Virginia man says right to hunt violated

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When a high-dollar corporation plans to run an upscale hunting preserve and clay target shooting center but is denied an operating permit by the county in which it is located and now wants a court to decide whether it can have this type of business, does that really mean all American hunters' rights are threatened?

Orion Estates, the would-be Nelson County, Va., shooting preserve operator, wouldn't object if you thought that way. In fact, I've received phone calls from an Atlanta public relations firm that sounded such warnings, hoping to gain support for this odd way of thinking. Apparently, Orion has the bucks to hire pricey flacks.

Well, don't throw away your hunting gear just yet.

Orion claims the Nelson County Board of Supervisors violated its constitutional right to hunt by denying a conditional-use permit for a shooting center, but it will be up to a judge to decide whether the dire warnings of real hunting being outlawed nationwide are warranted.

The way I look at it, if a county board decides you can't build a shopping center, does that mean all shopping centers in the United States are in danger of extinction? Of course not. Much the same kind of reasoning can be used here.

Orion plans to have a shooting facility that would offer clay target shooting, which Orion argues is an integral part of the overall hunting experience, on a 450-acre preserve along the banks of the James River.

Meanwhile, Circuit Judge Michael Gamble will decide if target shooting is a form of hunting, because Orion hopes to benefit from an amendment to the Virginia constitution that passed in 2000 and forever protects the rights of its citizens to hunt. (That amendment, incidentally, did in the animal-rights movement's plans for the Old Dominion.)

Nelson is a rural Virginia county that has plenty of hunters. It's not as if the people there had something against hunting. But it will boil down to whether the people in Nelson County want a commercial hunting/target shooting operation. Most likely it is as simple as that.

We'll find out in a few weeks when Gamble says he'll hand down his decision.

But don't go selling your hunting guns just yet, dire warnings from Orion notwithstanding. Something tells me that hunters in Virginia, Maryland and everywhere else, will be around for many years to come.