Unless you kill the animal with your bare hands it ain't going to be sporting to some.
BTW, I do know a guy that killed a mountain lion with a big rock.

Goddamn few lions would ever be killed w/o the use of dogs.

I don't blame the guy for his poor accuracy, adrenaline and fear do weird things to a guy.
My little brother shot the Helll out of his patrol car while involved in a shootout once.

The first lion I ever killed was after the most Hellacious chase you can possibly imagine.
Miles of up & down vertical country at 8500 feet, I was a lean, mean twenty year old kid at the time.
Stuck the barrel of the .44 right between the shoulder blades, then proceeded to puke my guts out from sheer exhaustion after the kill.


Sporting?....hmmm

Howabout "telescopic sights" & long range high powered rifles?

Howabout hunting animals over bait?

Howabout compound bows capable of shooting 100 yards?

Howabout hunting pheasants over dogs?
The dogs found the poor birds all the tough guy bird hunter did is blast em.

Howabout fishing with a guide and dragging the poor fishy to the boat by the lips?

You can nit pick hunting to death until you get to that bare hands on public ground thing.

I don't find the quite the thrill in the kill as much as I once did.

Hell, I let a feral cat walk yesterday that was peering into my bird coop.
Had the crosshairs of my .22 mag right on his heart at fifty yards.
Tightened up on the trigger and decided that the damn thing was just being a cat.
That magic spark of life gets a bit more precious to some as we grow nearer to death ourselves.

That said, I've been bowhunting my arse off with my kid for about two weeks.
Thomas had a stalk go bad on an absolute monster blacktail when the wind changed suddenly.
I think we're gonna let them settle down a while and try to take him with a "non sporting" precision sniper rifle in a few weeks otherwise risk blowing the bucks off of the mountain by pressuring them too much with low percentage archery attempts.

Back on topic, I've killed lions, bears , hogs & birds with dogs.

Killing ain't pretty, I've watched bucks & bulls die at close range with sucking chest wounds as they choke on their own blood due to heavy hemorrhaging from a razor sharp broadhead.
It will leave you with mixed emotions at times.

Think about death when you wash down that big ole burger with a frosty brew.
Funny, I argued hunting with a non hunting meat eater recently, I told him that he had not earned the flesh that he was about to consume.
His clueless expression was priceless.

Hound hunting ain't for everyone, but I'll back it as an effective means to an end .