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Three years ago, the supervisors were petitioned to add Rappahannock to the list of counties that prohibit carrying loaded rifles and shotguns in motor vehicles, noted Ross Hales. “It’s the only tool that the game warden can use to control on-the-road hunting,” he maintained. “Local hunters would do well to re-examine their thinking on this.”
Slob hunters cruise the county’s back roads “with these big guns hanging out their car windows, ready to shoot anything that moves,” said Clyde Scott of Flint Hill. “I’ve actually had people shoot deer down right in front of me and me in the line of fire!” Mr. Scott said he’d worked for 25 years in the police force covering the jurisdiction with the highest crime rate in the metropolitan area. “I’ve been in back alleys in the black of night and I never suffered from the fear we’ve suffered in this county from slob hunters.”
He called for legislation requiring that guns in motor vehicles be cased or in a compartment. “That will stop the slob hunters right there and make sportsmen of them all.”
Bob Dennis asked the supervisors to adopt the local options for controlling loaded firearms on the county’s roads. “It’s not the best answer,” but it’s the best of the available alternatives in the absence of a statewide cased gun law, he said.
“A case law would be more of a nuisance than anything else. . .but it would help decrease the slob hunters,” agreed Bert Gilkey, calling for statewide legislation.
Meredith Gorfein also supported adoption of the local controls on loaded firearms in motor vehicles.
The crowd was just as divided on solutions to the other half of the problem - the steadily increasing number of deer in the county.
When the deer season ends west of the Blue Ridge, “our real suffering from illegal hunting begins,” said Ross Hales. “People either don’t know or don’t care where houses are. . .There’s a lot of indiscriminate shooting,” he said, asking that the season be shortened to reduce slob hunting but the bag limit upped to control the deer population.
Carson Johnson questioned the contention that Rappahannock has an overpopulation of deer. Noting that he’d checked game for 20 years, he told the supervisors that hunters kill 10 deer for every game stamp
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