Virginia's hunting-dog law finds itself in the cross hairs

John Morse eased his pickup down a lumpy fire road that squeezed deep into a thicket of rural Chesapeake woods.

In a holding box in the truck bed, five of his hounds were going nuts as he stopped briefly to talk to a couple of camo-clad friends.

On this unseasonably warm fall morning, Morse and several members of Jim's Hunt Club were about to take part in a Southern tradition that has been passed on to them by generations of hunters - using dogs to flush out and chase deer and other game.

It's a heritage that faces growing criticism from property owners who say a Virginia law - the only one of its type in the country - is allowing unwanted hunters and dogs to intrude onto their lands. Hunters worry that people are trying to do away with their sport.

At a highly anticipated meeting on Thursday in Richmond, the results of a yearlong study on the conflict will be presented to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries' Board of Commissioners.

But Morse and his buddies didn't have time to worry about any of that as they prepared for a morning hunt. Morse backed into a narrow cut in the tree line, got out of the cab and called on the radio.

"Time?" he asked several other club members who had positioned their hounds strategically throughout a large parcel of woods, farmland and bog. "OK, then."

Morse opened the dog box doors and let out his beagles.

The dogs howled their approval as they darted into the woods.

Hot on their tails, Morse shouted frantically, hoping to jump a few deer.

The dogs disappeared into the thicket, noses to the ground, searching for scent of the quarry.

As the tone of their barking abruptly turned urgent, the radios lit up with chatter.

"They're on one," a hunter said. "Get ready, boys."

Landowners, many of them hunters, say the time has come for Virginia to do away with its unique, decades-old "right-to-retrieve" law, which says hunters have the right to go on prohibited lands to retrieve their dogs. They can't carry firearms or bows and arrows or hunt any game while searching for their dogs.

The newly formed Virginians for Hound Hunting Reform has vowed to take the issue before the General Assembly, where several bills to rewrite the law have failed in the past.

Individuals already have gone to court because of unwanted hunters and dogs on their land. In 2001, Jeff McDermott of Gloucester argued for and received an injunction against a Middle Peninsula hunt club. Curt Lytle of Zuni has a similar case pending in Isle of Wight County.

Ben Jones of Crewe in Nottoway County even sent a bill to the game department, charging it for use of his land. He argued that the right-to-retrieve law makes his land public domain. The department has refused to pay.

Because of Jones' argument, former Rappahannock County lawyer Joel Polin has said he thinks the right-to-retrieve law is unconstitutional.

Lytle - a professional bass fisherman and avid bow hunter - said he has no problem with hound hunting, except for cases such as the afternoon last year when, he said, a pack of dogs ran onto his land and scared his two young daughters.

Lytle said he just wants to be left alone so that his family can enjoy the wildlife retreat he has built on 100-plus acres.

"It makes no sense to me at all that I don't have the right to keep people off my land," he said.

Hunting with hounds for deer, fox, raccoon, bear and birds has been around for thousands of years.

But as more people have moved into rural landscapes over the past decade, leased or owned land available for hunting has shrunk. Landowners and hunters have clashed more and more.

In many Southern states - Florida, Georgia and South Carolina among them - game agencies have initiated strict rules governing the use of hounds to hunt deer, enforced with stiff penalties for violations. North Carolina game officials are considering regulations.

Virginia also is addressing the issue.

But things are different in the commonwealth because of its right-to-retrieve law.

The law became enough of a hot-button topic last year that the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries initiated a study - "Hunting with Hounds in Virginia: A Way Forward" - to try to find solutions to mounting complaints.

Bob Duncan, executive director of the game department, said that increasing problems prompted the study, an effort to keep the issue from being settled in the General Assembly.

"We wanted to be proactive," Duncan said. "We didn't want to just adopt things done in other states.

"We want solutions that will work in Virginia. We want solutions that hopefully will make all sides happy. And we want to do everything we can to preserve the tradition of hound hunting."

The game department contracted facilitators from Virginia Tech, and a team of interested parties has hammered out of list of proposals. Those ideas will be presented to the game department's Board of Commissioners in Richmond on Thursday. Department officials emphasize that no laws or rules will come out of Thursday's presentation.

The board will either accept or reject the proposals. If it accepts them, it will tell game officials how and when to start implementing them.

Hunters say they are worried that the study marks the beginning of the end for hound hunting. Most of them charge that it has done little more than throw gas on the fire.

"The whole project is a true mess," said Bob Kane, president of the Virginia Hunting Dog Owner's Association. "Hunters understand that there are people who have been taking advantage of RTR, trespassing and hunting where they don't belong," he said, using the acronym for right-to-retrieve. "We all know this is a case of a few bad apples spoiling the barrel.

"But all of this could have been fixed without this big study. It's been a big waste of everybody's time."

Morse and other hunters have mobilized for the fight, forming the 31,000-member Virginia Hunting Dog Alliance.

One of the alliance's goals is public relations.

"We're all being lumped in with the very few bad hunters and clubs who don't respect other people," said Morse, a member of the group's board. "Every group out there has its bad apples. We all feel like they are trying to take our sport away from us because of the very few we have."

Morse said a big part of the problem is that newcomers don't understand the rural way of life. Most outside of the sport know little about the intricate role that hunters and clubs play in the communities in which they hunt, he said.

"Twenty-three counties have issued proclamations rejecting the game department's study," Morse said. "These counties emphasized the potential cultural and economic impacts of restricting the use of hounds to hunt deer."

He rattled off a list of ways that, he said, hunters and their clubs benefit communities and economics. Clubs routinely provide for families in the community and contribute thousands of pounds of venison to Hunters for the Hungry, a statewide program that distributes meat to needy families.

"We buy gas, ammunition, clothing, licenses, food and expensive tracking collars for the dogs," said Morse, who has 10 dogs. "We try to be good stewards in the community.

"But you don't ever hear anybody talking about all of those things."

Morse said that every club he is familiar with strives to have a good relationship with landowners who live adjacent to or near the property where they hunt.

"We have people assigned on each hunt to work the dogs and do everything we can to keep them in bounds," he said. "Most clubs do everything they can to stay away from where we're not wanted."

And in a state with nearly 1 million deer, hound hunters play an important role in keeping the population in check.

"Hunters take about 230,000 deer every year," said Rick Busch, chairman of the study's technical committee and the assistant director of the game department's wildlife division. "Many of those deer are taken by hound hunters. Without what they do, the state would quickly be overrun with deer."

In the distance, the sound of gunfire echoed off the tree line. For one of the members of Jim's Hunt Club, the morning was a success.

But for Morse, it was more about the dogs than the kill.

"I got a big 10-pointer one day when the dogs really didn't run much," he said. "I really didn't think that day was a very good hunt because the dogs didn't do their thing. Yeah, I got a big buck, but it just wasn't as rewarding."

It wasn't long before the hounds were howling again, bringing a smile to Morse. They'd jumped another deer and were chasing it.

"There is a feel to this that is spiritual," said Morse, starting to choke with emotion. "For me, hearing the dogs running, that right there is what it's all about. If the dogs don't run, to me, we've had a sorry hunt.

"If I never pick up a gun again, or shoot another deer, seeing and hearing the dogs run is enough.

"I love this sport. That's how important it is in our lives."

Lee Tolliver, (757) 222-5844, lee.tolliver@pilotonline.com