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California is one step closer to banning hunting bears and bobcats with dogs after this bill passed the state senate yesterday.

From this story on sfgate.com:
The state Senate voted Monday to ban the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats, a practice the bill’s author compared with shooting animals in a zoo. State Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, introduced the legislation after a California fish and game commissioner posed for photos with a mountain lion he killed during a legal hound hunt in Idaho.

Before the vote, Lieu described the practice in which packs of dogs chase the animals until they are exhausted and climb trees, holding them until the hunter arrives. “It’s been likened to shooting a bear at a zoo,” Lieu said. “It’s simply not fair.” He also noted that dogs are sometimes injured or killed and called the practice inhumane and unsportsmanlike.

Thoughts? Reaction? Anyone want to place odds on the next low-hanging fruit anti-hunters try to grab are gundog field trials? Or even hunting with dogs altogether?