For a thousand years, dogs and hunting have gone together like bows and arrows, guns and bullets, predators and prey.
In medieval Europe, people tracked boars and stags with packs of hounds. Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned hunting dogs.
But simply because something is an old tradition doesn’t mean it should continue, say animal-rights groups, whose efforts to ban the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats is gaining momentum in the California Legislature.
The issue, this year’s most heated environmental battle in Sacramento, is drawing intense passions. Critics say hunters with packs of yapping dogs fitted with radio collars chase exhausted wild animals for miles, cornering them in branches and shooting them point blank…