George - Thats more than other fellow officers would do. Thank you for your honesty.

Sense everone has there own interperation of the DGIF laws, and some people have received tickets as of late for running dogs out of season how do you interperate outside feild trials, there are usually quite a few held after hunting season to raise money for clubs. If the dogs are not running foxes they are technically breaking the law right? Just intrested allways wanted to run in a couple of them I have herd great things about The big Orbit hunt and a couple of others but is It going to be Ileagle now that the DGIF is starting to crack down on the rules.

Real situtaion last season.

Hunter in our club recieved a ticket last year for having two wheels on the road while catching his hound. Warden pulled up and went to writting.

Three weeks later Im on the stand, warden pulls up, younger fella and ask for my license and then my gun. After he finishes checking my stuff I say: Officer your fellow officer wrote one of our members a ticket for having wheels on the pavement a couple of weeks ago, but you pulled your vehicle up and left two wheels on the road with no flashers or lights??? he briskly walked back over to me and replied: YOU SEE THAT ( AS HE POINTED AT HIS BADGE) HE SAID THAT RIGHT THEIR SAYS I CAN DO WHAT EVER I WANT TO DO. And ask me YOU GOT THAT!
after that him and his possey came down to my club every saturday trying their butts off to write tickets, fortunate we all follow the law. I will have to say in our area when they show up their demeaner is one of a drill seargant, kind of your guilty of something and I am going to burn your asses you red neck mf's.

George, I agree about the yard sale mess on the side of the road.....that is out of hand.

I can tell you one thing...if I have to stop my truck in the middle of a road to catch my dog and keep him from getting run over because people SPEED UP when they see you trying to catch your hounds there I'll pay the ticket the Game warden writes me...In my opinion I'm protecting my hound and the idiot flying down the road that swerves to miss him and wrecks...we had a guy have a hound hit last year that he had ON A LEASH...my hounds mean the world to me and I'll do whatever I have to to protect them in situations like that...it's safer to stop traffic and inconvenience someone for 5 minutes than to have a deer and pack of hounds running through speed demons and cause a wreck...if i'm just tracking then I need to be off the road...I thank all LEO's for their hard work, their job can't be easy...I've seen some that just want to check in and make sure things are in order and I've seen some that want to look at every inch of everything to try to write a ticket...I hope that the hound hunters don't become targeted this year more than in years past...it isn't right to target one group of hunters because they hunt a different way than another group.

I WONDER HOW MANY BACK COUNTRY RESIDENTS HAVE GOTTEN A TICKET FOR PULLING OF THE SIDE OF THE ROAD WITH TWO WHEELS STILL ON PAVEMENT TO GET THEIR MAIL OUT OF THE MAILBOX.

"My only point was dont have the attituide that I deserve a break but the other guy doesnt, because that really makes a for a law enforcement officers nightmare."

A cop that can't make the distinction between a highway, which is what I was speaking of concerning the yard sales, and a back country road that is used primarily if not exclusively by farmers who live, hunt and farm using those roads, then he is not a reasonable cop. He is one who goes by the letter of the law and not the intent.

These same roads only a few years ago were dirt/gravel and there was no difference between the shoulder and the middle of the road.

CSSJR

Mr.Bishop to clarifiy the difference is I volunteer my time on behalf of an all volunteer non paid organization with no command structure, while Mr. CPO Rich Goszka works for a para military highly structured organization with a rigid chain of command where he is a 24 hours a day sworn member……hardly an organization where Sgt’s announce policy decisions to the public without being directed (or selected) to do so by their superiors (in Richmond).

Rich came on here as a visitor with good intentions, although I admit that I took his post as being different from what he intended.

But the point is that he came back with a second post and sounded like a real guy.

So I think it is unkind to put him on the spot on why he is posting or anything else.

I think it fair to challenge him on something with which we disagree or question, but whether he has to ask his boss or his mother or who the heck cares before he posts is not the way we should treat him.

I hope he posts more. I hope he has the time to answer questions because we don't have enough access to these guys to begin with. You might see one of them every two or three years, or in my case once every 30 years until I went to a couple of the VDGIF meetings, and we should use that opportunity to learn from them, not ask them if their mother knows they post.

CSSJR

Chuck, The RTR and concelaed weapons. That is a good question. Under 18.2-308 the concealed weapons law the following subsection states: O. The granting of a concealed handgun permit shall not thereby authorize the possession of any handgun or other weapon on property or in places where such possession is otherwise prohibited by law or is prohibited by the owner of private property. Under the RTR law you are prohibited from carrying a firearm while in the act of retrieving your hounds. The answer in my opinion is, no you can not have any firearm permited or otherwise while retrieving your hounds. Again, an excellent question. Thanks

These laws are nothing new. They have been on the books for years. The intent of the article was to inform hunters about the specifics of the law and to address issues that have been occurring in my district for years. Tempers have been boiling over the last several years. Fights breaking out shot being fired. Not only between hunters v. landowners but hunters v. hunters. This is all due to the every shrinking hunting lands. Our officers are caught in the middle. They take heat from both sides, but my officers have always defended hunting and they are all hunters themselves. They educate non-hunters daily on the sport of hound hunting. You all must realize that we have and are experiencing a societal shift from an agricultural society to a suburban one. I had a gentleman ask my above running his deer hounds during the closed season at a recent meeting. He felt it was not fair to ticketed for this violation. I asked him if he knew it was illegal. He stated yes. Then we get many calls from citizens complaining about hounds chasing deer during the closed season. Are we just to ignore these complaints of clear violations of law? We had our wildlife regs meeting recently and the showings were very poor the best number in region 1 was 9 people in Warsaw. No one recommended a deer hound chase season. At all the hound study public meetings, no one recommended a deer hound chase season. I recommend hunters get engaged in the process rather than hinder it. My point is as hunters we must not only follow the laws, but ethics play a huge part in our sport of hunting no matter what animal you hunt or your methods. I will respond to any questions just email me. I answered 10 emails already from very pleasant hunters. I am not here to fight with anyone. Respect is a two way street. I have found that this may be the new way of providing information and interacting with each other. Not a bad thing. Gas costs are still high and this is more convenient than a phone. This might be the best way for DGIF to engage its constituents. I will make that recommendation. As for the 24/7, yes when called. I have a fireman's pole that leads from my house to my truck. This job is very demanding that is one reason we have a high turn over rate. If you want to debate problems, what do we do with clubs or groups releasing hounds on several acres and then lining the roads to hunt properties they don’t have permission. They never leave their trucks they can have a loaded gun and they claim they are looking for their hounds. Do you think this is not an uncommon problem? Then ride with us. You’ll see the truth. My point, debate the solutions rather than throw rocks at everyone. It does not sovle anything. Maybe if as a group you came up with some of your own solutions to the problems it would go along way to protecting the sport. If you would like I'll even post a problem then y'all can solve it.

"They never leave their trucks they can have a loaded gun and they claim they are looking for their hounds. Do you think this is not an uncommon problem?"

Maybe I am over simplifying, but this one looks like an easy one to me.

If he does not have permission to hunt on that land and he shoots the deer on that land, then he has with no question violated RTR.

If he shoots the deer in the road, he has violated that law that prohibits shooting in, down or across a public road.

Any resident, land owner or whatever citizen could take a plate number, look the guy in the eye and call the law.

My interest is in foxhunting. I belong to a deer club in VA only because they allow me to foxhunt on club leases.

So my next question is: Why does the foxhunter have to be afraid to stop his truck to catch a hound when it is easy to see that he has no weapon other than a training pistol (rat shot) and a self defense weapon....no long gun of any kind.

Tht should clearly indicate that he is not running deer or hunting deer from the road.

As for the deer hunter, if he does not fire a shot, it is hard to prosecute him for violating RTR, that I understand.

But there again, if he is a member of a club that leases say 2,000 acres in the neighborhood, it should be easy to identify him as not the kind of hunter you describe. He would more than likely only be off the 2,000 acres because he can't help it and is trying to stop hounds.

Heck, if I were the game warden, I would turn on all of my lights to stop cars and help him catch his hounds.

Then I would tell him that I want to see him back on his own leases within the next few minutes.

Now as for the bad guys you describe, I agree. I would give him a ticket for spitting on the road and anything else I could find.

But not a guy that had the bad luck to have his hounds run off leases that he has paid lots of money for and would rather be there than here.

CSSJR

again i echo claudes post and still waiting for answers from his first post add to that his last.
rich the problem i have with all this is last year a club around us shot a doe on a non doe day and left it in the woods,aparently it made its way out to the road and died our club was hunting the area too and we made the call so as not to get blamed for this crime and to help the cpo.no response at all,were told he would be there.yes i relize yall have a thankless job and alot of ground to cover,but to not respond to that,but pop out of the bush's to right a parking ticket for the man that is taking two minutes to load his hound or just stops long enough to get a beep on his dog or dogs,well it just seems rediculous.i understand there are problems and by all means those that are doing the things you mention deserve a ticket,no doubt.we understand were your coming from, can you understand were me and claude are coming from.

Rich - I'm still waiting for my questions to be answered. I do have another question. How many tickets have you written for interference with hunting?

Rich - With all due respect, the statement that in all the public meetings of the hound study, "No one recommended a deer hound training season" This is a mis-statement. I was present at Appomattox and Suffolk. At both meetings it was suggested that a training season be looked at, as long as it did not affect other training seasons ie: coon, bear rabbit, etc. I have probaly more then 50 e mails saved that were sent to the SAC that support the same. I discussed this very issue on this website many times. The clear majority of inputs are in support of the idea, of course,many have their opinions on certain specifics. It is important for everyone to keep in mind that this suggestion is meant to resolve two conflicts. One is the present unlawful act of training deer hounds outside the legal general firearms season. (This law is antiquated, and when measured by the laws and practices of other deer hound hunting states goes to prove that Virginia, though the largest deerhound hunting state in the country, has somehow missed the boat on doing what is right and logical.) Because of this, we find ourselves in conflict with the still hunters. Which is problem #2. It also happens to be one of the top problems identified by the SAC. This oversight must be corrected so that we can get to a point where a reasonable, legal window is provided for DHT. Then we can resolve the indifferences between the hound hunters and the still hunters and unite together in defending the attacks against hunting in general.
I respect the input of the CPO's and I appreciate them coming on this site and giving their views of the issues.
I will share the input given by the CPO's during our SAC meetings. It was the expressed opinion of the CPO's in our meetings that, hound retrieval is not hunting. The big problems identified in the study was hunting from the roads. ie: racing up and down the roads pulling off on the shoulders and bailing out w/ a gun with intention of harvesting the deer. At the same time causing an issue as a public safety hazard and displaying unethical behavior in the eyes of the non-hunting public. It is understood and hopeful that different CPO's will view different situations from a perspective of common sense. "What is in the best interest of the public?" If a hound is walking in the road, it presents a public hazard. I would think that it would be the in the best interest of the public to get the hound off the road immediently. In doing so, can the retriever do this without impedeing traffic? Some times you just might have to do so, to protect the hound and the public. I realize we are walking a thin line between legality and reason. Personally, (I know some will think I am extreme) I have installed a yellow strobe light on my truck to be seen 360 degrees, installed reflectors around my dog box, installed reflective tape 270 degrees around the box, installed reflective tape in my door jams and have installed a additional break/hazard light in my trailer hitch that will work in conjunction with my emer. flashers. When I flip the switch, everyone coming and going will be warned of a traffic hazard. Though I may still be cited a ticket. I will be able to present an argument that I have gone over and above reasonable measures to protect the public and the hounds. It would be my hope that if observed doing this by a CPO, they would assist me in warning traffic and take the time to measure the situation by what is the most right thing to do in that situation.

claude brings up another question rich when he speaks of a defense weapon,bow and black powder hunters with a conceal cary permit can cary while hunting,does that apply to the rtr law?

Rich Goszka - Thanks for your efforts to rein in the illegal deer chasing.

Mr. Sutton and other fox hunters - I don't really think that fox hunters have much to worry about regarding the issue of controlling or managing their dogs. If you are actually chasing or hunting fox with your dogs, then I would trust a CPO to give you the benefit. But deer hunting groups are just putting their dogs out with no real effort to control or manage - just pick them up after a few hours or the next day. This is what Rich is saying is not fox chasing/hunting, no matter what the owners say. These dogs are either chasing deer or at the least, running at large. Foxhunters should be angry when others claim their sport to skirt the law. There is a good VA OAG opinion on this located at www.oag.state.va.us/Opinions/1999opns/feb993.pdf.

Derrick - Aw heck, why bother?

John clarify your comment to me. Thanks

In reply to John and Derick:

Rich was kind enough to answer my questions about foxhunters in a private email to me.

I have no doubt that he will be fair, as John pointed out. I do worry about running into some new guy who has an attitude.

I think he has gone way beyond what his job requires in comming onto this site and taking questions and suggestions from us and I think we should be polite to him.

So we should give him some respect, not because he has a badge but because he is trying to communicate with us.

If we don't, he will more than likely go away and we will lose the chance to make our views known to him.

CSSJR

He also answered my questions through e-mail.

I too am a CPO and enjoy reading the posts on "Speeddogs". I work in the Greensville County area, many of you have seen me at Poole's and Emerson Poarch's fox pens while patrolling. I have been instrumental in getting several clubs (Last Chance, Cato Hill) into foxhound/beagle outside field trials. There was a question asked by "John on Oct 16th" on outside field trials being effected by the statue of running dogs out of season that was never answered.

The answer is no, read on.

All field trials (fox pen and outside hunts) are required to have a field trial permit issued by our department. This permit covers the club or person to legally conduct a field trial. The permit should be displayed in public view in the area where the registration is being conducted. If a permit is not displayed, ask to see it. If the club or person conducting the field trial can not produce the permit, more than likely it's an illegal field trial and subject to closure and some legal paperwork requiring a court appearance.

I too have much of the same problems as Rich on the Northern Neck. Hunt Clubs fighting each other, landowners complaining about hunt clubs and their dogs, road hunting, running dogs out of season (includes illegal field trials) and spotlighting. It's sad to say there are a few bad apples in the bunch that gives hunting a bad name.

There are 3 types of people in this world. Hunters, non-hunters and those on the fence. Here lately, those on the fence have been leaning towards taking sides with the non-hunters.

Derick,
Hound hunting opinions run the gamut from radical views held by HSUS/PETA, through a huge range of more reasonable opinions, and on to the radical views held by you and others. I thought your posting of Rich Goszka's original article was great although I knew you were just trying to stir the pot against his position, which you subsequently confirmed with several posts. On numerous forums you advocate enforcement of existing laws versus modifying existing laws or creating new ones. Here we have a situation where a CPO calmly cites his plan to enforce existing laws and you try to stir the pot against that plan. Oh well, I guess any controversial issue gets its radicals at both ends. But just as I would not bother to argue with HSUS/PETA regarding their opinions, the same applies to you.

John - The reason inwhich I posted the article was to inform you and other members of speeddog. The current rules and regulations need to be enforced but not at the extent of using a different color verison than the meaning of the regulation itself. He is a sgt and has men at his command, Do all cpo's under his command see the regulation his way or do they read and act on it a different way. How one percieves the law another may not and act accordingly.

JOHN LOCKE,
I AM NOT TRYING TO STIR ANY POTS,BUT AM I TOO A RADICAL FOR DEFENDING SOMETHING THAT HAS BROUGHT ONLY PLEASURE AND POSITIVE EXPERIENCES TO ME , MY FRIENDS, AND FAMILY. AGAIN, THE OVERIDING PROBLEM WITH THE ENTIRE ISSUE IS THE LUMPING OF ALL HOUND HUNTERS INTO A SITUATION WHERE WE FEEL THE NEED TO BE DEFENSIVE AND REACT TO OUR DETRACTORS DUE TO THE ACTIONS OF A FEW.

I HAVE BEEN CALLED A LOT OF THINGS,BUT RADICAL ISNT ONE OF THEM.
JMMJR,VHDA

John Morse,
I welcome your defense. The lumping of all hound hunters is a very serious problem but I believe that the overriding problem is "the actions of a few". As you defend what I trust are honorable hunting habits, don't make the same mistake made by your detractors and lump yourself in with all hound hunters as a defensive posture. Be willing to stand out to challenge those "few". Be part of the process versus protesting on the side. Support fair measures intended to improve the situation for all ethical hunters. Rich Goszka presented a reasonable interpretation of existing law along with a reasonable plan of enforcement. In his first post (not the article), he states,
"What I don’t understand is that y’all wanted us to enforce the existing laws, then when we do you question the intent of the law v. the letter of the law. I did not pull this stuff out of a hat. Some of it comes from Attorney General Opinions and case law. We do try to use common sense when dealing with violations." That is the best that a law enforcement officer can do and it appears that Rich is doing a great job.

THESE RULES BEEN IN VIRGINIA FOR YEARS. IN KING WILLIAM COUNTY YOU HAVE TO BE 100 YARDS OFF THE ROAD TO HAVE A LOADED FIRE ARM DURING HUNTING SEASON. RUNNING DOGS ON DEER IN VIRGINIA DURING THE OFF SEASON IS OUT. FOX HOUNDS IS CONTINUOS OPEN SEASON.WE HAVE RAN INTO THIS PROBLEM SEVERAL TIMES RUNNING DEER. MY ADVICE IS TO KEEP YOUR TRUCK MOVING WHEN YOU HERE SOME ONE COMING.THEY HAVE TO PROVE OR SEE YOUR DOGS RUNNING DEER. I USE TO GET PERMISSION FROM LAND OWNERS TO PARK IN THERE YARD TO HERE MY DOGS RUN. THANKS FOR FOX PENS.

JOHN LOCKE,
YOU MAKE SOME GOOD POINTS.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT I AND THE PEOPLE I KNOW AND HUNT WITH HAVE BEEN STANDING UP TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE MADE POOR DECISIONS WHILE HUNTING FOR YEARS. SIMPLY PUT, WE DONT TOLERATE IT.

FURTHER, I COMMEND RICH AND ALL OTHER CPO STAFF.THEY HAVE A TOUGH THANKLESS JOB. MY GROUPS HAVE ALWAYS COOPERATED WITH THEM. ALTHOUGH ITS BEEN MANY YEARS AGO, WE LET THE WARDENS IN N.C. USE OUR CLUBHOUSE TO STAY IN WHILE THEY INVESTIGATED A LARGE FIRELIGHTING, DEER MEAT SELLING RING IN CUURITUCK N. C.. THIS RESULTED IN A MAJOR BUST AND I BELIEVE SOME PEOPLE ACTUALLY GOING TO JAIL.

MY MAJOR POINT IS THE WAY THE ISSUE HAS BEEN FRAMED FROM THE START. AS AN ANALOGY,I HAVE TO BELIEVE THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF LAWFUL CAR DRIVERS IN OUR STATE WOULD REACT DEFENSIVELY IF DMV INITIATED A GENERAL STUDY OF CAR DRIVING AS A RESPONSE TO THOSE WHO DRIVE UNDER THE INFLUENCE.THAT IS NOT MY UNDERSTANDING OF HOW OUR SOCIETY DEALS WITH PROBLEMS .

AT ANY RATE,HERES HOPING WE ALL DO THE RIGHT THING THIS SEASON.
JMMJR,VHDA

The study is over with, debating it now does not help the sport. The debate now should surround around the issues confronting hound hunting and how to address them. Think solutions and image, just as you did in the Pilot article and video now that had some real impact. The real issue is how do we get the message to those causing the problems either intentional or just out of ignorance.