Virginia is being sued by property owners over its unusual law that allows hunters to invade private property to retrieve their hunting dogs, often resulting in damage to property and livestock.
This lawsuit isn’t aimed at hunting, but at protecting property rights, according to the Sacramento, California-based Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a national nonprofit public interest law firm that is representing the property owners.
Virginia is one of just two states—the other is Minnesota—that allows hunters to enter private property to retrieve their hunting dogs, PLF states.
The plaintiffs are Virginia property owners James Medeiros of Wilsons, Robert Pierce of Virgilina, and Mauricio Tovar of Chesterfield. Also listed as a plaintiff is Blue Wing LLC, which owns 1,100 acres in Virgilina, including a tree farm, 20 miles of hiking and horseback riding trails for use by its members, and a 500-yard rifle range. Pierce is a member of the corporation’s board and operates the Blue Wing property.
The defendant, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR), is an agency of the state responsible for regulating hunting and enforcing state laws and regulations governing hunting. The agency’s Law Enforcement Division has more than 100 conservation police officers for dealing with complaints related to hunting dogs.
Lead plaintiff James Medeiros and his family run their own business, White Oak Meadows, on land they bought in 2012 in Dinwiddie County outside of Richmond. The family cultivates forest and farm products, including beef and poultry raised exclusively on grasses and native vegetation.
Ranching is already a tough business and dealing with uninvited hunters and their hunting dogs makes it even tougher for ranchers, according to PLF.
Although using dogs to hunt game, especially deer, is a tradition in Virginia going back to when 20,000-acre farms afforded plenty of room for chases that spanned more than two miles, nowadays, there are more people and less farmland. Currently, private hunting grounds are generally 5,000 acres or smaller, and rarely adjacent to each other, so the dogs that deer hunters rely on end up on nearby private property.
The retrieval law, which is typically invoked during deer hunting season, applies to several game animals with year-round seasons.
“Hunters aren’t required to give property owners notice. And in practice, hunters can use the cover of other game’s hunting seasons and access rules to gain year-round access to actively hunt on private property, rather than merely retrieve wandering hounds,” PLF stated in a summary.
These unannounced intrusions by dogs and hunters also have an adverse effect on Medeiros’s business. White Oak Meadows has lost livestock and poultry to marauding hounds, and the dogs have disturbed cows and disrupted their milking process. The plaintiffs don’t oppose deer hunting—many are hunters themselves—but they don’t want trespassers on their land.
“We’re not saying that hunters shouldn’t be able to get their dogs back,” PLF attorney Daniel Woislaw told The Epoch Times in an interview.
“Our clients are just asking that these hunters get permission, because most of the time they’re going to say yes” to a request to access their land, Woislaw said.
“But when the government grants this right, and says they don’t have to get permission, that’s taking away a property interest. That’s taking away the right to decide who comes and goes on your private property, and that’s worth something.”
It makes sense to bring the case now in light of last year’s Supreme Court decision in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, Woislaw explained.
Until the Cedar Point ruling, the government “pretty much always wins, so if you fell into this regulatory camp, you’re pretty much going to lose no matter what,” Woislaw said. But under the ruling “we don’t have to do this convoluted regulatory taking analysis,” the government doesn’t always win.
“We see this case as very similar to that because what this law is doing is it’s giving a physical right to enter property for public use on behalf of a group of hunters, and there’s no compensation. So we’re asking for that compensation,” the lawyer said.
Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources spokesperson Paige Pearson told The Epoch Times in an email, “We have no comment on this matter as it’s pending litigation.”
