03/07/2025
I have tried hard to be a gentleman in all of this but I am going to have to start talking about what’s going on in West Virginia in the tracking world.
First of all, here at Longspur we are for the eventual legalization of controlled off lead tracking. There must be very solid steps taken to make sure when it’s legalized that it doesn’t evolve into hunting deer with dogs. Controlled Off lead tracking is keeping the dog within sight, reading the dog and if there is a jump and bay, the handler must make an educated call on whether the deer, bear or boar is mortally wounded before dispatch. We can not have off lead tracking where a tracker pulls up with deer hounds or curs and they drop the box on the deer. No guarantee that the correct deer was chased. This will cause problems between landowners, deer hunters and lease holders. Off lead tracking can not just be thrown in on a bill at the last minute as a knee jerk reaction. Why? It could hurt all dog hunting in the long run and you must have the foresight to see this.
Why is this even coming up? We had a talk with the President of the West Virginia Bowhunters Association, they are suddenly going to oppose some of HB 2043 which has taken two years worth of work and lots of legal work to get to where it’s at. They want to just throw off lead tracking with no dog limitations, no national certification requirements and no forethought. Basically the West Virginia Bowhunters Association is supporting deer hunting with dogs! Let’s dump the box and shoot them like rabbits boys!
Now why is the West Virginia Bowhunters Association pushing for off lead tracking? Because one of their members was arrested for tracking off lead and obscene phone calls and harassing a DNR witness in Wood County, West Virginia in October. They are reacting to get a law to make a small minority of their members legal in their illegal activities. It’s wrong and I believe it will be a bad day across the board for all hunters if they get their way!
What’s next? A WVBHA members gets a ticket for keeping 8 trout, spotlighting a buck or killing 3 Turkey in the spring, are they going to run to Charleston to make all these illegal activities legal?
Basically if they are willing to work with the 3 legitimate tracking outfitters in the state to write legislation that will also benefit their illegitimate tracking outfitters member, we all would be willing to help, otherwise the President of the Bow hunters association needs to make a scientific reason why he is for this. (He can’t, he admitted on the phone he didn’t know the differences between on lead, off lead and free cast tracking)
