Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Va dog hunt survey/review of complaints

Long article, so link for the page.

http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2007-12-24-0109.html

There are flat TOO MANY of us anymore, that is when cultures clash and the trouble starts. The big city folks move to the country to get away from the city and then try to change the country to the city, boggles my mind.

Had a neighbor T, that retired to his homeplace some years ago. Nice guy, had just got to citified or whatever, never could figure him out.

Asked him one time why he retired to his homeplace if he liked the big city so well. He said, "He just wanted to retire to where it was peaceful and quiet."

This was at his home, and you could not visit with he or his wife (nice lady also) for a little, yippy mouthed, poodle dog barking non-stop in your face. This with no correction whatsoever to stop the barking. His neighbor couldn't even visit with anyone in his yard, for that little dog barking inside or outside the house. It was also one of those barks that got on everyone's nerves.

The neighbor with the poodle told me one time, if he had known there were so many dogs that barked in the neighborhood, he would never have moved back home. He even asked me one time why my dogs didn't bark when the all the other dogs were barking.

Don't recall what I replied, probably one of those easing out of the conservation gracefully things.

Go figure, ........I can't!!!

For some 50 years now, up to, and including today, I have had problems with dog hunters.
Florida is fairly liberal about hunting deer with dogs. There are registration requirements for using dogs on private and public land. Many of the larger WMAs, like Ocala and Osceola allow deer hunting with dogs, and set aside vast areas of land for that purpose.
Problems arise when folks like me want to hunt the same areas. The dog crew routinely block the roads, destroy roads with their monster trucks, destroy stands, shoot around still hunters, and do every thing they can to force anyone not in their group or club out of a given area.
Today, while up in Osceola, I had an altercation with a group of these Neanderthals, about blocking FR 211.
I would be more than happy to see deer hunting with dogs banned.

deer hunting with dogs? How is that done?

Around here dogs are ussually shot if they run deer, so I never even considered that you could use them to hunt deer.

Release the hounds, they are trained to run the deer to the hunters. Shoot thr deer. Dress the deer, repeat.

TLEE,

It is not all that simple.

Dogs run deer across property lines irrespective of Yuppy or long-tenured local ownership. And some dog hunters, unfortunately for the more responsible members of their sport, have demonstrated a strong outlaw streak that includes vandalism against those who complain about, or try to restrict their packs' incursions on others' private propeety.

And, like it or not, the hunting community is split over dog hunting. One trend is toward hunting leases based on major investments in food plots and culling does to get a herd with improved trophy prospects. Run a few dog packs each week across that ground and you will scatter those deer all over the county and ruin yeaes of effort. And then local hunters wo scout deer year round and are serious about pusuing a single trophy animal resident in their area also suffer the random, illegal, indiscriminate impact of dog packs on private land.

I would love to see a way to square the circle. Save a hunting tradition and make it work in the real world. But, the odds are long against it -- particularly as large landowners -- exurban or long term, local -- tend to have a lot of political power at the local and state level. When the idiots supply them with free ammo to curtail the sport, they inevitably win.

Demonizing newcomer landowners is not a viable solution to this problee. Dog hunters need to clean up their act. And some niche for the law abiders needs to be created.

By the way, I own only a house in suburbia and do not lease land to hunt -- yet. I do run free running dogs off the private land I hunt.

1B

I should have been clearer about this issue. My desire to ban deer hunting with dogs extends to public land, not private land. Much of this club activity is done on private land, leased or owned.
This is one of THE most contentious issues within the hunting fraternity.

You guys who are complaining about dogs, are you just complaining about using dogs on deer, or dogs in hunting in general? Using Beagles for rabbit, pointers and retrievers for birds, hounds for boar, etc., is a pretty old and established tradition. Is this part of your complaint? That seems totally off base, if it is.

Deer.

The main problem at issue here is dog packs trained to run deer.

Pack hounds used for other purposes that stay off of private property are not the issue here. BUT, if your beagles run deer on preivate land, not yours, when they are supposed to be on rabbits, or your coon dogs do the same -- they are a problem too.

Bird dogs usually hunt under direct, close, control of their handlers. The stupuid ones may chase deer too but that is abnormal ansd undesirable.

1B

Tell me about it--tenfold in my neck of the wooods........

I agree, we are beginning to run over ourselves.


Casey

Oh man, I can I identify with that kind of situation...........








Not me! I take full advantage. I tell 'em:

1. Ya' gotta be smarter than the dog.

2. Ya' gotta enforce what you say to the dog--even if that means jumping in the middle of dog--figuratively AND literally.



I take my Aussies everywhere. They know how to heel, they don't break until I give them express permission. I can take them down the street in town (without a leash) park them in from of the store, and come out 15 minutes later and they will be right where I told them.

People always say, "What kind of dogs are those?" (Like the breed really makes a difference or something......)


Casey

Unfortunately, I deal with this issue all the time. Deer and coon hunting with Treeing Walker Coonhounds is very popular in my area. Since I volunteer at a dog shelter, I deal with hounds and their [bleep] owners all the time. on average, 20-40% of our dogs are Walker hounds at any given time. Used to be a lot of beagles too, but far fewer these days for unknown reasons. There are a number of issues involved.

One is the fundamental issue of property rights. Whether a landowner is the direct descendent of Lighthorse Harry Lee, or a 1st generation American named Kwon Lee, when he buys land its his land. Hound hunters have no more right to go charging across his property day and night. A friend bought a ranchette with two horse pastures and a mini-barn where she keeps her horses. The local rednecks go barging across her land chasing raccoons, crossing multiple fences, waking everybody up and scaring the horses. Its really just not cool to be waking people up at 0200 on a weeknight, especially folks who work an 0700-1900 shift 5-6 days a week.

You can see from many of the badly spelled comments following the article that a lot of rural folks really don't have any respect for property rights. You can see the difference between normal hunters and hound hunters. Normal hunters, its expected and required by law to talk to private landowners first and get written permission to hunt on their property, with the hunter needing to abide by the stipulations of the landowner. Hound hunters, however, expect the landowners to abide by the expectations of the hunters. Really bizarre.

Another is how the hound hunters treat their dogs. Some of the better hunt clubs give their dogs decent vet care, but on average they're no better than the Michael Vick types. Its not uncommon for the rednecks to dump injured dogs on our shelter property in the middle of the night, apparently its cheaper to buy another dog than pay a vet to fix a broken toe or whatever. We tend to receive a rash of Walkers at the end of hunting season, they turn up not only on our property but get dumped on rural roads and whatnot. And when they can't find their dogs, they often end up with us. Almost invariably they have either hookworms, whipworms, or both. Heartworm is also popular. Undernourished, really nasty tartar & plaque due to their diet, tick infested*, etc. One redneck who bitched at me that he lost $250 in pay because he had to take a day off to retrieve his stray from our shelter, then said he couldn't afford the cost of heartworm preventative. Needless to say that dog has a pretty bad case of heartworm infestation, and has maybe a 50/50 chance of making it.

There is definitely a money/class aspect to it. One of the comments on the referenced web article hit the nail on the head; the hunt clubs have money and influence, which is why the state vet turns a blind eye to the mistreatment of club dogs but has plenty of time to harass my shelter. The thing is, to get to our shelter they have to drive past a house that keeps 4 hunting dogs each in a 3x6ft run outside. Same state vet that had no idea Michael Vick was running a big dogfighting operation, even though the news choppers had taken video of the place.

My general expectation is that hound hunting is going to kill off all hunting in Virginia. The hound hunters would rather screw the rest of the hunting community rather than clean up their own act.

* One dog we rescued was initially described as black with brown patches, until the vet bathed him. The black areas were all ticks. Literally tens of thousands. His coloration was the standard tricolor. Two years old, but already gray around the eyes and muzzle from malnourishment and stress. We placed him in a home, where he had love and companionship for his last few months of life.

Really the main problem is the lowlife crowd that uses deer dogs. While there are responsible hunt clubs that hunt on their own land with their own dogs etc, for every good situation there seems to be 9 bad ones.

The dogs are doing what comes naturally, its the owners who use them in areas where they'll cross a couple dozen property lines and get wrapped up with horses and livestock. While I don't find hound hunting to be interesting, I'm not against it, as long as its not infringing on the rights and lifestyle of others. Its pretty clear to me that 90% or more of the hound hunters will infringe upon others as much as possible.

What the fellow from Oregon said applies here too, dogs running deer are shot on sight. I guess I don't have a problem using hounds where legal, but here it's not, as such, dogs that do run deer don't do it long.

I'd be happy if the country folks who move to the city wouldn't try to change the city to the countryside. The yahoos who lived 2 houses down from me had a hyperactive black lab they kept penned up in the back yard; barked all night, every night. Driveway looked like a junkyard, too. Everybody was happy when the For Sale sign went up.

I have in the past bred, raised and trained registered Walker Fox Hounds to use on fox and coyote. I was lucky in the fact that both of my grandfathers had completed most of the leg work and I was allowed to enjoy their efforts in some very well bred hounds. Would they still run a deer from time to time, YES. Did I encourage it, NO. We do not have an established club where I live, but there are five distinct groups that hunt mostly coyotes with hounds in the immediate area (15 square miles). All five groups utilize tracking equipment on their hounds and at times electronic training devices on problem hounds. They are very proud of their hounds and spend a large amount of money on them in feeding and training. The people you folks are describing are not houndsmen, just as the drunken roadhunter is not a hunter. We have a state organization that looks after law following houndsmen and their animals. It is illegal in some states (not sure about all) to shoot or harm a hound unless it is either threatening you or your livestock. This means if you shoot a hound for chasing a deer, you are liable for the cost of the hound and depending on its breeding, future offspring that could have been reared and sold. Think twice before you pull that trigger and the possible financial and legal recourse from your actions. I have owned my own hounds for over 30 yrs and have seen many things, I do not claim that I have seen all. Many times I have had spectators (folks who don't usually hunt with us) tell me that a certain dog came by them running a deer. I usually listen to what they have to say and then ask are they sure a coyote didn't come past them? More than once, I have taken these folks to the bay only to find a coyote holed up after they swore the dogs were running deer. A coyote is very smart and will purposely follow a herd of deer to try and fool the hounds. A trained hound knows this, a untrained human doesn't and will seldom "SEE" the coyote as they are focused on the deer and the barking dog. A sure sign that a deer is being ran by a dog is that the deer will almost always be by itself and it will look very distressed usually with its tongue hanging out. If more than one deer is involved, usually they just became spooked when the barking dog came through and are not actually being ran. A coyote will also run through a herd of cattle to through the dog off its track. A coyote can walk/run through the cattle with little attention being paid to them, but the cattle hear the barking dog coming and get very defensive. The cattle will actually chase the dog/dogs as they try and sort out the scent trail. A houndsmen that even suspects they have a dog that will harass livestock will take immediate action. Of the five groups of houndsmen that I regularly hunt with, all own land (from 100-3000 acres each) that they either farm or raise livestock themselves. You will not find one NO HUNTING sign on any of their properties and if asked by a local will allow them access to hunt/fish. We are continually asked to hunt certain areas during calving season to help with predatation. We readily invite the game warden to ride with us if he would like. Members of our group include a bank president, one of the local vets, county commissioner, county deputy, along with many other common folk who get together to enjoy each others company and the beautiful music made by the hounds.

Everytime I hear about someone complaining about a legal form of hunting and how it interfers with "their" way of hunting I shake my head. Just another closet PETA member.

CK

With the exception of a few extensive locales, hound hunting for deer belongs in the past. My Virginia experiences of over 40 years ago in the Piedmont areas saw conflicts even then.

Hounds are not trained in any fashion to bring deer back around to hunters. They simply scent trail the animal until one or the other gives up or bites the bullet. Only the deer can dictate direction. Given that whitetail have relatively limited home ranges, they will tend to circle in an attempt to remain in and maybe exploit the intricacies of familiar ground.

The practice was to release the dogs, listen, and then with local knowledge make a guess as to direction and likely road crossings ahead of the the pack. These made for challenging road races among pack owners and non owners also free to exploit the situation. And yes, there were some interesting and indeed heated interactions as each attempted to short stop the other.

Yes, it's a long standing tradition, but with the parceling up of property, it's one of those tradtions that will die. Hopefully it will not include a ban on all hunting, which could be the result if left totally up to the voters. A little PETA footage on the right TV stations and it could be gone in a year. Five seconds of hounds and a wounded of exhausted deer on video would be all that's needed.

We lost hounds for bear and lion in Oregon to the voters. One 10 second clip of a bear falling from a tree into a pack of hounds in a small stream could not be undone by stacks of biological data showing expanding populations or pleas from informed F&G administrators to sustain the practice. The public just did not see it as fair chase. Remember that across the country, hunters are only about 10 to 12% of the population. If we tick off the other 90%, we will lose. The rural sectors in any state are a voting minority.

Hounds may still be used on bobcats in Oregon, and there is presently an amazingly high bycatch of lions by that circle. If they do not become a bit more discrete, free running hounds will be banned completely here.

As a past resident of Va and WVa, it's interesting regarding the feelings toward dogs and deer. Va was tolerant of dogs in the laurel forest areas, while any dog chasing deer in WVa would be shot on sight with no complaints from the owner.

Edited- Crappie Killer: I would agree that there are many who work and train their animals to such a degree that they may indeed be target specific. This is a situation though where perceptions rather than the truth will likely prevail.

Hawkeye, I was fairly clear, about what sort of dogs and dog hunting I was talking about. You, as so often happens, did not pay attention.
I guess you don't go afield often.............

Where I live in Va, deer hunting with dogs doesn't happen. I think it occurs most where the thickets are impenetrable in the more southern regions of Va.

We do have a rich fox hunting traditon and about 2-3 fox hunts with hounds find there way traversing the farms I hunt on during each hunting season. I'm more than content with all the deer that scatter once those hounds and horses roll through the farms.

Makes me wonder where they all came from! The deer hide and bed without detection well enough on the farms. I can only imagine what it is like in the areas with the most deepest and impenetrable thickets.