Virginia will conduct a one-year study of a little-known practice called fox penning.
The sport involves trapping wild foxes, placing them in large, fenced, wooded areas and chasing them with hounds.
The state Senate's conservation committee voted 13-2 Thursday to carry an anti-penning bill over for a year while state game officials conduct the study.
As originally written, the bill by Sen. David W. Marsden, D-Fairfax, would have banned the sport. Marsden presented a substitute bill Thursday to regulate the sport more tightly. Pen owners fiercely opposed it.
Both sides were well-represented in the meeting, with about 175 people packing the room and about 100 more waiting outside. Police asked some people to leave to make room for others.
The senators got hugely differing views of the sport.
Opponents said penning — also called fox chasing — often ends with dogs tearing the foxes apart.
"Fox penning is a brutal and unethical practice that is a stain on the honor of the state of Virginia," said Robin Robertson Starr, the Richmond SPCA's chief executive officer
Pen supporters called the sport a family-friendly activity designed to train dogs, not kill foxes.
"We are not the barbarians we have been made out to be," said Michele Taylor, who owns with her husband a 200-acre preserve, or pen, in Mecklenburg County.
She invited the senators and public to see her operation. "We have nothing to hide."
Both sides said they were happy with a study.
In Virginia, nearly 4,000 foxes were put in about 40 pens over the past three years. Pen owners say they need to keep adding foxes because so many die naturally, escape or learn to hide.
Critics say pen owners have to keep replacing foxes because the animals are getting killed so often.
State officials don't know how many foxes are killed in pens
A House version of the anti-penning bill was tabled Feb. 1 in a subcommittee. The sponsor, Del. Kenneth R. Plum, D-Fairfax, said that was a strategic move, allowing pen opponents to rally behind the Senate bill.
Penning became popular in Virginia in the 1980s as a way to train foxhounds, state officials say. The state began regulating the pens in 1997.
Under state rules, pens must encompass at least 100 acres, with holes for foxes to hide in. There are about 40 pens in Virginia.
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