Thursday, February 23, 2006
Bill Cochran's Outdoors: You'll need a lawyer to deer hunt in Southhampton County
Bill Cochran is a Roanoke Times outdoors columnist.
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The black-powder hunting season has become hugely popular in Virginia, yet one county -- Southampton -- has put the muzzle on muzzleloading guns. Never mind that regulations of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries specify that there is a statewide early and late muzzleloading season. Try practicing it in Southampton County and you could end up in court. That’s true even if you hunt on your own property.
Some hunters applaud this; others are steamed. Meanwhile, the DGIF says there is little it can do about the situation, although the agency in recent years has strived for uniform hunting regulations.
You don’t have to look far to find hunters who will tell you that it isn’t a case of DGIF having its hands tied; rather, it is a matter of the agency winking at the situation.
The issue raises a major concern: If one county can get by without honoring a season or a state hunting regulation, what is to keep others from doing the same? Think of the hodgepodge of regulations across the state if every county picked and chose the seasons it wanted. Or what if one county decides not to honor any of the hunting seasons? This isn’t a county issue; it is a statewide hunting issue.
Southampton is one of Virginia’s prime deer counties. For a number of years, it has ranked at the top or near the top in number of deer killed. It produces an above average number of trophy bucks.
V.S. “Vee” Pittman, a deer hunter who lives in Franklin, believes Southampton is trophy country because the hunting is controlled by private clubs that hunt with hounds. Club members do what is right for the deer herd through programs that include DMAP and Quality Deer Management.
“Local citizens, primarily farmers and landowners, formed hunting clubs after the turn of the century for the purpose of deer hunting with dogs,” Pittman said. “Our flat terrain, combined with dense cutovers and swamps, allowed for dog hunting over large tracts of land and the weapon of choice has always been the shotgun.”
Pittman killed a Southampton trophy bucks during the recent season and took it to a taxidermist shop in nearby North Carolina.
“In looking at the other deer in his shop to be mounted, by far the largest bucks were taken in Southampton County,” he said. “The taxidermist and I concluded the reason that Southampton County has big bucks was that it did not allow muzzleloader or rifle hunting.”
The real reason that the muzzleloading season is blocked in Southampton County is because it comes in two weeks ahead of the dog season, and many of the people who control the clubs don’t like that, said Penn Riggs.
If clubs don’t want muzzleloading hunting on their land, then let them control it, Riggs said. “But let the landowners and hunters who want to hunt that way have that right.”
An avid deer hunter, Riggs lives in Norfolk, but hunts in Southampton and is an active club member who enjoys dog hunting in addition to still- and stand-hunting and bow and crossbow hunting. He hunts with a muzzleloader outside the Southampton County.
Riggs believes there is a sizable and growing number of sportsmen who want muzzleloading hunting in Southampton. He collected more than 300 names of Southampton County residents who advocate black-powder hunting and presented them to the DGIF. The petition was filed without comment.
“The support for black-powder is here, it just gets stream-rolled by the Board of Supervisors and the hunt club connections,” he said.
Richard E. Railey, the Southampton County attorney, is one of the 11 members of the DGIF board and has sided with dog hunters.
Pittman believes a muzzleloading season would open the door to unsafe hunting practices and rogue hunting.
Riggs said he was offended to be classified as an outlaw hunter just because of his interest in muzzleloading, and Pittman’s safety issue doesn’t hold water, he said.
“Southampton allows slug guns in the general gun season,” he said. “Modern slug guns have trajectories very similar to muzzleloading rifles. The real reason behind the ban is not as noble as gun safety and hunting tradition, it’s simply greed and envy. They don’t want anyone hunting two weeks before they do. If the DGIF says the herd has the carrying capacity to support black-powder hunting, then hunters should be able to use muzzleloaders if they want to.”
Pittman doesn’t like the idea of people from outside the country getting into a huff over the black-powder ban.
“The citizens of our county through our board of supervisors have sought to keep muzzleloading hunting prohibited in our county for numerous reasons. Why should this be an issue outside of our country?”
Duane Preston, a landowner in the county who is a proponent of the muzzleloading season, is scheduled Monday to bring the issueto the Southampton County Board of Supervisors, as he has in the past. Look for Preston to refer to a recent article in Petersen’s Hunting Magazine which called Virginia ’s local firearms ordinances “schizophrenic.”
