July 18, 2007Game Department meeting holds a few surprisesI was in Richmond for a meeting of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries' board of directors. These can be long days because I usually head down in the morning and come back after the meeting, so that's six hours on the road plus the meeting. Fortunately, my friend Bill Cochran and I usually make the trip together and that makes the time on the road pass pretty quickly because we always have plenty to talk about. (He retired from this job in 1998, but still writes a weekly outdoor report on our Roanoke.com Web site. You can see his stuff HERE.) Yesterday's meeting was a marathon. A bunch of hunters who run deer with hounds in Central and Eastern Virginia thought the DGIF was planning to try to sneak some restriction on their sport past them. Their concern was fueled by a postcard from the Eastern Virginia Deer Hunting with Dogs Hunters Club of Eastern Virginia (or something nearly as unwieldy) that exclaimed in part that "this is an anti-Hunting meeting!" Somewhere around 300 of these folks showed up, and they were ready to fight for their right (some guy actually used that phrase in his remarks to the board, and I was really wanting him to finish with... "to paaarrrrttty.") Actually, the department only planned to get rolling on a plan to form a stakeholder's task force to look at ways to deal with the dog hunting issue, which is one of the more controversial things the agency has to deal with. It's a great idea. After the plan was laid out a couple of the folks who had signed up to talk decided not to bother. But most still did, and I guess I can't blame them. They made the trip and they wanted to get their two cents in. They made some good points -- over, and over, and over and over. At least I could take breaks. My buddies Lee Tolliver from the Virginian Pilot and Lee Graves from the Richmond Times-Dispatch both had to focus on that issue for their stories so they had to stay and listen to every work just in case someone said something unique. After more than two hours they were finally done. If the department ever does recommend changing dog hunting rules, it's going to be really ugly. That probably won't be a day trip meeting. The real purpose of the meeting was to get rolling on those hunting regulations changes (which won't take effect until the 2008 season). Early on it looked like the most interesting thing was the disparity between the deer hunting rules on public versus private land in Western Virginia. I had my laptop and actually started writing my story with that as the lead. Then during the public comment period several guys got up and made a pitch for the board to consider adding another week to the western early muzzleloader season. This wasn't surprising because this has been a major gripe since the week was taken away in the west (but not Eastern Virginia) in the mid-1990s. Well, the board forwarded the proposal. That doesn't mean they passed it, just that it now goes out for public comment. The actual vote comes in October. Anyway, that was the biggest news and it blew my first story so I had to start pretty much from scratch. The DGIF building had secure wireless but they wouldn't let me on so I had to go down to a Panera Bread to finish the story and file. Poor Bill. He was stuck there reading the regs book while I finished up. The whole slate of proposed changes is HERE on the DGIF's site. |
About this blog
While growing up in rural Southern Oregon, Mark Taylor developed a passion for the outdoors while he and his younger brother tagged along with their father on fishing, hunting and camping adventures. Graduating from Northwestern University in 1988, Taylor spent four years as an officer in the U.S. Navy based in Norfolk before moving into journalism. After five years writing about the military for a Norfolk-based publishing company, he became the outdoors editor at The Roanoke Times in 1998. He lives in Roanoke with his wife and twin daughters. .....Advertisement.....
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Comments
[July 19, 2007 9:22 AM]
DonnieI read somewhere that some single hook/flies only regulations were discussed but can't find any details. Can you shed some light?
[July 20, 2007 3:12 PM]
Mark TaylorDonnie, I wrote briefly about it in my news story that appeared in Wednesday's Roanoke Times. (You can find the original story at www.roanoke.com/outdoors.)
The proposal is to clarify the rule to make it legal to use a series of single-hook artificial lures, with multi-fly (dropper) rigs being the primary example. It makes sense as I know plenty of fly anglers who never fish with fewer than two flies.
mt