Hound Hunting – Where do YOU stand?
I was just browsing through my blog roll today, and saw this bit in Dave Hurteau’s Field and Stream Field Notes blog. In short, it looks like Florida is trying to crack down on deer hounds being run across private property, and a recent case is putting the law to the test.
I can’t remember if I’ve had much to say about hound hunting in the past, but rather than bounce all over the site trying to see what I’ve said before, I’ll start fresh.
My first deer hunts were done over hounds in southeastern North Carolina. I took my first deer this way, and several others later.
The club we hunted back then, Black River Hunting Club, had thousands and thousands of acres to run. Much of the land was dense pocosin (kind of a coastal swamp), grown over with turkey and pin oak, cat-claw briars, blackberry brambles, and a mucky peat that goes from solid ground to a bottomless mire without warning. For a human to move through this stuff is a barely surmountable challenge. To move through and hunt is impossible. Deer thrived in this place, but the only way to move them was with hounds.
Pine and hardwood ridges cut through the swampy thickets, and open “islands” of pine offered great places to set stands. The general plan for a drive was to set standers at positions, usually a couple hundred yards apart (all ground hunters had to use buckshot… rifles and slugs were restricted to elevated stands), and then to put the dogs down at the end of the area. The hounds would move in, until they picked up a scent. At first there would be scattered barking, some soft, individual baying, until the trail suddenly got hot. And then… oh, the songs they’d sing!
If you’ve never stood in the frosty morning, shivering with cold and anticipation as the gentle woodland sounds are suddenly replaced by the baying music of a pack of deer hounds… well, it would be impossible to convey the sensations that course through you. Every crackle of every leaf becomes a big whitetail, slinking through the oak brush. The scrape of a branch in the icy breeze could be the monarch of the southern forest. Your ears cock toward the sound of the dogs. Are they coming closer? How far now? How long until they pass?
Your eyes pick apart the foliage, seeking that flash of reddish-brown, or the white flag of a fleeing deer. You evaluate every opening, each breach of the thickets for the likely shooting lanes. All the while your heart pounds, faster with every yelp and bark of the approaching dogs.
Then you hear it… the crack of branches, the thump of hooved feet. You scan harder, shotgun half-raised… and there he is! This is another reason for using buckshot, as you must swing on the speeding deer as if it were a rabbit. Pull through, level, and the hollow boom of a shotgun makes a distinctive echo against the longleaf pines, the sound rolling down to the river and back as the acrid scent of spent powder drifts back over you. Everything seems to go quiet in the moment of the shot, and brielfy afterward, before you hear the dogs closing now. They break from the bushes even as you walk forward, and suddenly the baying music ends. A few scattered barks… some whining… then wagging tails as you wade through the panting bodies to the animal on the ground.
I’m no William Faulkner or Robert Ruark, and I know my description doesn’t touch the excitement or exhileration of a good hound hunt (read Faulkner’s A Race at Morning if you get half a chance…) . It’s another of thost things that has to be experienced to be fully appreciated.
That said…
Somewhere along the lines of my early 20s I lost interest in hound hunting. After taking a couple of deer without hounds, the dog drives just didn’t carry that same sense of accomplishment anymore. I came to prefer still-hunting, or scouting and hanging a stand over a prime area. Since coming to California and experiencing western hunting, glassing big country, tracking, and stalking… well, why should the hounds have all the fun?
I have also participated in a couple of hound hunts for wild hogs, and while I can see where some folks would find the adventure and rush to their liking, it just doesn’t suit my interests these days. I’d do it again if invited, and I’d have a good time, but it’s not an experience I seek out.
Even so, I will always carry those fond memories of frozen November and December mornings… when the hush of frosted pine needles explodes into the controlled chaos of singing hounds, graceful, racing bodies, and the crack and boom of hopeful gunshots.
Wow! Did I just get a little sidetracked from my original point. Maybe not…
The question in the title of this post is, Where do YOU stand?
Here’s why I ask.
The tradition of hound hunting in many parts of the country, particularly the southeastern US, is at a pretty critical crossroads. Some hard decisions are going to have to be made.
When we ran dogs at Black River Hunting Club, as I mentioned the club owned and leased thousands of acres. Even when the dogs ran past the standers (a regular occurrence), they could usually be picked up somewhere on our own property. If not, the handful of marginal farms surrounding us were friendly and allowed us to cross their properties to recover the dogs.
Things have changed since those days. The area around the old hunting club has been subdivided. The little farms, barely scraping by on ground that consisted mostly of “sugar sand”, sold out. Developers came in. Marketing and landscaping management turned the scrubland into nice little housing tracts. Across the highway, the industrial plants grew as well. The whole thing pretty much boxed in the old hunting club properties. As landowners died off, leases went away, and the property holdings shrank even further.
The end result, as it has been for so many hunting clubs, is that it’s hard not to run a pack of hounds without crossing private property lines. Landholdings are getting smaller, and refugees from the suburbs and cities who buy their own little “piece of paradise” aren’t as willing to open their properties for access. In some cases these new landowners want their own little hunting spot, and in others the newcomers just don’t want anything to do with hunting. Some lines are being drawn, and many of them are fenced with pure hostility.
Here’s the kicker. Age old “range laws” in many states like NC require that the owner of livestock be permitted to access any property in order to recover their stock. The property owner is not permitted to hinder this recovery, nor is he allowed to injure the stock. This doesn’t just apply to cattle or sheep. Dogs fall under the range laws as well. So if a pack of hunting dogs ranges onto another landowner’s place, the law says that the owners of those dogs must be permitted to retrieve them. This doesn’t sit well with many landowners… especially since this law is often abused by a handful of houndsmen who use the “I was just chasing my dogs,” argument to hunt property they do not own.
The conflicts have been heated. Some landowners, in spite of the law, have taken to killing the dogs on sight. In other cases violent confrontations have occurred, including firefights and murders. This is no small thing.
It’s further exacerbated by what appears to be a new breed of “hunters”. These are the 4-wheeler cowboys, equipped with jacked up trucks, quads, radios and high-powered rifles (a common sense no-no in the flat, coastal plain geography) who race roughshod through the woods behind and around the hounds. The idea of fair chase appears to have been lost on these guys, as they herd and pursue the deer…often without regard for property lines or habitat destruction. It’s a relatively small segment of the hunting population, but their actions are highly visible and the souce of a disproportionate amount of negative opinion toward all hunters.
Where’s it all leading?
Well obviously there’s going to have to be new regulation. I’ve seen proposals from outright bans to limiting dog drives to properties that meet certain size requirements (x-number of acres, for example). I’m not sure what the “right” answer is, myself… which is kinda why I’m throwing this out to all of you.
Is the traditional dog drive doomed? Is it an anachronism that has to face its fate? Or can houndsmen find a way to co-exist with urban sprawl and suburban refugees?
Like I said, some tough calls are on tap and I doubt that any of them are going to make everyone happy. What do you think?
Personally I am not in favor to use hounds to hunt for whatever game, be that deer or hogs. Having said that, I feel that every hunter should be able to hunt by whatever means is legal. I am in favor of using hounds to find downed game, having grown up in Europe where this is common I have seen firsthand how efficient specially trained dogs are in finding shot game in short order.
-ov-
January 16th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Ah! so eloquently written Phillip. Makes me long for my childhood/youth spent in Florida running behind the dogs and the thrill of the chase.
Once more, the “out of bounds” minority have stepped into the spotlight and garnered the attention of the headline grabbing media.
At one time when I leased several small properties it was definitely a challenge to keep our catch dogs from catching a cow or two by the ear.
With gentle but firm training ( You should never, for any reason physicaly disipline a dog!) I was able to teach my dogs not to catch cattle, even if a wild boar were to run right through a herd!. It took a little patience but this was accomplished in a relitively short period of time and the surrounding land owners/cattlemen were grateful for my time spent doing so!
It all boils down to being responsible and respectful, also proper etiquite and personal ethics comes into play as well.
There were a few times (not many) when my dogs would catch a wild boar on someone elses property.This would happen when we thought that a mortal wounding had occured and we would turn the dogs loose for recovery.
If the dogs would inadverdently catch a non-wounded boar on property which I had no permission to hunt, then I would turn that animal loose. Sometimes it could be a “real rodeo” to accomplish this feat (L.O.L.)
But then, I would gather my dogs and return to my leased area with no harm done except to one realy pissed off boar with sore ears.
I also have encountered these 4 wheel drive, kill everything within gun range individuals on public and private lands, and as far as a silver bullet solution to the problem which you mention Phillip, There realy is none!
We just have to keep educating the public and continue to try and present a positive image in spite of the few who do not.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:00 am
[...] was checking out the Hog Blog like I do often and saw Philip’s post about hound hunting. Unlike him and many of the native tarheelers I hunt with, they grew up with the hunting of deer [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 8:42 am
your story is the way it used to be, I have hunted that way also. But this is the way it is now.
You are hunting your stand and far away you hear the dogs running. Suddenly you hear racing engines as a line of trucks careens down the gravel road. They line up on the road, of course they all have open chambers and a bullet in their hand.
(don’t want to break the law) I pity the poor deer that tries to cross the road. The deer turns and heads across your property. They all get on their CB radios and figure out where to head next and zoom off down the highway.
If you ask them what they are doing lined up on the road in front of your property, they are ALWAYS just trying to catch their dogs. There is nothing thrilling or sporting about this type hunting. Until they stop this, hunting with dogs is going to be a major problem with the rest of the hunters. The false belief that hunting with dogs is like the old days needs to be revised so you can see the travesty it has become.
(Step off soapbox)
January 17th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Thanks for the replies so far. I know it’s a hot topic.
TM, I think you’re right that education of the public needs to improve… and I think we also need to educate some of the hunters.
Rex, I’ve experienced exactly the same thing, and it’s no mystery to me why more and more private landowners back home are closing their land to the dog drivers… nor is it any secret why there are ongoing conflicts between the two.
It’s also a good example of where new legislation would make sense… and the kind of hard decisions that I’m talking about. In most counties in rural, Southeastern NC (can’t speak for a lot of other places), it’s perfectly legal to pull off the right-of-way of any state road and post standers for deer drives.
Back in “the day”, this wasn’t that big of a deal. Rural roads were scarcely travelled, and the standers were generally toting shotguns loaded with buckshot. The social mores of the time regulated shooting across or down the paved road. In the event an errant shot did go down on the pavement, the buckshot still had limited range and carried little power or velocity beyond a hundred yards or so.
Today, more dirt roads are paved, and there’s a ton more traffic. The paved roads lead to more development, and it’s rare to find more than a half-mile or so between houses. The safety implications of firing any gun along the roadside are frightening. But it’s even more frightening when the old social controls seem to have fallen by the wayside, and it’s not unusual at all to now see the roadside hunters waving high-powered, magnum rifles. Considering the topography of the NC coastal plain (flat to slightly flat), and the extended range of these rifles (deadly at well-over a mile), this is just crazy.
There oughtta be a law.
A small number of NC counties have taken a pretty wise approach to high-powered rifles, requiring any centerfire rifle hunter to be situated in a stand at least eight feet off the ground. I think that this should be law throughout the coastal zone (and probably in the central zone too).
I also would support “safety zones” around state roads. The needs to be a minimum safe distance, 150 or 200 yards. Get those guns out of range of the highway! I understand, completely, what that would mean to many hunting clubs… but that’s the cost of life in the modern world. It’s not like it used to be.
There are a handful of other things that need to be seriously considered regarding deer drives with hounds. Many of them are less relevant when it comes to hog-dogging or bears, so I don’t wanna narrow the issue too much just now.
But I do wanna add this consideration…
The question of whether it’s sporting or not is always tied to personal ethics. That’s a fine line, and should be toed very carefully. What is “thrilling” to one person can be annoying to another… and boring to the next. Judging another LEGAL hunter’s motivations is a slippery slope.
Even so, having had many of the same experiences as Rex, it’s easy to form some pretty negative opinions. Still, basing those opinions on a group of bad examples (the 4-wheeler cowboys) is no different than the anti-hunting tactics that are being used against us by PETA and HSUS.
The trick is to eliminate the dirty bath water without tossing the baby out the back door at the same time.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:03 am
a good point made to me.
the problem of someones dogs ruining your hunt on your own land, the disregard for laws along the roads and the lack of regard for surrounding landowners is all tied together.
A hundred yard from road buffer would be a start, ban the use of radios or phones in this type hunting, or stop the use of vehicles completely to follow deer from crossing to crossing.
I personally have seen trucks shot, houses, and at least one person wounded as people shot at deer crossing roads.
I have seen several large bucks taken by dog hunters measured for B&C and never mentioned they were taken using dogs and radios. I am pretty sure this is disallowed. Correct me if this is not true.
I do not know the answer BUT the use of dogs in the south in slowly dying due to cost to keep the dogs and more and more landowners turning to still hunting and the posting of their property. Landowners that use their land for hunting spend big money getting them ready to hunt and are now making sure to stop the continuous incursion of dogs onto their property.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Rex, overall, I think you’re right.
The hound hunting tradition in the South, as we knew it, is dying. In many cases, the folks you’ve described have been their own worst enemies. I think there’s a valiant fight being fought to preserve it, but with some exceptions I wouldn’t be surprised to see the practice disappear into the annals of history in the next several years.
I’m not a houndsman, as I’ve said, so there’s a part of me that really won’t mourn its passing.
But the other part of me wonders, “what’s next?”
January 17th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I have absolultely no problem with using hounds to hunt deer. It isn’t legal to hunt that way here, so I have never done it, but I know the anticipation of hunting rabbits with beagles and that is an absolute blast.
Definitely a touchy subject but one I don’t have any problems with.
January 17th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Arthur, I can assure you that you are comparing apples to oranges.
January 18th, 2008 at 8:50 am
You should check out the laws that GA had to enact to try and save deer dog hunting… I believe they can’t hunt less than 1000 acres and must register all dogs as well as the property.That way, if someone finds your dog, they can turn you in. Clubs get one or two warnings, then they lose the right to use dogs! They can still stand hunt, but that is it.
Of course some of the dog hunters complained, but it WAS the dog-hunter groups themselves that brought about the rules. The ethical, law-abiding, neighbor-respecting dog hunters understood that something had to be done. And if they did NOT, they would have it done for them.
I do not mind dog hunting when they are on a big tract and work hard to MINIMIZE problems with the neighbors. I understand that they will occasionally get off the property, but when they do it on purpose (usually by hunting a way-too-small property, or worse, by plain running them through your land)then they get what they get!
For instance, this season we had to call the game warden out for the group that hunts on the 300 acres behind one of our tracts. Just like in years past, they knowingly put them out on their piece, had the dogs push right on through ours, then waited to shoot the deer on the far side of us off the county road -which is ILLEGAL in SC if you don’t have property on either side, not to mention unethical and unneighborly! When I called the law, what do you think they said… “those guys again. We just wrote them a bunch of trespassing tickets last week!”.
So, while our guys were nice enough to help catch their dogs, I wouldn’t have had a problem with them shooting them (and I normally HATE people that shoot pets). Another neighbor took a different approach – he caught the dogs and took their tracking collars off; he then drove all around with them in his truck so that those guys couldn’t hunt, I mean POACH, and instead spent the day driving all around looking for their dogs who somehow could cover 60 miles in an hour. He also figured that if they lost a bunch of collars worth hundreds apiece, maybe that would stop.
I KNOW this sounds crappy, and it IS. One group shows total disregard for others,thereby causing others to act just as stupid in an effort to get back at them… because there is no other way currently to punish them.
I say enact laws similar to GA, then leave the law-abiding hunters alone… and that means dog and still hunters!
January 18th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Well,
As Phillip said, This is definitely a hot topic and as I have stated, There is no “Silver Bullet Solution!”
I will reiterate though that more education seems to be the best answer here! Very much like a bad driver who is given the choice to go to traffic school and reduce his fines, so as the approach to (Re-educating) a hunter who practices bad ethics and poor judgement.
Perhaps these 4 wheel drive,Radio toting, shoot em up individuals were taught improper hunting practices by their fathers and grandfathers and just simply do not know any better.
First, lets mandate the re-education of an offender and give them the chance to mend their bad habits.
Then, if this does not work and they continue to tresspass and trample another persons/hunters blessings of liberty, and they return to their old habits! Take their hunting priveledges,firearms and “Dogs” away from them for a period of time.Heavily fine them and let em’ sit at home and contemplate the error of their ways for awhile!!!!
But, this shooting of dogs and taking their retrieval collars and driving around town with them is “not” the answer to the problem. It will only serve to divide and conquer us as hunters, just as the A.R.G.s have intended to do all along.
January 19th, 2008 at 4:14 am
T. Michael,
I agree with you that shooting the dogs and taking their collars is NOT the way to handle it. However I disagree that it will further divide hunters – because the ones doing this are not hunters. They are POACHERS.
And you must understand that you are actually talking about 2 groups when you refer to the “4 wheel drive, radio toting, shoot em up” crowd. Both groups run around, chasing their dogs and deer on trucks/4 wheelers, but one group stays on THEIR land and does it legally off of roads they are allowed to hunt on (usually on large leases of 5,000 acres or more). The other group uses the same method, but runs their dogs through other’s land and hunts off of roads they are not legally allowed to. And while I don’t personally like either way (I think dog hunters should just surround a block and run it, not chase them down), at least one group is doing it legally (and probably with only an occasional problem), while the other group is doing it ALL illegally and always causing problems.
It is also almost always the same idiots/groups that do it, and they do NOT care about the current rules/laws or the consequences that enforce them. Just like our neighbor’s crowd – we knew that they were going to do what they did, because they do it EVERY year. And obviously the previous years trespassing tickets (or this years) had any affect.
So are hunters and land owners left to invest tens of thousands of dollars to cultivate great hunting on their lands just so that some THIEVES and POACHERS can ruin it without any repercussions? Currently they are! So I say pass laws similar to our night hunting laws where violators lose their trucks and guns, not just their hunting rights. These are criminals, so what would stop them further breaking the law by hunting without a license? Nothing, so that is why it would be important to hit them were it hurts-in the pocket book. It almost totally eliminated night hunting, and it would provide a way law-abiding hunters could take care of business with OUT breaking the law themselves – because shooting dogs and stealing collars is just that.
I do totally agree with you on the needed re-education of first-time offenders/hunters that break the rules, because everyone should get a chance to “mend their bad habits” (and I guarantee that we have ALL made mistakes while hunting, so this is an important step). But the first step is to enact NEW laws that make it much clearer about what is allowed by all hunters as well as creating severe punishments for those that break them.
Jeff
January 19th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Hi Jeff,
I do understand the problem of which you talk about very well. As besides my own land, I also lease several large properties, all in the same vicinity.
The biggest problem which I have encountered over the years, is the neighbors and their poaching/tresspassing and also the running of dogs on their small tracts of land.
I also know from first hand experience that these individuals and their Poaching/Tresspassing mentality is the same as their fathers and grandfathers were.
And, that they pretty much are holding the surrounding landowners in a grip of fear. Fear of the repercussions of a retaliatory mentality which these individuals have swaggered and brandished about for three generations now.
I currently am suing one of these individuals for their tresspassing/poaching antics and I believe that I am the only one which has ever had the courage to do so in close to 100 years! Ever since I have initiated the lawsuit everything has been real quiet for three years now and when the monetary dammages have been compensated I believe that we will no longer have anymore trouble out of these very bad people.
The one thing which I have discovered about these type of individuals is that they are “curs” this term is coined by “real” dogmen and is used to describe a bulldog which will “cur” out and not stop a wild boar. A cur dog will instead run away! So we just will take this cur dog and neuter/spay them and find a good home where they will be nothing more than a family dog for the rest of their lives.
Unfortunately, we cannot do the same to these lawbreakers, so I do “agree” with you that we must hit them in the pocketbook and maybe then they will be neutered monetarily which just might quell their bad habits somewhat. But more laws?
California has enough of laws already and we are currently stuck in a mire of laws, so much so that for every law which says that you cannot do a certain thing, you can find another law which says that you “can” do that very same thing!
We just need to properly enforce the current laws which we already have and stand up to these Poachers/Tresspassers. And this also means that the law abiding, hunting community must start standing together and not allow ourselves to be divided and continue to argue semantics.
I believe that we all want the same thing, it is just that we are not unified enough to initiate the change which we all so desperately want to take place.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I do so very much, miss, terribly the public land hunting which I used to do a few years back!
The activity which I would be persuing right now would be “Bear hunting”.Somewhere up in our beautiful and picturesque northern California forests.
The bite of a cool brisk breeze, the crunch of white, new snow beneath my boots and ahh! the sound of ol’ brother bruin desperately digging out a fresh winter den and me sneakin’ up to take a peek to see if he is harvestable.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:37 am
Wow some great discussion on this topic. I will disagree with one point about the 8ft rule for hunting with a rifle. I love to take my 30-30 and stalk hunt at times and that law will make it illegal to do that or regulate me to use a shotgun. Rather then creating additional laws I’d like to see the ones we have enforced.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:53 am
[...] states require the use of shotguns in more urbanized areas and ban rifles. I was reading on the Hog Blog earlier about the Hound Hunting issue and the topic of use of rifle only from elevated stand. Although in [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Quite simply put, Lets Do It!
Lets form an organization. No easy task mind you but not only is the time for one overdue but one which takes on the task of “watchdogging” the organizations which already takes our money. And will sometimes do little to nothing in addressing the real issues which we all seem to be facing down here in the trenches.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:13 am
Moose, while I agree in principle, I don’t think the distinction (your 30-30 vs my 30-06) is workable from an enforcement perspective. Unfortunately, while this will look like a “baby with the bathwater” solution, it’s the only way this kind of law would work.
As has been mentioned before, we need to take a long hard look at the things we take for granted and the practices we’ve “always followed”, and consider them versus the impact of not changing.
As far as enforcing current laws versus making new ones, that’s the problem in a nutshell… in most counties there is no law against using the high-powered rifles on flat ground, and there’s no law against hunting off the highway right-of-way.
It used to be that common sense and courtesy regulated hunters and kept them from doing things like that. And as I said, before the rural areas became so populated with urban/suburban refugees, the conflicts with non-hunters or other property owners were minimized.
Now it’s become a matter not only of public opinion/perception, but of safety pure and simple. And if hunters won’t regulate themselves, the law will have to do it for them (hence the CA lead ammo ban, for example).
January 25th, 2008 at 8:52 am
I agree with Othmar and Phillip wholeheartedly that keeping it at a grassroots/activist and State level would be the prudent thing to do right now.
The one thing which we “all” know is that whatever California does, the rest of the states soon follow because if you look at the money trail it eventualy leads back to California.
And Othmar hit the nail right on the head when he said to keep “blogging away” for this information medium will travel the quickest and reach lots of outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen.
January 27th, 2008 at 2:00 am
[...] also thought that with all of the discussions going on right now about dog hunting at the Hog Blog and Moose Droppings, these old shots would illustrate the heyday of dog hunting as well as possibly [...]
January 29th, 2008 at 11:46 am
David and Concerned, even Rhonda Shearer all make some very valid points in their arguments.
And the boy? there is not even a real argument to be made here because an 11 year old does not have the mental capacity to be able to make a judgement call on morality/ethics because he is still developing for christs sake!!!
But Kevin, you said it best of all “Please just let it die and go away”
February 1st, 2008 at 7:36 am
You have to take some of the accusations of the anti-dogging folks with a grain of salt. If hounds are used primarily in rought terrain that is hard for humans to traverse, then I’m not sure how the 4-wheeler cowboys can zoom all over the same land with ease. Kinds makes you wonder….
August 27th, 2008 at 10:46 am
The practice should be banned because population density is too great in North Carolina… Someone is going to get hurt or killed as these reckless dog hunters race around to cut of the deer and shoot from the road… They trespass, mess up the roadway, shoot in all directions, and cause all types of disorder… It’s no longer an admirable tradition because of the reckless nature of the practice of dog hunting in the modern age… Please call your State Representatives, your County Commissioners, and the NC Wildlife Resource Commission and request a ban in writing…
December 15th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Yep! And while we are at it we may as well start pushing for MORE legislation to ban ignorant people as well!
We may as well go ahead and lump all Gun Toting hunters in the same category as “Poachers” because we know that all poachers carry guns!
While we are on that subject we may as well ban all firearms because surely all firearm owners are irresponsible and wind up shooting someone with their reckless shooting in all directions.
Lets just go ahead and ban hunting altogether because all hunters are nothing but poachers and don’t follow the laws anyway.
You know, I think I am going to stick with my first statement and say: Lets Just Simply Ban All Ignorant People!
There, problem solved!
December 15th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
As folks may have noticed, I’m of two minds on this one. On the one hand, I agree that the folks who are out there doing the things “Ban” describes (and yes, they’re definitely out there) are the reason many folks want to see hound hunting brought to an end. These people ARE a safety risk, not to mention a threat to private property. It’s a fact, and something has to be done because, simply, the “hunters” won’t police themselves.
On the other hand, as Michael is pointing out, painting ALL houndsmen with that same broad brush is neither constructive nor accurate. There are still plenty out there who abide by rules of common sense and etiquette. And I personally know of more than one houndsman who has stepped away from the sport under the realization that they can no longer run the hounds due to the sprawl of development.
There has to be a better answer, but the houndsmen themselves have to step up and police their own ranks.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
If you look at the laws which are currently in place Phillip, there are plenty of laws which would come down hard on the perpetrators of the aforementioned infractions concerning running ones dogs.
The problem is that these laws (just like our firearms laws) are not enforced, too many good ol’ boys in the court system that just don’t hold the real criminals accountable for their actions.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
In large part, you’re right, Michael. Tresspassing, for example, is already illegal… except under the auspices of the “range laws” which allow these folks to enter private property in pursuit of their dogs (stock). The problem is that these laws are used as a loophole for the nefarious, and there’s very little that can be done to prosecute because they must be caught in the act of actually hunting/shooting… and even then, it’s pretty vague. The laws are antiquated, and need revision.
There’s also currently no general law, at least in NC (and NC is specifically the state “Ban” is talking about), against shooting along the roadsides… as long as you’re not shooting onto or across the public road. Likewise, it’s not illegal in many parts of the state to fire centerfire rifles from flat ground. This isn’t CA, with our canyons and ridges. Along most of coastal and central NC, a bullet fired from five feet (average shoulder height) at a running deer is liable to end up a long ways from where it started… and population density is rising quickly. We recognized this even before the suburbs spread into our hunting grounds, which is why most clubs required ground hunters to use buckshot, and relegated rifles and slugs to elevated stands. That common sense, self-regulation has gone by the ways in the past couple of decades.
True, you shouldn’t have to legislate common sense. People should know better. But if they don’t, there’s a point where someone (the government) is going to step in for the bystanders who are in harm’s way… and when the legislature gets involved, it’s often bad news for all hunters.
I totally agree that, in some cases, the “good ol’ boy” system enables some of this behavior to take place. But that’s not the only problem here. Houndsmen have got to realize that the problem is largely within their own ranks. The rural countryside is changed, and they’re going to have to change with it, or they’ll become another anachronism.
I have to agree with the approach of states like GA, where deer houndsmen are only allowed to run their dogs on large tracts of land. I don’t know if 1000 acres is the perfect size or not, but it isn’t altogether unreasonable either. If your land isn’t large enough to contain the hunt without spilling over onto other’s property where it’s not wanted, then you shouldn’t be running your hounds there. (I’m sure, by the way, that you are aware of the difference between running three or four dogs for hogs, and running a pack of fifteen or twenty hounds for deer. But even the hog dogs can range pretty wide, and they have no idea what a fenceline or Posted sign means.)
I also think that legislation restricting the use of centerfire rifles without elevated stands is reasonable in areas like coastal NC, particularly for driven game (but even still-hunters miss). And a law prohibiting hunting from the highway right-of-way makes sense as well, although there’s no reason houndsmen can’t line the road to collect their dogs.
The alternatives, of course, if left to the legislature and the general public, are going to be outright bans on everything… no more hound hunting… no more centerfire rifles (many states have already done this)… etc. Like the lead ban, if the folks who stand to lose the most don’t get actively involved in finding solutions, then they’re going to be left out in the cold when someone else does it for them.
December 16th, 2009 at 5:59 am