- Joined
- Jan 3, 2016
- Messages
- 314
- Reaction score
- 191
I know we all have our opinions about what is happening in Virginia. On the whole, I do not like the majority of the proposed legislation coming up for this session. I think much of the proposed legislation is absolutely an infringement on gun owner rights, and I am not happy with it, although, in the spirit of full disclosure, I do believe in universal background checks for firearms transactions, including private sales transactions.
That said, if my life has taught me anything, it is that you have to take the good with the bad, and this bill is a small bright spot in the largely dark legislative session: http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB886 Although it is no longer moving forward, at least it was considered, which means people are thinking.
I have not shared an experience from this past hunting season with you all, yet, but I think now is the appropriate time given the fact that I have received much venom for expressing my mostly negative sentiments here regarding using hounds for hunting deer (and the right to retrieve law - which, in my opinion, is an infringement on landowner rights). I want you all here to know that I support legal and ethical hunting, whether hounds are used or not, and I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with ethical hunters to keep our hunting tradition alive for myself and subsequent generations. I think the reason folks have been upset with me is because they lack perspective on the reality here. in my neck of the woods.
In late December, I was home for the weekend, and as many weekends in December require, I was trying to catch hounds running deer across our property. When I was unable to catch the dogs on one portion of our property, I took our UTV back to the house to recover from the morning. As I approached the house, my father was standing in our driveway, and waved me down. When I turned the UTV off, I could hear a man on the road, about 40 yards from the entrance to my aging parents' home, yelling unintelligibly. My father then told me this guy had been yelling at my father and asking my father if he had a problem with him, while my Dad was walking our new German Shepherd pup in our front yard. So, I decided to walk down to the road to deescalate things. Well, as I approached the edge of our property, just prior to the ditch line, this guy, and his wife sitting in his truck, let me have it. They yelled and swore at me from the road, calling me things that I will not post here. I have been on active duty military service or in law enforcement for the past 19 years, and I have been verbally dressed down in English, Pashto, Farsi, French, German, Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and probably some other languages I don't recall, and this guy and his wife could hold their own with the best of them.
The most ironic thing was that I had not spoken a word to them, and I did not for the next 23 minutes of their tirade, as I waited on the Conservation Police Officer (CPO) to arrive, who had been out here earlier that morning. All I did was record their tirade, and when the CPO arrived, I identified myself as a law enforcement officer, informed the CPO I was armed, and asked if he wanted me to disarm before I approached. You should have seen the look on this guy's face when he heard me say I was a law enforcement officer; I could have picked his jaw up off of the pavement. Anyway, during the four way interaction, this guy continued to passively insult my father by asking him about his sexual orientation, among other things, with no response from the CPO. I can't blame the CPO, though, he was new and overwhelmed by the situation. As such, with his concurrence, I guided the conversation to inform this guy that what he had just engaged in was, in my professional opinion, a violation of Virginia Code (I am a former Virginia State Trooper). Anyway, the CPO reviewed the video, and agreed. In the end, we all went our separate ways. By the way, this guy doesn't live here, or own property here; he lives about an hour and a half away. He told me that he had been hunting out here since he was a boy, and that his family had been here since the 1800's, long before my family moved out here, like that even matters. Afterwards, I swore out a summons against the guy with the local magistrate for a violation of Virginia Code 18.2-416. Luckily, I had the background to successfully do so; I can't imagine what the average citizen would do, not being well versed in how to go about doing so. The CPO (and his supervisor) asked me to swear the summons out based on the fact that it was a suspected criminal code violation, which was not in his wheelhouse.
From that day until the end of the season, we had trucks driving by the house and incessantly honking their horns, shots fired after dark on the land this guy was "hunting," to include one at 1900 on the last day of the season. These shots were close enough for us to hear the compression of the shots in the house. It's hard to describe that, but I think most of you will know what I mean. On a weekday, while I was not here, according to my mother who saw him, one of the guys we see hunting with this guy parked in our neighbor's driveway, jumped out of his truck, ran across the road to his lease just on the side of the road, and fired ten successive rounds from a shotgun, ran back to his truck, and sped off. This is what we deal with here; this is just as bad, if not worse, as some of the crazy legislation being introduced here. This is why I think the way I think, not because I hate hunting or hunting with hounds. I greatly respect ethical hunters, and I count myself as one. As ethical hunters, we have to separate ourselves from folks like this to preserve our privilege to hunt, legally.
Once this matter has been dealt with in the local General District Court, I will post back here. I will also post a link to the video of this guy, and his wife, doing their thing, on YouTube, so that you can make your own decision(s). At the conclusion of it all, I also plan on sending the video/YouTube link to every media outlet willing to listen, as well as every member in our state legislature, until someone does something.
That said, if my life has taught me anything, it is that you have to take the good with the bad, and this bill is a small bright spot in the largely dark legislative session: http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+SB886 Although it is no longer moving forward, at least it was considered, which means people are thinking.
I have not shared an experience from this past hunting season with you all, yet, but I think now is the appropriate time given the fact that I have received much venom for expressing my mostly negative sentiments here regarding using hounds for hunting deer (and the right to retrieve law - which, in my opinion, is an infringement on landowner rights). I want you all here to know that I support legal and ethical hunting, whether hounds are used or not, and I want to stand shoulder to shoulder with ethical hunters to keep our hunting tradition alive for myself and subsequent generations. I think the reason folks have been upset with me is because they lack perspective on the reality here. in my neck of the woods.
In late December, I was home for the weekend, and as many weekends in December require, I was trying to catch hounds running deer across our property. When I was unable to catch the dogs on one portion of our property, I took our UTV back to the house to recover from the morning. As I approached the house, my father was standing in our driveway, and waved me down. When I turned the UTV off, I could hear a man on the road, about 40 yards from the entrance to my aging parents' home, yelling unintelligibly. My father then told me this guy had been yelling at my father and asking my father if he had a problem with him, while my Dad was walking our new German Shepherd pup in our front yard. So, I decided to walk down to the road to deescalate things. Well, as I approached the edge of our property, just prior to the ditch line, this guy, and his wife sitting in his truck, let me have it. They yelled and swore at me from the road, calling me things that I will not post here. I have been on active duty military service or in law enforcement for the past 19 years, and I have been verbally dressed down in English, Pashto, Farsi, French, German, Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and probably some other languages I don't recall, and this guy and his wife could hold their own with the best of them.
The most ironic thing was that I had not spoken a word to them, and I did not for the next 23 minutes of their tirade, as I waited on the Conservation Police Officer (CPO) to arrive, who had been out here earlier that morning. All I did was record their tirade, and when the CPO arrived, I identified myself as a law enforcement officer, informed the CPO I was armed, and asked if he wanted me to disarm before I approached. You should have seen the look on this guy's face when he heard me say I was a law enforcement officer; I could have picked his jaw up off of the pavement. Anyway, during the four way interaction, this guy continued to passively insult my father by asking him about his sexual orientation, among other things, with no response from the CPO. I can't blame the CPO, though, he was new and overwhelmed by the situation. As such, with his concurrence, I guided the conversation to inform this guy that what he had just engaged in was, in my professional opinion, a violation of Virginia Code (I am a former Virginia State Trooper). Anyway, the CPO reviewed the video, and agreed. In the end, we all went our separate ways. By the way, this guy doesn't live here, or own property here; he lives about an hour and a half away. He told me that he had been hunting out here since he was a boy, and that his family had been here since the 1800's, long before my family moved out here, like that even matters. Afterwards, I swore out a summons against the guy with the local magistrate for a violation of Virginia Code 18.2-416. Luckily, I had the background to successfully do so; I can't imagine what the average citizen would do, not being well versed in how to go about doing so. The CPO (and his supervisor) asked me to swear the summons out based on the fact that it was a suspected criminal code violation, which was not in his wheelhouse.
From that day until the end of the season, we had trucks driving by the house and incessantly honking their horns, shots fired after dark on the land this guy was "hunting," to include one at 1900 on the last day of the season. These shots were close enough for us to hear the compression of the shots in the house. It's hard to describe that, but I think most of you will know what I mean. On a weekday, while I was not here, according to my mother who saw him, one of the guys we see hunting with this guy parked in our neighbor's driveway, jumped out of his truck, ran across the road to his lease just on the side of the road, and fired ten successive rounds from a shotgun, ran back to his truck, and sped off. This is what we deal with here; this is just as bad, if not worse, as some of the crazy legislation being introduced here. This is why I think the way I think, not because I hate hunting or hunting with hounds. I greatly respect ethical hunters, and I count myself as one. As ethical hunters, we have to separate ourselves from folks like this to preserve our privilege to hunt, legally.
Once this matter has been dealt with in the local General District Court, I will post back here. I will also post a link to the video of this guy, and his wife, doing their thing, on YouTube, so that you can make your own decision(s). At the conclusion of it all, I also plan on sending the video/YouTube link to every media outlet willing to listen, as well as every member in our state legislature, until someone does something.
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