Wow.  Quite a few posts ago I had written about why I was so against dog fighting.  Now, I’m not always a big Eugene Kane fan, but I do read his articles in an attempt to get a different point of view on things.  It’s in that back drop that I can across this story.  He wanted to know the difference between UFC and MMA versus dog fighting.  The standard — and quite expected — answer came down to choice.  Humans choose to get in the ring, the dog doesn’t.

However, that led him to bring up an interesting point about what’s the difference between hunting and dog fighting.  Well, he specifically targets deer hunting – presumably because they’re so much cuter than a ruffled grouse or pheasant — but the implication is hunting in general is similar to dog fighting.  Hunting feeds people.  Simple as that.  Evolution, top of the food chain, however you want to describe it.  People need to eat, and hey, at least with hunting the animal has a chance.  Just ask my dad’s Boykin Spaniel.  Last time I took her pheasant hunting, Cara was quite disppointed in me as she didn’t get too many opportunities to retrieve the pheasant’s she sent skyward.

But, why go after hunting?  Why not a meat processing facility?  Ever been to one?  I have (National Beef in Liberal, Kansas – a division of Farmland Foods), and let me tell you, that deer in the woods is being treated a heck of a lot nicer than the pig or cow that finds itself on the “kill floor” of a slaughterhouse.  The smell might be the part that’s hardest to get out of your head, but I digress.

Those dogs are bred, trained and mistreated into fighting.  There are other dogs that are stolen from their owners that become bait dogs for the fighters.  There is nothing remotely humane about dog fighting.  Since we, as humans, removed many of the deer herds natural predators such as the wolf packs the only thing impeding the over population of the deer herd is hunters.  And in case you hadn’t notice, the hunters are losing the battle.  Those 2 weeks in November don’t seem to be enough for the hunters to properly trim the size of the herd.

So, is better to remove deer hunting all together and have more deer in your backyard?  And not the cute “Bambi mothers” as Kane calls them.  No, these would be the mangy, tick and disease ridden ones because there wouldn’t be enough food to support such a large herd in the state.  Kane was wise not to bring up deer hunting on his blog, because he was smart enough to know the outcome.  But, to even suggest deer hunting and dog fighting are similar is just dumb.