Hound hunters and out of control dogs

[U_Stormcrow]

Two things.

One, search the statutes governing your property (likely county), for the term "at large". That will tell you the limit of what you are LEGALLY able to do. Anything less than that is a courtesy.

Two - my neighbors have dogs trained to hunt boar/feral hogs (not very big boar, I'm in FL). In the Spring, during training, the new pups get excited and sometimes go off property ( we all have at least 30 acres, I think they have 80, but their home is maybe 350 ft fm my property line, so...)

Anyhow, I strung a 1.2J charger to about 1/3 mile of electric fence wire, three hot strands. It has thus far stopped one of the aforementioned hogs, and all of the dogs. Several Occasions.

My soils are hard clays - nothing like yours - but at one point I used a hammer drill and bit to dig a hole in my soil to set a ground rod into. Something similar may work for you.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I've hit another electric poultry netting snag: I don't have the ability to hook it up to the mains, so it would be a solar charger, and I am now reading that the solar ones are too weak to work properly when the snow piles up. With the weather being what it has been lately, there would be little sun and the netting would get covered almost daily between random snow showers and snow blowing down the hill the rest of the time. Even though a little thaw is coming this weekend, it looks like it will be back to the steady dribble of snow after that. My husband wants to get a proper fence put up for our dog when the snow is over for certain; maybe that's really what I should be focusing on planning out, since a sufficient quantity of electric poultry netting looks like it would take at least 2 weeks to get to me anyway even from places like Amazon.

It sounds like you were able to safely grab the dog (without getting bitten).
If it happens again, you might take the dog to the local pound, or take it into your house and call animal control to report that you found a "lost dog."

I think that will be my strategy if the dogs come through again. I've now read some accounts of other people doing this with hound hunters elsewhere in the state and it doesn't seem there's any risk of getting in trouble for capturing and holding an animal waiting for animal control or law enforcement to arrive even if the owners get there first and demand it back. In all cases it sounds like the animals were confiscated when authorities arrived. It is however illegal to do anything to the collar itself or remove it from the dog.

One, search the statutes governing your property (likely county), for the term "at large". That will tell you the limit of what you are LEGALLY able to do. Anything less than that is a courtesy.

"At large" thing isn't the most straightforward thing for NY and my area (which seems to just be the same as the state rules). The broad definition is basically any dog not on a leash while on someone else's land. However, hunting dogs have a slight exemption that lets them stray onto other land, but that they must still be "accompanied by" the owner. The owner is then still subject to trespassing laws and it's still trespassing even if the property isn't posted...so I guess it's legal for the hunter to stand on one side of the boundary and the dog to stand on the other as long as the "accompanying" condition is there. Unfortunately the hound hunting crowd tries to use the radio/gps systems to justify that they are "accompanying" or "in control" of the dog; obviously they aren't, but I don't know if that's been tested in the NY courts or not. Then there are the laws that allow a land owner to shoot a dog that is actively threatening or attacking pets/livestock/etc.

There is another funny law that is also relevant: dog licensing. Now, normally I hate that kind of garbage; licenses for common place animals strike me as officious and just another way for the government to line its pockets. However...that viewpoint of mine aside, it may actually be something I can leverage if I have to. In my area, any dog over 4 months old is required to display two tags outside of the owner's property: a license ID number tag and a rabies vaccine tag. An owner of an unlicensed dog over that age limit can't necessarily get it back if it gets picked up, and animals lacking tags can be confiscated simply for not displaying them even if the owner did pay for a license. None of these dogs had those tags.

 

[mowin]

Yrs ago one of my cavalier king Charles got loose. Neighbors down the road didn't know who's it was and called the local dog warden. I couldn't get my dog back until I got a license. The dog warden had the license at his residence, but wouldn't sell me one as he was closed on Sunday and Monday. Wanted the dog and the owner to suffer, and he laughed at me. Had to wait 3 days to get him back. I wasn't happy. However, it came out that the dog warden was selling the license, but not giving the funds to the town. I was one of the ones that helped put him in jail for a few months and loose his business. After he got out I asked him how it feels to be locked up like the dogs.

 

[McChooky]

I've hit another electric poultry netting snag: I don't have the ability to hook it up to the mains, so it would be a solar charger, and I am now reading that the solar ones are too weak to work properly when the snow piles up. With the weather being what it has been lately, there would be little sun and the netting would get covered almost daily between random snow showers and snow blowing down the hill the rest of the time. Even though a little thaw is coming this weekend, it looks like it will be back to the steady dribble of snow after that. My husband wants to get a proper fence put up for our dog when the snow is over for certain; maybe that's really what I should be focusing on planning out, since a sufficient quantity of electric poultry netting looks like it would take at least 2 weeks to get to me anyway even from places like Amazon.



I think that will be my strategy if the dogs come through again. I've now read some accounts of other people doing this with hound hunters elsewhere in the state and it doesn't seem there's any risk of getting in trouble for capturing and holding an animal waiting for animal control or law enforcement to arrive even if the owners get there first and demand it back. In all cases it sounds like the animals were confiscated when authorities arrived. It is however illegal to do anything to the collar itself or remove it from the dog.



"At large" thing isn't the most straightforward thing for NY and my area (which seems to just be the same as the state rules). The broad definition is basically any dog not on a leash while on someone else's land. However, hunting dogs have a slight exemption that lets them stray onto other land, but that they must still be "accompanied by" the owner. The owner is then still subject to trespassing laws and it's still trespassing even if the property isn't posted...so I guess it's legal for the hunter to stand on one side of the boundary and the dog to stand on the other as long as the "accompanying" condition is there. Unfortunately the hound hunting crowd tries to use the radio/gps systems to justify that they are "accompanying" or "in control" of the dog; obviously they aren't, but I don't know if that's been tested in the NY courts or not. Then there are the laws that allow a land owner to shoot a dog that is actively threatening or attacking pets/livestock/etc.

There is another funny law that is also relevant: dog licensing. Now, normally I hate that kind of garbage; licenses for common place animals strike me as officious and just another way for the government to line its pockets. However...that viewpoint of mine aside, it may actually be something I can leverage if I have to. In my area, any dog over 4 months old is required to display two tags outside of the owner's property: a license ID number tag and a rabies vaccine tag. An owner of an unlicensed dog over that age limit can't necessarily get it back if it gets picked up, and animals lacking tags can be confiscated simply for not displaying them even if the owner did pay for a license. None of these dogs had those tags.

We had a lot of hunting dogs show up at our house when I was a kid but none of them ever killed our chickens .Ours free ranged so the dogs could have killed them if they wanted to.Most hunters back then were farmers who had chickens too.

 

[cmom]

Electric wires work good. I have them around my coops and pens and nothing has gotten past them. A good fence charger is a must so it puts out enough power to let whatever touches the wires that they are there and also be able to tolerate weeds or whatever might touch the wires. My first charger was like a bee sting but this one I have know will let anything that touches the wires know that they are there and will hurt but that is the idea I want whatever touches the wires to know they are there and will hurt when touched. Good luck...

 

[cmom]

One BYC member several years ago was having an issue with a neighbors dog coming onto her property and killing her birds. He told her it wasn't his dog. The next time it came on her property she shot it with a paintball which might have hurt a little but not lethal. Good luck...

 

[DonyaQuick]

Had another bizarre dog incident today. Two dogs came running through my property wearing matching, weirdly thick collars. No obvious radio transmitters this time but they were very heavy-looking with an extra thick section. I have seen similar things listed as GPS collars online. Maybe could have been training collars, but I have one of those and looked through a lot of them so I'm doubtful.

The dogs weren't pursuing anything that I could see and were not together; they passed through separated by a good minute or two. One dog was a very big brown thing with one of those extra wide heads and the other looked like a black lab; never seen either before locally. Not what I would expect for hunting dogs but who knows. Couldn't catch either dog this time. Brown took one look at me and I guess I had an aura of Ima-mess-you-up, since it immediately went tearing off over the hills down the middle of the main road. The black lab also avoided me but doubled back and meandered up through my property again, sticking to a very difficult to traverse area on two feet, so I couldn't catch it or scare it off easily. My husband was just bringing our dog back from a walk on the other side of the property and it was going ballistic, but she's a puppy and still being trained off the leash so we couldn't let her go charging through the forest after it.

Since neither dog was being aggressive but we had one hanging about, we decided it was time for some impromptu milk bottle target practice in the vicinity (although firing AWAY from where the dog was). Loud bangs got the dog to make itself scarce and it hasn't come back that I've seen. If there was another hunter skulking about out there like the last time, then now they know I have a boom stick too. Worst case would be that the dogs were just adopted by someone in the area who lost them and I now look like some kind of crazy psychopath, but I really doubt it given the collars.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

You could have shot at the dogs too. You miss you miss, you hit and one less barker

 

[DonyaQuick]

You could have shot at the dogs too. You miss you miss, you hit and one less barker

It's illegal to do that in my state if the dogs aren't actively presenting a threat to people, pets, livestock, or wildlife. The previous ones were doing that, but these two new ones were not.

 

[shawluvsbirds]

It's illegal to do that in my state if the dogs aren't actively presenting a threat to people, pets, livestock, or wildlife. The previous ones were doing that, but these two new ones were not.

If the hound is just passing through I'd give it a break. I do understand if it's harassing livestock or posing a threat that is very frustrating.
Especially if you have repeat offenders. But even your best well-trained hound can blow off your commands sometimes when they get excited and get on a trail.
People put a lot of time money and effort into these hunting breeds and it stinks that there's no good place to go out and let them do what they do without taking the chance they're going to get on someone else's land from time to time.