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VA Hunting Hounds Study **ACTION REQUEST**

VA Hunting Hounds Study **ACTION REQUEST**

Posted 3/3/2008

http://www.dgif.state.va.us/hunting...y-committee.asp

Stakeholder Advisory Committee
The Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) represents the many values of Virginia's citizens interested in hunting with hounds and will meet several times to learn about the issues, understand the various viewpoints, and consider alternative strategies for addressing the issues identified by the focus groups and through public input. SAC members will maintain communication between the citizen interests they represent and other committee members (as well as the VDGIF). The SAC will provide an opportunity for the many different interests to talk about and understand the views of others and will work with the technical committee to develop sound recommendations to provide diverse opportunities for hunting with hounds in Virginia in a manner that is fair, sportsmanlike and consistent with the rights of property owners and other citizens. SAC members, representing the broad spectrum of stakeholder interests, have been invited to participate by VDGIF and Virginia Tech personnel leading this process.

Committee Member Stakeholder Type
David Steger Bear Hound Hunter
Jim Hackett Deer Hound Hunter
John Payne Deer Hound Hunter
John Rawls, Jr. Deer Hound Hunter
Joyce Fendley Fox Hound Hunter
Lt. Col. Dennis J. Foster Fox Hound Hunter
Lyndell Price Raccoon Hound Hunter
Buddy Fowler Rabbit Hound Hunter
Greg Scheere Corporate Land Manager, Westvaco
Woody Lipps Law Enforcement, USFS
Carroll Dickenson Non-hound Hunter
L. Nick Hall Non-hound Hunter
Ben Fulton Private Landowner
David Shelor Private Landowner
Wilmer Stoneman Private Landowner and Virginia Federation of Farm Bureaus
Emmett Edmonds Animal control officer

==============================================

Dear Virginia Hunting Dog Owner Friends,

This is a most disturbing announcement from the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. There isn't a single legitimate houndsmen club representative on that entire list. One of those named is an alleged dog killer. Another is the Legislative Aide of Delegate Frank Hargrove, who has repeatedly introduced bills for the PETA-wannabe Virginia Voters for Animal Welfare and twice patroned bills that made it possible to kill dogs without criminal penalty. The two red coated MFH types supported HSUS's HB538 anti-dog breeder bill. Many such trail riders call themselves "foxchasers," rather than fox hunters, to avoid the perceived social sigma of the word hunting. Their interest is to separate themselves from any limitations on hound running or right-to-retrieve imposed on non-mounted sportsmen.

The Vice President of the VA Deer Hunters Association is adamantly anti-hound. During the Caroline County focus group meeting, VDHA advocated eliminating all chase training that conflicts with any hunting of turkey, birds, bear or deer, i.e. no outside the pen hound running except during the actual hound hunting seasons.

Left off this group were people like William "Billy" Bobbitt. Billy's the president of the National Beagle Club of America (NBCA), the AKC parent breed club, also president of the Skyline Kennel Club and a retired public defender from Augusta County. Billy represents a huge Old Dominion hunting dog constituency. Perhaps he knows too much about the law, proper procedures and is overly careful and conscientious for this DGIF Stakeholder Advisory Committee.

This handpicked group will largely determine how Virginians hunt hounds in the future. Your input and mine through the invited focus group meetings has been buried and will never see the light of day. The HSUS-PETA-DGIF meeting summary also still isn't available, but a Virginia Animal Control Association board member has replaced HSUS-PETA. That's not progress, if you know anything about VACA.

This roster is the result of months of deliberation and deal cutting. Don't believe for a moment the promises of meaningful future comment opportunities. This deck is stacked. DGIF is exempt from Virginia's Administrative Procedures Act (APA). That law requires open rulemakings, docketed comments, recorded ex parte meeting minutes and a causal relationship between a problem addressed, public comments received and the final rules adopted.

DGIF is spending over $250,000 on this hunting hounds study to set its revised hunting regulations and/or proposed 2009 General Assembly legislation. Its specific basis for this expensive and extremely divisive effort is that 406 complaints about hunting dog owner trespassing were received in a recent period. What DGIF management and board members don't acknowledge publicly is that all hunting complaints logged for the same period totaled 11,355. Not only were the hunting dog owner trespass complaints only 3.5 percent of the total, a substantial number of those were from people that don't understand the existing Code's right-to-retrieve provision and mistakenly complained about unlawful trespass.

ACTION REQUEST
Contact Governor Kaine and your personal General Assembly representatives. Tell them to stop this farce and restructure the Hunting Hounds Stakeholder Advisory Committee to include legitimate hunting dog owner representatives.

To email the Governor, use the form HERE http://www.governor.virginia.gov:80...actGovernor.cfm Ask for a subject-specific response.

Letters and faxes should request the same, subject-specific response.
Governor Timothy M. Kaine
Patrick Henry Building, 3rd Floor
1111 East Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23219
Fax: (804) 371-6351

Telephone the Governor's office at (804) 786-2211 between 8:30 AM -5:30 PM on weekdays. Interrupt the recorded message by pressing zero (0) and tell the operator you want Governor Kaine to **Restructure the DGIF Hound Study Committee** and why.

For General Assembly contact information, see http://leg1.state.va.us/081/mbr/MBR.HTM

Please forward and cross post widely.

Sincerely,
Bob Kane, President
Virginia Hunting Dog Owners' Association
Chairman Emeritus, Sportsmen and Animal Owners' Voting Alliance
http://vhdoa.uplandbirddog.com http://saova.org