House panel shows little appetite for hunting law changes - WWBT NBC12 News

A House subcommittee on Wednesday methodically struck down a series of bills that would have altered Virginia’s hunting laws, with numerous votes deadlocking despite a Republican majority on the six-person panel.

Among the six proposals that failed at the House Natural Resources Subcommittee were bills to limit or ban the use of steel-jawed or snare traps in hunting, to allow hunting on Sundays on certain state-run lands, to prohibit hunting contests intended to kill large numbers of predators like foxes, coyotes, and bobcats, and to allow the use of smaller-caliber rifles for deer hunting.

The subcommittee still has to take up proposals related to Virginia’s controversial “right to retrieve” law, a 1938 statute that allows hunters to go on other landowners’ property without permission to retrieve hunting dogs.

Right to retrieve has become an increasingly hot-button topic in rural eastern Virginia, where increasing development and population pressures have clashed with traditional practices of using hounds to hunt deer.

Del. Margaret Ransone, R-Westmoreland, pointed to two incidents since 2020 of hunting dogs in her district around the Northern Neck being caught in snare traps for her legislation to limit or prohibit the use of snare traps in Virginia.

“What’s happening in my district, we’ve got people that are buying up large properties of land putting snare traps all over their property,” she said. “They do not own livestock. They aren’t trying to kill nuisance species. They are doing it with the intent to try to catch something else.”

Richmond County Sheriff Steve Smith said that since he became aware of snare traps being used in his jurisdiction in 2018, two hunting dogs have been killed and two others freed from the traps.

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source: https://www.nbc12.com/2022/02/03/house-panel-shows-little-appetite-hunting-law-changes/

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