County opposes ‘dogging deer’

Residents of northern Orange County protested Thursday against hunters using dogs to track and kill deer.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners then voted unanimously to seek legislative authority to ban “dogging deer” throughout the entire county.

Dogging deer is a practice in which hunters use dogs to chase deer to areas where hunters can easily shoot them, Assistant County Manager Gwen Harvey explained.

Some residents are opposed to the practice because dogs sometimes chase deer onto private property or busy roads.

Using dogs for hunting is illegal in the southern part of Orange County. The practice has been outlawed in adjacent Alamance and Durham counties.

Additionally, the legality of dogging deer has attracted non-Orange County residents to hunt near private property, residents said at the meeting.

Jennifer Honeycutt, a resident of Cedar Grove, an unincorporated community in northern Orange County, asked the board to ban dogging deer throughout the county.

She said dogs running through her property scare her horses and damage her fence.

She said her black Labrador, Jazmine, was once shot by a hunter, and called the incident a “disrespect of property.”

Her husband David told the board of numerous confrontations he has had with hunters on his property.

“I don’t trust to ask them off unless I have a loaded gun,” he said.

Rougemont resident Mike Laws was in the minority in advocating against the ban.

“Hunting is a human right, and I am standing up for the hunters and the hounders of the United States,” he said. “If it comes down to it, we will hunt on horseback.”

Other residents against the ban wore hunting apparel, including camouflage hats and jackets.

In her presentation, Harvey described a poll by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission that showed that 61 percent of land owners were against dogging deer. Fifteen percent of residents approved of the practice.

County line decision waits

The commissioners also put off deciding on the boundary line between Orange and Alamance counties.

The board voted unanimously to postpone the decision until February.

The board will have to choose between the historic line, used since 1849, a deviation of that line that takes natural variations in the land into account, or a recent variations based on tax parcels.



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