No NEW, I think I have gotten your point and clearly. Now, I fully support introducing young hunters, or older new hunters to the sport, as you described in you last post.

But the article DOES say that we should support any type of hunting. I see you are from VA, as am I, so you are familiar with dog hunting. The article clearly uses hound hunting as an example we should support without question. I disagree greatly on this issue.

The dog hunting (let me specify that I am talking about hunting deer with dogs only) I have witnessed in VA has been very negative. This includes blatent trespassing, killing deer out of season, killing deer with an illegal weapon, killing deer at night, killing does during buck only season, intentionally using dogs to run does out of a buck only state controlled land (state forest land) onto private land where does are in season, killing more than the legal deer limit, not turning in deer, and the such. I tried hunting with dog hunting clubs a few times. I was personally criticized for not shooting two illegal does because it would have "stopped the dogs, and we don't want to waste time chasing them over a few stupid does."

Now my point: Dog hunting is very visible to the public, and presents an image of hunters that gets applied to all hunters. Blatent disregard for hunting regulations and property rights that is visible to the public presents a negative image that in my opinion is much more destructive to hunting as a whole than eliminating one form of hunting would. We must remember that like it or not, we are not the voting majority and the the public opinion of the general population DOES matter. Now, if hound hunting was performed ina responsible, respectful manner, fine. Have at it. But, currently in my area or central VA it is not, and most of the complaints I hear from non-hunting citizens about hunting involves dog hunting clubs.