This September a challenge to Virginia’s Right to Retrieve law* was sent to the state’s Supreme Court for consideration.
The State of Virginia is unusual for a law that enables hunters access to private property to retrieve hunting dogs or birds.
Three landowners in southern Virginia filed a complaint against the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources asking for compensation for the trespass committed by local hunt clubs (the hunt clubs were not mentioned by name). The disgruntled landowners stated in their petition that the hounds overrun their properties during hunting season. The landowners contend that the department authorizes the trespass in the state statute called the Right to Retrieve law. The landowners lost in the lower court in Richmond, Virginia.
Virginia’s lower court ruled in favor of the Department of Wildlife by concluding that the Right to Retrieve law decriminalizes rather than authorizes hunters’ entries on private land, therefore any compensation for trespass is not due or guaranteed by the department.
Now the landowners have appealed the loss to the state’s Supreme Court on the basis that their loss was due to a technicality (no monetary claims were submitted to the lower court along with a transcript that was mistakenly left out). The Department of Wildlife contends that any technicality is irrelevant since the lower court ruled that the law exempts the department from any responsibility for compensation.
The Virginia Supreme Court has not yet announced if it will hear the case or not.
It must be noted that at least one of the landowners in question is a self-declared hunter (though not a foxhunter), so this attack on the law may not be for an animal rights agenda. However, with the new threats to trail hunting in Great Britain (and the recent abolishment of all trail hunting in Scotland), this case may open floodgates that could have unforeseen ramifications for the foxhunt clubs in Virginia.
* § 18.2-136. Right of certain hunters to go on lands of another; carrying firearms or bows and arrows prohibited.
Fox hunters and coon hunters, when the chase begins on other lands, may follow their dogs on prohibited lands, and hunters of all other game, when the chase begins on other lands, may go upon prohibited lands to retrieve their dogs, falcons, hawks, or owls but may not carry firearms or bows and arrows on their persons or hunt any game while thereon. The use of vehicles to retrieve dogs, falcons, hawks, or owls on prohibited lands shall be allowed only with the permission of the landowner or his agent. Any person who goes on prohibited lands to retrieve his dogs, falcons, hawks, or owls pursuant to this section and who willfully refuses to identify himself when requested by the landowner or his agent to do so is guilty of a Class 4 misdemeanor.
