State Rep. David Hawk, R-5th, said Wednesday that he introduced legislation in the Tennessee House of Representatives to remove the ban on fox hunting in Greene County at the request of several county commissioners.

Commissioner Rennie Hopson, who represents Clear Springs, Horse Creek, Chuckey, Newmansville and other areas in the northeastern part of the county, said he would like to see the current ban on fox hunting in Greene, Washington and Benton counties removed in order to bring the three counties in line with the rest of the state.

The three counties are the only ones among Tennessee's 95 counties which have such a ban on fox hunting.

Hopson said the current ban dates from the rabies epidemic of the 1960s, which he remembers well.

He said he can remember that some dairy cattle and beef cattle had to be killed because they came in contact with rabid foxes, and a bounty was placed on foxes.

James McAfee, a Greene County native with a degree in conservation biology who is now with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), said a number of human rabies fatalities in Greene County at that time led state officials to take drastic measures to control the fox population here.

When extensive trapping did not work, poisoning was resorted to, McAfee said. The poison "stopped the rabies epidemic," he recalled, but it also devastated the raccoon population and much other wildlife here.

McAfee stressed the fact that he was speaking strictly as a Greene County native and lifelong resident, not as an official of the TWRA, which takes no official position on the county fox hunting bans.

In the aftermath of the epidemic in the late 1960s, McAfee said, fox hunters asked the Greene County legislative body, which was then called the Greene County Quarterly Court, to pass a total ban on killing foxes "for any reason," in an effort to let the non-rabid fox population rebuild.

The ban has been continued since that time, first by the Tennessee Game and Fish Commission, and more recently by the TWRA.

McAfee said fox hunting as a sport has all but died out since then, but the fox population has rebounded greatly.

"We have more foxes, more deer, more turkeys and raccoons than we've ever had in my lifetime" in Greene County, he said, to the point that they are causing problems.

McAfee and Hopson each cited cases of deer causing vehicular accidents, deer and raccoons raiding gardens, and foxes becoming very bold and even relaxed around people.

McAfee said he personally believes that these conditions have developed because there are fewer hunters every year, a national trend that he said is also reflected locally.

"In today's society, there are no fox hunters," he said, except for a few affluent hunters who use fox hounds to chase coyotes on large, privately-owned, enclosed compounds.

Hopson said he was approached more than a year ago by several trappers who told him of problems that the fox hunting ban is creating.

He said that, with the ban in effect, someone who uses a trap to catch a coyote can inadvertently catch a fox instead.

Immediately, the trapper has a legal problem, Hopson explained, because releasing the fox without injury to the trapper and/or the fox is dangerous, and killing it is illegal.

He said he plans to ask the Greene County Commission to vote to abolish the ban to show support for the legislation that Rep. Hawk is working through the state House of Representatives.

State Sen. Steve Southerland, R-1st, of Morristown, has already moved companion legislation through the state senate.

Ideally, Hopson said, removal of the total ban would allow the TWRA to establish a fox hunting season in the three affected counties, with a bag limit and other typical regulations.