Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 3, 1992 TAG: 9203030041
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is akin to catch and release fishing. You pursue the animal and even if you outrun or outsmart it, you let it go.
That is the kind of season that organized bear and coon hunters will be campaigning for during a meeting of the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries in Richmond on Saturday. So many proponents are expected to attend that the hearing has been moved to a larger room.
Here's what state game biologists are expected to propose:
An experimental bear chase season - some prefer to call it a training season - to be open from the first Saturday in September to the first Saturday in October.
A four-month extension of the raccoon chase season west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, so the dates will match those in the east, Aug. 1-May 31.
While biologists appear to be ready to give hunters these concessions, board members of the game department may not be as generous. They are the ones who make the laws.
Some board members have questions about whether the chase seasons will work. Can the hunters be trusted to only chase? Will their hounds be damaging to turkey nests or newly born deer when they go ripping through the spring woods? Will they be harmful to the raccoons and bears they pursue?
In an effort to find answers, Virginia biologists polled game technicians in other states, and got answers from more than 40. What they found was a limited amount of concern from their peers.
"That brings up the question to me, are we being overly protective, overly conservative?" said Bob Duncan, chief of the department's game division.
Probably, he said.
So Duncan, who once recommended that bear hunting be eliminated while working as a biologist in Tennessee, now says he would be comfortable with an experimental chase season in Virginia this fall.
"I think it is important that we have this thing," he said.
Bear hunters want it so badly that they have worked to rid their ranks of outlaws. They have cooperated closely with game officials during recent months. Such acts should be rewarded as long as wildlife populations aren't harmed, Duncan said.
"My job is to get past the emotion of the thing and determine what can and cannot be done," he said.
Virginia's survey revealed that nearly half the states that permit bear hunting have a chase or training season.
"All but one or two of these reported no measurable adverse impact from the chase season," Duncan said.
The findings were much the same with the raccoon chase season, he added. Some 95 percent of the more than 40 states responding to the survey permitted chasing or hunting year-round.
"We have been hard pressed to document the impact raccoon hunting has on other species," Duncan said.
Even so, many people in Western Virginia, including game department board members, have gut feelings that it can't be good to have free-ranging hounds afield in the spring. Never mind that it is permitted in the East.
The result may be a compromise western chase season, one that extends beyond the present Jan. 31, but not all the way to May 31.
The hearing Saturday is set for 9 a.m. at the State Water Control Board Conference Room, 4900 Cox Road in Richmond's Innsbrook Office Complex.
by CNB