ORIGINAL: SwampCollie
ORIGINAL: Who
And you wounder why farmers and ranchers dont like these things? Getting irrigation pipe ran over, wells shot for the fun of it, unauthorized dogs. Things sure must be different in your part of the country. Here you come onto someones property without permission, trespass, with a gun your poaching, looking in my barns, your stealing and I have every right to draw down on you and hold you till the sheriff or game warden gets there. Killing your dog that you are responcible for, well just a kindness as have you ever seen what the yotes do to them?
If you as a hunter were to contact me asap for my permission to come on my place I might even help look but just to do it or I see some dog just running on the place..... just another stray.
The laws are a little different in VA Who.
Just say for a moment that you lived in VA.. take your whole operation and move it to VA east of the mountains. If someone KNOWS (that is the key word) that their hunting dogis currently on your property, then they may,
without your permission, go
on foot and UNARMED to retrieve it. Its the Right to Retrieve law.
That said, there are plenty of loopholes in that general law and that is where you'll have a lot of conflicts.
There are a lot of instances you'll read about, and please understand that by and large this is a small minority of people doing this in VA. Most dog running clubs are law abiding, considerate and respectful hunters. Like anything else... its 5% of the population causing 95% of the problem.
Thanks in part to Michael Vick also, killing a dog in the state of VA is a felony. I am not totally aware if it is still legal to shoot a dog that is actively harrassing your livestock or not, but I know it was once allowed and is allowed in most states throughout the country, and especially out west.
If someone in Texas is shooting up your property, I doubt it has much of anything to do with dog runners. You have inconsiderate rednecks on your hands, and they should be dealt with firmly. But just understand that quite often in VA someone who is trying to retrieve their dogs really is doing just that..... just getting their dogs and trying to get the heck out of there.