KING AND QUEEN COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — A board member of a local hunting association is calling the killing of three hunting dogs “gruesome” and “cold-blooded” after he says they were killed on Friday.
Robbie Shackleford, board member of the Newtown Sportsman Association in King and Queen County, said the hounds were shot in the middle of the day on Friday, Dec. 29.
Shackleford said he reported the killing to authorities.
“Cold-blooded killed. It was gut-wrenching. I witnessed the removal of the dogs. Extremely graphic,” Shackleford described.
The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) confirmed on Sunday, Dec. 31, that the death of the dogs prompted an investigation.
Though the department did not confirm when and how the dogs were killed, Shackleford told 8News that the dogs were out with their owners that day. One other dog was in the group.
Shackleford said the dogs were shot on a big tract of land with no livestock, and that he believes the killings were intentional.
“You just don’t shoot dogs. And I feel for the boys who lost their dogs,” he said. “It was a horrific act. An act of animal cruelty. I’d even say it was a hate crime toward dog hunting.”
Shackleford said he has been hunting for about 45 years.
The Newtown Sportsman Association controls about 15,000 acres and has about 60 dogs that are a part of their club.
Shackleford said the Association has a positive representation in the community by giving donations to the local fire department, giving venison to landowners and community members, and gifts to serval landowners that don’t allow the association to hunt their property.
“I would actually say that some of these dogs mean more to us than people do,” he said.
Despite the potential issue of property ownership in relation to this incident, the Code of Virginia allows hunters to retrieve dogs even when the property owner has denied access.
“If he’s on your land we have a right to retrieve him. If this law wasn’t in effect, we would not have had the circumstances to find out the gruesome, gut-wrenching, devastation that happened,” Shackleford said.
He added that all of the dogs have GPS tracking with contact information on them, to help control the hunt and proper retrieval of every hound.
