Thursday, October 30, 2008
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: Hound study is a line drawn in the sand
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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At this point, it may be difficult to see anything good coming from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries’ controversial hound hunting study, but if hound hunters take it as a wakeup call to rid their ranks of outlaws, then the agony will have been worthwhile.
“There is no question that the unethical actions of a few have led us into this battle,” said Jim Hackett, a 50-year-old deer hound hunter from Prince George County.
“As this process goes forward, those who have caused this problem are gong to stand out more and more until they stand alone,” said Hackett. He is one of 18 members of the DGIF stakeholder advisory committee, the group assigned to take a look at hound hunting in Virginia with an eye toward resolving conflicts, particularly between landowners and hound hunters.
When the findings of the study were released last week, few people appeared to be satisfied. That included hound hunters, landowners, non-hound hunters, animal-rights advocates and even stakeholder committee members who claimed that parts of the process were flawed, if not downright suspicious.
The battle cry was, “We are going to take the matter to the General Assembly,” which is akin to saying, “We are going to take the risk of letting uninformed strangers decide the fate of our believed tradition rather than sit down and resolve our own problems.”
Some called the $70,000 study a waste of money, saying there already are enough laws to govern hunting and trespass. Why not enforce them rather than enact new ones?
Floyd Smith of Goochland County saw the study as a conspiracy by the DGIF to side with the anti-hunting movement. Others agreed. That is pretty unlikely, considering the DGIF depends on hound hunters for a big chunk of its revenue and gets little, but grief, from the animal-right’s groups.
Such thinking reflects the deep distrust that many hunters have with the DGIF following abuses by agency leaders that led to the forced dismissal of former executive director Bill Woodfin in May 2005.
Tom Evans, representing the Virginia Deer Hunters Association, said the hound study had sharpened conflict and produced no gain.
Kirby Burch, who said he represented 35,000 hound hunters under the umbrella of the Virginia Hunting Dog Alliance, told DGIF board members, “You have sought from the beginning to diminish hound hunting.”
Warren Radford, president of the Virginia Bear Hunters Association, was widely quoted when he said, “I’m afraid we’re witnessing the beginning of the end of hound hunting in Virginia as we know it.”
Dr. Steve McMullin, the Virginia Tech wildlife professor who facilitated the study, appeared to be perplexed by what he called “misconceptions and misinformation.”
Hound hunters have a choice. They can keep on bickering or they can save their sport by lowering their tolerance of hunters who give hound hunting a bad name.
Said McMullin, “We did not paint all hound hunters as renegades, but to pretend that there are none does more harm than good.”
At the heart of the issue is the right-to-retrieve law. Only Virginia and Minnesota give hunters the right to retrieve their dogs on private property even when access has been expressly denied by the landowner. It is an easy law to abuse.
Hound hunters are adamant when they say that right-to-retrieve is crucial to the welfare of their dogs. Many landowners are outraged that right-to-retrieve strips them of their property rights and, in their view, is unconstitutional.
The most potent recommendation of the hound study (you can find others on the DGIF site HuntFishVA.com) is to soften the right-to-retrieve law by requiring hunters to make a reasonable attempt to contact a landowner prior to retrieval of hounds from posted property. “Reasonable attempt” isn’t defined.
None of the study’s 11 recommendations were acted upon. By far, the 25 people who addressed the board were hound hunters. Bobby Smith, who said he owns 438 acres in Rockbridge County, was alone in presenting the viewpoint of landowners.
“Don’t tell me how great all the bear hunters are,” he said. “I am not against bear hunting. I am against bear hounds running across my property.”
In their rancor to oppose changes to the right-to-retrieve law, hound hunters must not overlook the fact that the majority of the study’s recommendations involve ethics, education, more law enforcement, stiffer fines and increased accountable. These should be addressed right away while the more controversial ones -- right-to-retrieve modifications, a deer hound chase season, and restrictions on road hunting -- can stand a cooling-off period.
No DGIF board member has more of a hound hunting mindset than Richard Railey of Courtland. He says he owns more deer hounds that he would like for his wife to know about. He squirms when people accuse the board of being part of a conspiracy to abolish hound hunting. “It is just a lie,” he said.
As for the hound study, “It is not perfect, but it is a start,” he said. “If we would all work together instead of stabbing knives in each other’s back, we can solve this problem and preserve this sport for another 100 or 200 years. But we will never accomplish anything if we say there is no problem, because there is.”
