and guidance more than anything.
One thing that burns my blood is the talk about how the bear hunters are scum and how they are unethical hunters. There has been no talk about how deer hunters are road hunting all the time, shooting deer out of season, killing a deer and only cutting the tenderloin out and leaving the rest of the carcass.
I don’t understand why bear hunters catch so much flack about the little things that some rogue hunters do, but everywhere you turn there are deer hunters that are doing 10 times worse. Don’t get me wrong, I love deer hunting and know a lot of very ethical deer hunters, but I see a lot more wrong in deer hunting than I have ever seen in bear hunting.
JONATHAN BRANSON
BILL: I hunt in Southampton and Sussex counties primarily. I've seen a lot of abuses and travesties by dog hunters, and I've also seen a lot of deer hound hunting that was done as it should be, with consideration for other hunters and landowners alike. I agree that there needs to be some additional regulation to help control the unethical element, short of banning dog hunting altogether. If the innocent have to suffer a little, that's life. I'd love to be able to spotlight deer at night and wouldn't dream of shooting them, but because there are those who would, I can't spotlight. It's a changing world, and we have to change with it if we are to survive.
By the way, our club uses tracking collars on deer dogs quite a bit, but we hunt on private land and only use the collars to assist with dog retrieval after the hunt. Used properly, collars are an amazing tool.
PENN RIGGS
BILL: A fellow hunter just called me and claims he heard through a friend of a friend that a national timber company with land on the Eastern Shore of Virginia has closed their land to all dog hunting. I don’t know if this just includes hunting deer with dogs or if it means all dog hunting. Have you heard anything about this alleged ban? Does the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries know anything about it?
TERESA PRESTON
TERESA: A “no hound hunting” clause has been implemented by Vision Forestry in response to what is described as a substantial number of complaints about two clubs that use hounds to hunt deer. Vision Forestry manages 8,600 acres that formerly was owned by Chesapeake Properties in Accomack and Northampton counties. The land now is owned by the Conservation Fund. Of the groups that lease the hunting rights on this property, about a half-dozen are hounds men who have hunted on about 2,150 acres. Instead of singling out and dealing with the two problem clubs, the landowners have chosen to take the broader approach of not allowing any hound hunting on property they lease. The VDGIF is aware of the situation.
Sounds like still another case of hunters fouling their nest.
BILL
