In a state considered the US birthplace of hunting with hounds, US president George Washington’s favorite sport has become a target for some Virginia landowners who say baying dogs and their owners are trampling property rights.
Even other hunters object to a Virginia right-to-retrieve law viewed as the most absolute in the country: Hunters have free rein to chase after dogs that stray onto posted private property.
Proponents are rising to protect their right to hunt, mindful that other southern states have already limited or eliminated certain forms of the sport because of complaints from property owners.
Courtly fox hunters and down-home bear and coon hunters — an unlikely coalition — contend their heritage is at stake.
“If we have a major defeat in Virginia, I think it would hurt hunting with hounds in every state. Therefore, we will fight it at every turn,” vowed Kirby Burch of the Virginia Hunting Dog Alliance, an umbrella group for 450 hunt clubs claiming more than 30,000 members.
A big part of the friction involves loss of rural habitat because of development. In Virginia, land is being developed at more than three times the rate of population growth, according to Hunting with Hounds in Virginia: A Way Forward, a state-commissioned report.
Because of that, more dogs are running on private lands, riling property owners.
Forms of hound hunting have been banned from Washington state to Massachusetts and many southern states have followed suit — in part because of opposition from animal-rights groups, but also from landowners. Texas banned hunting deer with dogs in 1990, and Alabama, Georgia and Florida have restricted the sport more recently.
Those actions have prompted officials to examine the sport in Virginia, where approximately 180,000 hunters use dogs. Game officials here say they hope to deal with the issue before problems mount.
Some hunters say the criticism comes from outsiders unfamiliar with the sport’s heritage, but that’s not always the case.
“An awful lot of what we consider ‘new people’ are sons and daughters of Virginia but don’t have the tradition of the land,” said Rick Busch, assistant director of the wildlife division of the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. “It’s not necessarily Yankees piling into our southern states.”
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