by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Orion Sporting Group LLC is weighing all options following the June 29 decision by a Nelson County, VA, judge ruling that the Old Dominion’s constitutional protection of the right to hunt does not extend to the discharge of firearms for sporting clays, helice and other clay pigeon shooting activities on the same property as a hunting preserve.

The case is believed to be the first constitutional legal battle over the right to hunt in the US.

Orion brought the suit after Nelson County officials had approved shooting live game on the group’s 450-acre rural land tract, but banned the discharge of firearms for clay target shooting. Orion filed suit, claiming that the county’s ruling violated the right to hunt explicitly protected by the Virginia constitution and that the proposed shooting activities are an accessory use by the right of the hunting preserve.

Orion said it believes that simulated hunting is a contemporary form of the hunting arts, providing sportsmen and women the choice of hunting live game or simulated game. Orion’s brief also claimed that the constitutional protection extends to preparatory hunting activities, such as hunter education, training and practicing with clay target shooting.

Nelson County Judge J. Michael Gamble disagreed. Gamble upheld the county board of supervisor’s denial of a conditional use permit for shotgun sports at Orion Estate, an exclusive hunting preserve. In his eight-page decision, Gamble rejected the preserve’s argument that shooting at airborne clay and plastic targets at its shotgun sports center is an integral part of hunting.

Gamble wrote that that definition of hunting involves the pursuit of live game.

“Shooting sporting clays is not the pursuit of game,” Gamble wrote. “It is essentially shooting at an inanimate object.”

Gamble made it clear in his decision that the right to hunt remains fundamental.

Orion originally opened its shotgun sports center and corporate training facility in Nelson County in 2001. Working with the county in order to expand its operation, Orion decided to relocate to a larger rural tract in central Virginia, adding a licensed hunting preserve.

Prior to the lawsuit, county government officials were entirely supporting of the activities of Orion,” said Morris Peterson, Orion’s managing director. “In fact,” he added, “Orion was encouraged to remain in Nelson County by the Board of Supervisors and the Economic Development Office.

“It was only after Orion spent millions of dollars to relocate its sporting operations to a larger, even more rural tract of land within Nelson County that local government attempt to prevent Orion from continuing its existing, successful shotgun sports center operation.”

Orion’s facility is located in a distinctly rural atmosphere in the Blue Ridge Mountains along the banks of the James River.

Gamble’s ruling could provide legal guidance elsewhere in Virginia and in about a dozen other states with right to hunt protections.