There's a battle brewing over what is considered sport and what’s considered savage.

At the Tar River Fox Pen in Creedmoor there are 900 fenced in acres dedicated to what for now is a completely legal sport. Pete Warren, President of the Eastern Fox Hunters Associations, said families gather to watch the events there that have taken place for decades.

"Who has the fastest dog; who has the best dog,” Warren said. "It's not something that just started and it's something we hold dear to our heart."

During events, up to 200 hounds are numbered and released. They're judged on speed and how well they track fox and coyote, which have a refuge every 35 acres as regulated by the NC Wildlife Commission. He said the whole reason the hunting sites were fenced in years ago was because of growth, to keep the wild animals off of people’s property.

But Amanda Arrington, State Director of the Humane Society of the United States, said that on the nearly 150 pens in North Carolina like the one in Creedmoor, too many foxes and coyotes are being killed.

"We want to stop the abuse. Fox and coyote are being trapped, often injured when they're trapped, taken to these enclosures where they're unfamiliar and then packs of dogs are released on them and they rip them apart and kill them,” Arrington said.

Warren, admits while it happens, the objective is not to kill.

"We do everything we possibly can to save every fox and every coyote,” Warren said.

Joe McClees, a lobbyist for the NC Sporting Dog Association, said the practice is actually a humane way to hunt and is nowhere close to legalized animal fighting as some have compared it to.

"This is a Redneck social event. This is a cultural thing that is Southern that is in more states than just the South,” McClees said. "The purpose of these things [events] are to train dogs and  … to create a sport within a confined area where the dogs won't be on other people's land."

There are two bills in the senate to ban the practice, one of them sponsored by Senator Neal Hunt, who is a Wake County Republican.

"When it came to my attention, frankly I was appalled,” Hunt said.

While there are refuges for the fox and coyote in the pens, he questions how sheltered they really are for the animals.

"If a fox or coyote can get into it what is keeping a hound from getting into it?" Hunt said.

Representative Ty Harrell, a Wake County Democrat, is getting ready to introduce a companion bill in the house.

"I don't have a problem with hunters I don't have a problem with sportsmen. What I have a problem with is essentially trapping injured animals in a small space and then releasing your hounds on them, and call that sport,” Harrell said.

Warren insisted the fox and coyote inside this fence are not injured and are fed well. He said banning the sport would hurt local economies since it’s so popular, and that he and others are just trying to preserve a tradition.

"This is my sport, and we're not willing to give it up,” Warren said.