Bruce, GH, I'm glad that I'm not the only one that holds this opinion! I'm not too proud to admit it. I think some of these guys take the "ethical game" way to far. Hey none of us are wanting to shoot a dog, we are being forced into by their owners who don't really care about them.

One particular time a couple years ago we had 3 labs that were chasing deer every single day across our hay pasture. I mean every day! We were also no longer seeing any deer in the pasture because of this. (so much for the theory that the dogs won't bother the deer) We knew who owned the dogs so being the good neighbor we went up to his house which was over 1/2 mile from our place. We very nicely explained to him what was happening and told him that they were really causing havoc with the deer and our hunting. He quickly told us that he moved to the country so he could let his dogs run free and he wasn't about to stop them. Even though he only owned 1 acre he felt they should be able to freely run on the surrounding 2,000 acres. Nothing changed and he was given another warning. I was fully prepared to start dropping dogs like flies. It was a blessing when he moved out of town of few weeks later!

Guys, I'm no idiot I don't want to shoot a dog that got loose one time and ran over on my land. However, I'm not going to stand for these "repeat" offender dogs who think our land is their playground. All of you have a problem with hunting deer with dogs, however, you can somehow justify a dog running a deer on his own as ok?

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Hunting the Piney Woods of Deep East Texas.