Hunting for Reverse of Virginia Blue Law

The folks at Virginia’s Wildlife Violation Hotline have answered some unusual calls in their time, but they’d never before handled a complaint quite like Joe Ficarro’s.

“I’d like to report a hunting violation,” said the 40-year-old Virginia Beach taxidermist when he rang up in February.

“Sir, when and where did the violation occur?”

“Tomorrow,” said Ficarro, “in Pungo.”

Ficarro explained that he’d be the violator and wanted to make sure a game warden was around to catch him hunting on Sunday. He even solicited advice, to be sure he clearly broke the law.

When Warden Craig Thomas met him at the appointed hour, Ficarro hauled out a $14 single-shot clunker of a shotgun, just in case it was confiscated as evidence. “They weren’t going to get my Browning,” he said. Then he loaded it with birdshot and stepped afield, ostensibly to hunt quail.

“I told the warden I hoped I didn’t have to actually shoot one, because we might be there awhile,” chuckled Ficarro, a deer hunter who claims no expertise with birds. “But he said all I had to do was walk around with the gun.”

Ficarro did, and got the ticket he came for, thereby entering a fray he hopes will change the law of the state.

When he enters Virginia Beach District Criminal Court on April 25, it will be to challenge the constitutionality of a law he says unfairly denies him the right to do as he pleases on his day off.

“You can go to tractor pulls on Sunday,” he said. “You can shop at the mall. You can shoot skeet, go to a football game, buy beer. But I’m stuck at home, watching all-star ‘rassling on TV. It burns me up.”

The perceived injustice of Virginia’s traditional Sunday hunting prohibition has bugged Ficarro for years. He works six days a week, he said, with Saturday his busiest day in the shop. But when he finally gets a day off, he has to do as others tell him in keeping with anachronistic, Bible Belt blue laws, as he sees it.

He was bemoaning that fact at his weekly card game last winter when his cronies suggested they do something about it. Their research showed several legislative bills aimed at opening Sunday hunting in Virginia, one of 11 states that prohibit it. All had failed.

Ficarro called the sponsor of the most recent one, Sen. Madison Marye, D, who said the chance of getting a bill through the General Assembly was nil and he wasn’t planning to try again.

That left one avenue, said Ficarro’s attorney and card-playing partner, Gary Byler. “He told us, ‘Someone’s got to break the law and test it in court,’ ” said Ficarro.

“I said, ‘Who would be stupid enough to do that?’ and when I turned around, everyone was looking at me.”

The rest is civil-disobedience history, and Ficarro is turning into something of a local figure because of it. “The day this thing hit the papers I was like Donald Trump’s lawyer,” he said. “The phone rang off the hook. People wanted to know, ‘What can I do to help?’ ”

Ficarro and Byler figure the case is likely to go to several levels of appeal, so they established the non-profit Virginia Sportman’s Association for Sunday Hunting Inc., to raise money.

“We’ve already got $1,400 and that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Ficarro. “We’re selling $7 hats for $25, which is a better deal than the televangelists give. At least you get a hat.”

But for all the joking, Ficarro believes he’s onto a serious issue. Virginia’s blue laws against commerce and recreation on Sundays, like those in many states, have been eased in recent years.

Some states also have removed or eased Sunday hunting prohibitions, according to the Wildlife Legislative Fund of America, an Ohio-based hunters’-rights organization that reports 34 states have no ban on Sunday hunting.

But prohibitions remain firmly in place in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina, as well as Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Maine.

That leaves Ficarro surrounded by places that won’t let him hunt on his day off, even though he’s been assured by Virginia’s Game Division chief, James Remington, among others, that there’s no biological need for Sunday closures.

Ficarro said the sentiment against Sunday hunting comes from churches, which want folks in the pews, and from some farmers who want a day of rest with no one tramping around their fields.

He recognizes those constituencies, he said, and appreciates their concerns. “There’s no bad guys in this dispute,” he said. “But our country and our state were founded on principles of freedom to do what you like, as long as it doesn’t infringe on someone else.”

Byler said: “We believe Sunday hunting is outlawed because it’s the day most people who go to church choose to worship. We all know that’s why the day was picked. We feel that picking a day for religious reasons is an unconstitutional mix of church and state.”

Byler reckons it will be an uphill fight to change the law. “Judges at this level are always reluctant to strike down a state statute as opposed to a city statute,” he said.

He hopes a protracted court case will force the Virginia legislature to readdress the issue and change the law voluntarily, so Ficarro doesn’t have to take it all the way to the Supreme Court.

Whatever the outcome, however, it’s clear Ficarro has opened a can of worms, which is a bold move for a taxidermist.