Eric Gregory Ripper
Eric Gregory Ripper, the man accused of blasting three hunting dogs during a late 2023 hunt, just learned the hard way that the state of Virginia has opinions about apparent property rights when furry assets are involved. He’s now set to spend the next couple of years behind bars and has been hit with a healthy level of restitution for his gruesome acts.
Ripper was found guilty on January 16, 2026, of three felony counts of animal cruelty (killing companion animals) and two misdemeanor counts of removing electronic transmitting devices from dogs. Following the verdict, he was sentenced on March 25th to a total of 60 months in jail, with 36 months suspended. That means he will serve 24 months of active jail time, with additional suspended time on the collar-removal counts and was also ordered to pay a little over $3,700 in restitution.
According to reports, the incident took place on the afternoon of December 29, 2023, on Ripper’s private property in King and Queen county. Conservation Police Officers with the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources responded to an initial report of a hunting dog being shot and later discovered a total of three dead dogs, reportedly disposed of in a particularly cruel manner.
The dogs were part of a larger pack used by the Newtown Sportsman Association, a local hunting club that runs deer hunts across roughly 15,000 acres using tracked hounds. The dogs were wearing GPS collars with owner contact information at the time of the shootings.
Robbie Shackleford, a board member of the Newtown Sportsman Association, reported the incident and witnessed the recovery of the dogs. He described the scene as “gruesome,” calling the killings a “hate crime toward dog hunting.”
“Cold-blooded killed. It was gut-wrenching. I witnessed the removal of the dogs,” Shackleford said. “Extremely graphic,”
Ripper, the landowner, was arrested on January 2, 2024 and the case soon went to a jury trial and drew widespread attention within Virginia’s hunting community, especially since it occurred around the same time as a separate incident in neighboring Essex County where additional hunting dogs were shot and killed.
In a statement following sentencing, the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources said the outcome “underscores the serious and violent nature of the offenses which included shooting and killing three hunting dogs.”
“The Department is encouraged to see that the evidence revealed during the investigation led the jury to convict and impose a weighty sentence,” the DWR said.
No public statements from Ripper or his legal team have been reported.
