Sunday hunting blasts a day of rest

Every session, it is instructive to discover which bills prove to be of most interest to the public, or of most importance to the commonwealth, as they percolate their way to the top of the legislature's agenda.

This year has been no different. Whereas the still-enfeebled private economy restricts action on many major matters, there is no little energy being devoted to a handful of bills from among the 3,000 that have been introduced.

Without question the most calls and emails to my office have been generated by bills, in both the Senate and House, to allow hunting on Sunday, specifically on private property.

Virginia has banned hunting on Sunday for time immemorial. The reasons are many — and the fact that Sunday is the Christian sabbath is but one among many social and also environmental factors that have preserved field and stream, farm and woodland from hunters on the first day of the week.

Proponents of allowing hunting on Sunday argue that the frenetic pace of contemporary life leaves them little time to hunt during the week, or even on Saturday; accordingly, they declare, the ban on hunting on Sunday should be lifted.

The move to lift the ban received impetus some months ago when the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (DGIF), the state agency charged with overseeing hunting, fishing, etc., in the commonwealth, issued a poll in which a majority of respondents — including hunters — expressed support for lifting the ban.

My experience has been different — confirming the not uncommon view that there are reasons to doubt the veracity of the DGIF poll.

A large majority of my fellow-hunters, including a large majority of constituent-hunters who have written or called me in recent weeks, oppose lifting the ban. They cite the traditional reasons — on which more momentarily — but they also point out that the expansion of hunting to Sunday could well prove to be a "public relations" disaster for sportsmen — and sportswomen. After all, there are those who would like to see hunting, and all blood sports, outlawed entirely in Virginia.

The several lift-the-ban bills in the Senate were rolled into Senate Bill 464, patroned by Sens. Ralph Northam, Democrat of Norfolk; Chap Peterson, Democrat of Fairfax; Phillip Puckett, Democrat of Tazewell; and Frank Wagner, Republican of Virginia Beach. Note that three of the patrons are from urban areas, three are Democrats, and only one — Puckett — is from a rural area.

The urbanization of Virginia proceeds apace. The influence of rural legislators wanes as the populations of rural areas continue to decline and the populations of cities and suburbs continue to rise. This is noteworthy, because many the bedrock principles that inform the Virginian tradition to which appeals are made by opponents of hunting on Sunday have very little purchase upon the peoples or the legislators of the vast "urban crescent" that now stretches from Northern Virginia down Interstate 95 and eastward to Hampton Roads.

Among rural traditions, church-going is one — and an important one — but there are many additional reasons for opposing the expansion of hunting to Sunday.

The principal example is that hunters are not the only individuals who wish to take to the woods on the weekend — including Sunday. Equestrians, hikers, bikers, picnickers, bird-watchers, fishermen, canoeists, kayakers: all of these wish, too, to enjoy Virginia's great outdoors, often on Sunday — and they wish to do so without the threat inevitably posed by the presence of rifle- or shotgun-toting hunters.

The bill that emerged from the Senate — Senate Bill (SB) 464 — is a backroom-compromise that would expand hunting on Sunday "(a) on private property, either as a landowner, the landowner's spouse or the children of the landowner, or with the written permission of the landowner."

This appeal to what advocates call "private property rights" ignores the fact that the common good — and a commonwealth such as Virginia is, by definition, devoted to the common good — is, in the order of things, a principle of a higher order, in specific instances, than private interests.

Bullets travel without regard to property lines — and so do shotgun pellets or slugs or even arrows from powerful-enough bows. And always, for an unsuspecting equestrian, there is the peril of encountering a hunter who misconstrues a horse — or a person — for a deer or any other game.

It is a legislator's obligation to decide issues with regard to the common good — often despite polls or even the interests of a specific county or section of the commonwealth.

With regard to SB 464, it is a great encouragement to me that so many citizens of the 65th District have encouraged me in my own conviction: current custom serves the common good. Hunters can hunt on Saturday, others can enjoy the outdoors, without the noise and the implicit concern of encountering hunters, on Sunday. Accordingly, my vote, when the issue comes before the House, will be against Senate Bill 464 — and also against House versions of the same legislation.