Deer Hounds...... 
Tuesday May 11 there will be a presentation at the Big Game Subcommittee of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission on Georgia’s Deer Dog Hunting rules. John Bowers of the Georgia Board of Natural Resources will present to the committee as it looks at how to handle the issue here in North Carolina. Deer hunting with hounds is an old southern traditional hunting method that over the past number of years has become less popular for a variety of reason. Conflicts between traditional hound hunters and others hunters and land owners have been pretty well documented. Unless a solution is agreed upon the majority that oppose this style of hunting will chip away at it and get it completely outlawed and the tradition will be lost.
Georgia faced similar issues and developed rules that protected the tradition and eliminated the few bad apples causing many of the problems.
The Georgia Plan was created in 2003 as a last-minute deal negotiated by houndsmen, still hunters, landowners and other stakeholders, Bowers said. Conflicts between houndsmen and others had grown to the point that the state was considering a total ban on hunting deer with dogs.
“Problems had reached critical mass,” Bowers said. “A survey showed that the primary problems were hunters trespassing after dogs, dogs trespassing on private property, and interference with public roads.
“Our primary problems were only in a few counties,” Bowers said, “but they had the potential to affect good hunters in other areas as well.”
With a week left before legislative action would ban all dog-deer hunting, the group came up with a plan now being hailed as genius in some circles, and unfair in others.
The agreement hammered out between the parties only applies to deer hunting with dogs.
Houndsmen may run only on contiguous parcels of 1,000 acres or more, and must have a permit issued to their club by the state. The permit number applies to the property, and must be on each dog’s collar.
The deer dog hunting lobby is opposed to this meeting even happening
Enough already
Henri McLees, a lobbyist for the N.C. Sporting Dogs Association, said Thursday the “Georgia Plan” would effectively end dog hunting for deer in some parts of the state.
“Houndsmen already have a lot of rules they have to deal with,” McLees said. “Everyone knows there is a concerted effort to end dog hunting of all kinds in North Carolina – this is just a step in that direction.”
The 1,000 acre provision in the Georgia Plan is a sticking point with many ECHA members, McLees said.
“A lot of clubs don’t have that much land they can lease,” she said. “They are dependent on public lands, like the game lands, and this just won’t work.”
While I think there are people that would liked to see the practice stopped there are also a lot of people that wouldn’t care if they didn’t have to put the shenanigans that some of the bad apples pull. Under current rules there is little a landowner can do when a pack of dogs run on their posted land. While many of the dog hunters may work to avoid such a conflict there are some clubs that could careless and will run the dogs regularly across posted land.
If the committee recommends passage of the Georgia Plan, it still has to be approved by the entire board of the Wildlife Commission. The rules would still have to be approved by the legislature before becoming law. McLees said the ECHA “is ready to fight this through the legislature if we have to.”
“Hunters have enough regulations they have to follow right now,” McLees said. “This needs to be stopped.”
Well ok what does the sport dog lobby propose to clean up the rogue hunters in their ranks?
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