SPEEDDOGS
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Last week, Henri McClees and I met with Larry Wooten, President of the NC Farm Bureau, and several of his staff, as well as with Gordon Meyers, Executive Director of the WRC, and a couple of his staff.
Here is what I learned from that conversation:
1) The Farm Bureau is working hard to require written permission to hunt on any lands. They have joined with the Soybean Growers Assn. and the Corn Growers Assn to promote this bill to require written permission to hunt on all lands(some WRC members have told me privately that their primary interest was to require written permission on posted lands).
2) 86 of 100 counties already have a prohibition on roadside hunting; (I have subsequently been told that NC DOT is also behind this proposal to restrict roadside hunting, and that it is also supported by the NCFB)
3) Neither the NCFB nor the WRC staff were interested in discussing a compromise that would allow a limited right to retrieve hounds on lands where you don't have written permission to hunt.
Subsequent to that meeting, I have spoken with a WRC Commission member and he has indicated to me that after talking with several of his co-commission members, the WRC would not oppose a limited exemption to the written permission provision so that a hunter can retrieve his dog, under the following circumstances:
1) the land is not posted or fenced
2) the hunter is not carrying a weapon of any kind
3) the hunter is on foot (i.e., no 4-wheelers or vehicles allowed without permission of the owner).
The primary sponsor of SB 373 is Senator Tom Apodaca. Senator Apodaca is the Rules Committee Chairman in the Senate. For those of you who are not familiar with the power structure of the Senate, the Rules Committee Chairman is a "big wheel" in the Senate. He controls the flow of all bills. When his name is on a bill, that bill gets a lot of attention. The rules chairman usually gets what he wants.
I have always found Senator Apodaca to be a reasonable man. My advice, for what it's worth, is to tell him and the other committee members the following:
1) you understand the desire to provide additional protections for landowners
2) you could support a written permission bill that applied to posted lands (thus if a landowner wanted you to have written permission to hunt on his land, all he'd have to do is put up some posted signs)
3) ask him to allow you some ability to retrieve a hound that gets away from you; tell him about VA's law that allows virtually an unlimited right to retrieve; remind him of the Rockingham County bill that passed the House last week that contains a right to retrieve; ask him to support an amendment that allows you to WALK, UNARMED, into UNPOSTED or UNFENCED land to get your dog.
The new legislature is made up of individuals who are very oriented towards protection of "private property rights". I expect that if you separated your non-hunting life from your hunting life, you too, for the most part, would be strong advocates of private property rights in your non-hunting life. I know I am.
The NCFB's involvement in this bill introduces new difficulties for us in opposing the bill. The NCFB is a BIG voice among elected officials and they usually get what they want in terms of legislation.
Joe and Henri McClees are doing a very good job, but they are fighting an uphill battle on these written permission bills. It will, in my opinion, be impossible to defeat them this session. However, I believe it is possible to amend the bills to establish a statutory right to allow retrieval of a hunting dog on lands that you do not have permission to hunt on, under limited conditions, which will be a big deal once the state goes entirely to a written permission state. And we'll never have as good a chance to get a retrieval provision in the law as we do right now while this bill is being discussed (it will be much more difficult to pass a retrieval bill as a stand-alone bill in a future session).
As hunters, we need to decide what we're "for" instead of always saying what we're "against".
I know many of you will not like these remarks, and will think that I don't know what I'm talking about, and that's ok. But I walk the halls of the legislature every day, I know the individual legislators involved in these bills, I know what it takes to pass legislation and to defeat legislation, and I know that legislators are tired of only hearing from hunters when their primary message is "no" or "just leave us alone". Those messages may have worked in the past, but in my judgement, those days are over. 
The last week or two the Pen Association with all other Association where asking to help on Bill #755. Does the outside hunters have the same support and help on Bill #374. Or is this bill to support some or to all hunters.