Running Dogs In VA
02-21-2008, 11:14 PM
#151
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Where the ducks don't come no more
Posts: 4,420
RE: Running Dogs In VA
ORIGINAL: rick64
Andy, I would agree with most of your post, but I still don't see a need to shoot a dog.
The deer population in NOVA is a result of good habitat and a lack of access for hunters. You would have to admit that most of the land in NOVA is "huntable" and the deer numbers could be controlled by bowhunters if they had access to more property.
Running deer with dogs was never popular in NOVA and today it wouldn't be practical.
Andy, I would agree with most of your post, but I still don't see a need to shoot a dog.
The deer population in NOVA is a result of good habitat and a lack of access for hunters. You would have to admit that most of the land in NOVA is "huntable" and the deer numbers could be controlled by bowhunters if they had access to more property.
Running deer with dogs was never popular in NOVA and today it wouldn't be practical.
Thats my point about NOVA. SE VA is every bit, if not more so primed for large, dense herds of deer, and with the open fields, then THICK cutovers and swamps.... its hard to hunt any other way but with dogs. By its nature it limits access... just with cutovers instead of with cul-de-sacs.
The dogs that get shot usually aren't deer dogs... they are usually some type of cross between a house dog and a deer dog.... obviously wild, and twice rabid. I'm a softy myself and the older I get the harder and harder it is for me to do. But trust me, I only shoot the ones that need shooting anyway, and I think throughout the past 20 years that has only been 5. A friend and I did have a walker hound a week after the deer season attack his lab as we walked in to a wood duck swamp. After we got Drake behind us that dog didn't get a second chance.
