Is hunting good for animal populations?

February 2, 2008 8:18 PM

Growing up in West Virginia, which is a state where almost everyone hunts deer, I was constantly told that hunting was in the deers best interest. The rationale being that if the hunters didn't kill some of them off, there wouldn't be enough food to support the entire population, causing many of them to die off over the winter. Looking around the internet, I haven't found anything that supports this idea. So i'm wondering if there is any truth to this, or if perhaps it is just something people made up to justify their animal killing hobby.
posted by wigglin to sports, hobbies, & recreation (37 comments total)

I'm not anti-huntist, but I've always found the argument suspect. If you want to reduce the deer population, it seems to me that killing females would be the way to go.

I do believe that deer are definitely overabundant along the Eastern seaboard. A lot of that has to do with habitat destruction as development overtook forested land, but the population is outsize for the space available.

It's also a twentieth century phenomenon. New England in the 1800s was nearly completely deforested and the deer population was quite small. As the sheep farming craze passed and the timber trade used up all its resources, second-growth forests came back very gradually. The region is now 75% forested, but that's only since about 1900. Deer flourished in abundant forest, but now that habitat and food supply is more limited, there really aren't as many resources as there once were to support their numbers.
posted by Miko at 8:22 PM on February 2, 2008

Depends on whether there's natural predators or not. Just anecdotally, the military base near where I grew up had managed hunts for several years, then suspended them at some point. The population exploded and there were some issues with disease and in general the deer were much smaller than previously. I think large numbers of the deer were culled and the managed hunts were reinstated as a result.
posted by electroboy at 8:24 PM on February 2, 2008

In the midwest you can see how this is possible. There are more deer there now than there ever were. Once all the crops are harvested in late fall, what are the overpopulated deer supposed to eat?
posted by sanka at 8:26 PM on February 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

It's sort of true. In the absence of predators, deer numbers in many US states (like WV) are much, much higher than they should be. It's not just a winter die-off of deer, it's the enormous damage that this does to the windflowers in the forests.
Unfortunately the reproductive capacity of non-monogamous animals like deer is determined by the number of females, and hunters preferentially kill males. So actually, hunters need to kill more deer and in doe in particular.
posted by atrazine at 8:26 PM on February 2, 2008

I don't think it's "something people made up to justify their animal killing hobby" based on the wikipedia articles for culling and wildlife management, but whether or not it's in the "best interest" of the animal, I don't know.

Well, best interest in the animal definitely not. Best interest in the species? Maybe. Best interest in OTHER species? I'm inclined to say yes in certain circumstances.

I was on safari in Africa a couple years ago, and our guides briefly discussed their reasons for culling certain animals in Kruger. Part of it was that the population of one species was growing so big and so rapidly that it was threatening the food supply and survival of some other, more endangered species.

I don't know about the deer in West Virginia, though....
posted by Squee at 8:29 PM on February 2, 2008

Study: Deer overpopulation may hamper forest health, diversity of tree species.

There are lots more articles like that out there. The main problem isn't really so much that they'll all die off in the winter - although more will die than would if the population were lower - it's that too many deer = havoc in the environment: they eat everything; if their food source in the wild is depleted, they will eat crops; if they can't eat crops, they'll come into your suburb and eat your roses and your plants.

Point Reyes National Seashore management has hired hunters to come in and kill non-native deer (axis and fallow deer) that were introduced as exotic species a hundred or so years ago. They've outcompeted the native black-tailed deer and caused incredible destruction in a fairly delicate ecosystem - their numbers and eating habits have damaged bird nesting habitat and such.
posted by rtha at 8:31 PM on February 2, 2008

Political pressure from hunters is absolutely essential to preserving animal habitat from development in WV and across the country, and in that most basic of all senses, hunting is in the best interest of the deer, because without hunting, many of these populations would be extinguished altogether.
posted by jamjam at 8:45 PM on February 2, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

The national deer population, now estimated at 25 million to 30 million, has been growing for decades. Not only have deer adapted to encroaching suburbia, but they have benefited from a series of mild winters, an increase in newly developed areas being declared off limits for hunters and a decline in hunting in some parts of the country . . . Some forecasters believe there could be a point when the deer population will become so large it just can't sustain itself. But no one knows when. "We're not certain when it will max out," Curtis [wildlife biologist Paul Curtis of Cornell University] said. "Deer populations are already at densities a biologist wouldn't have dreamed of 10 years ago." (Associated Press, 2000)

Here in Missouri, the pre-settlement deer herd was decimated by the early 1900s. The Missouri Department of Conservation started a breeding program in the 1930s and hunting resumed again in the 1950s when the state-wide herd was estimated at 15,000. Since that time the deer population has gone up, up, up-- surpassing the pre-settlement size and now close to one million.

Deer is managed most specifically as a sport (although it's also a major source of protein in many rural counties). The constantly-changing seasonal limits are currently designed to maintain or reduce overall population while increasing the number of trophy bucks-- those with sizable antler racks.

I don't know about West Virginia, but in Missouri the problem isn't having the deer die because of lack of food or winter conditions-- it's the impact growing populations on agricultural and (as rtha notes) environmental heath. Via management (and lack of natural predators) we've gone from bust-to-boom in about 50 years.

In certain areas extra permits are issued to kill does only and limit the "harvesting" of young bucks, specifically to keep the population stable while increasing the numbers of large bucks. It's a sport, a lifestyle and to a minor extent, a source of food.
posted by F Mackenzie at 9:03 PM on February 2, 2008

Follow-up to jamjam's comment: sport hunting is absolutely the reason the deer population wasn't driven into near-extinction. The same goes for wild turkey. If it weren't for general public's fear of brown bears, you'd see their numbers skyrocketing through breeding and hunting programs. There have been several plans to reintroduce elk to Missouri (a native species, now gone), but concerns on their impact in high-population areas have put those plans on hold.
posted by F Mackenzie at 9:10 PM on February 2, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Deer are prolific breeders in the absence of predators (human or animal). Overpopulation is a significant problem at a number of national parks, and in some residential areas.

Article from the NPS about overpopulation in Great Smoky Mountains park. It says, "Local over-population leads to widespread disease and starvation. Predation by coyotes, bears, and bobcats help reduce threats associated with overpopulation." So that's as close to an official, disinterested word as I think you're likely to get.

The idea with controlled hunting is that you have a small population of well-fed deer, instead of a burgeoning population of deer that starve when they outstrip their food supply or when winter comes.
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:10 PM on February 2, 2008

I work with ecologists who managed a preserve. In the past wolves lived in the area, but they were driven out by humans. Reintroducing them is not realistic at this point given that sprawl has enveloped the area. The natural ecosystem of the area clearly rested on deer having a predator, without one, deer can strip a forest quite easily. Maybe the deer don't overshoot and die, but they do screw up the habitat for species that may be endangered.

A few science papers on the subject.
A natural experiment on the effects of high deer densities on the native flora of coastal temperate rain forests from the journal Biological Conservation says that deer reduce species richness

Long-term response of spring flora to chronic herbivory and deer exclusion in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, USA says that deer with predation negatively effect "diversity, evenness, and species richness"

and that's just the few two results when I search Sciencedirect. There are tons and I don't think I can read them all. Others include Browsing by red deer negatively impacts on soil nitrogen availability in regenerating native forest and Evaluating the effects of ecosystem management alternatives on elk, mule deer, and white-tailed deer in the interior Columbia River basin, USA.

That said, sport hunters are not the best managers. If ecologists ran the show there would be more deer culled than hunters currently kill and ultimately, a push to reintroduce other predators. Sometimes ecologists will want to eradicate invasive game species such as feral pigs and hunters will oppose it...because they like to kill and they want to keep killing.

So yeah, hunting can play a part in managing ecosystems, but I think most hunters just like to hunt . Also, all of this presupposes that the total ecosystem is worth more than individual animals, but I do believe that a healthy ecosystem = healthy deer. There are a few emerging deer diseases, like chronic wasting disease, that are blamed on excessively dense populations.
posted by melissam at 9:17 PM on February 2, 2008

We're members of a local nature center, Fontenelle Forest. The forest is about 2.5 square miles and they have put up fences to exclude deer from small areas to demonstrate the damage they are doing to the eco-system. The deer exclusion areas (plots the size of a small room) are lushly grown up with diverse plant life and tree saplings. The rest of the forest, by contrast, is naked until about 4 feet off the ground. It is a stunning difference - something that I can't really convey in words. They have a managed deer hunt every year and harvest about 90 deer out of the 2.5 square mile tract. This still leaves about 25 deer per square mile.

Logically, I would conclude that the remaining deer will have more to eat and be less susceptable to disease (such as Chronic Wasting Disease).
posted by Ostara at 9:45 PM on February 2, 2008

When I lived in Colorado (which was a very long time ago so my memory is a little fuzzy), but I remember my mom telling me that someone's husband who was a big hunter was actually paid during certain years to go out and thin out the deer population, with other trained hunters, because overpopulation could be such a problem. However, my memory of this is admittedly shaky, but I do remember the rationale being that since the wolf population was now virtually nonexistent, there weren't enough natural predators.
posted by whoaali at 9:49 PM on February 2, 2008

Historically the primary predator for deer was wolves. Brown bears and grizzly bears do some, and occasionally pumas will take a few. Coyotes even get some. But wolves took a steady toll. The reproductive rates for deer are tuned to maintain their population in the face of that level of predation.

Now there aren't any wolves in most of the country, and not very many even in the places where wolves can still be found. So the only thing that keeps the deer population in check now is human hunting.

If humans were to stop hunting, the next limit would be availability of forage. The population would rise, deer would overgraze, and then starve. Problem is, a lot of other species would suffer as a result, particularly antelope (as well as elk and moose). It would seriously impact deciduous forests, because deer that can't find grass and leaves to eat will strip bark off of deciduous tree trunks, which kills the trees. That in turn would have broad-ranging effects on birds, rodents, and mid-sized critters like raccoons and skunks. You're talking about a pretty serious ecological catastrophe.

So is hunting good for the deer? Depends on how you look at it. Obviously it isn't good for the individual animals that get shot. But for the species, it keeps their numbers under control, which means that they don't destroy their habitat through overgrazing. I would say that it is good for deer as a species.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 9:55 PM on February 2, 2008

Here on the island, the deer have zero natural predators and there is almost nowhere left to hunt due to open spaces going away. There's almost nowhere you can point a rifle and have a stray bullet not find a house or road. There are a lot of deer out here...the coyotes just aren't big enough to prey on the deer.

So I think hunting is important, I just wish it was done a bit more scientifically, with some sort of census, does and bucks both hunted, etc.
posted by maxwelton at 9:58 PM on February 2, 2008

The West Virginia Cooperative Extension has a number of publications on deer control and damage, if you'd like to look at some locally-applicable research. They're all here; some notable ones seemed to be the Urban West Virginia Deer Damage Assessment and Fundamentals of Deer Harvest Management.
posted by Upton O'Good at 10:16 PM on February 2, 2008

"Shooting innocent creatures is a strange way to demonstrate one is trying to protect them."

There's a difference between strange and round-about. By your logic, I can also say:

"Working in the city and buying food from farmers is a strange way of feeding yourself, why not simply grow my own food?"

"Exercising is dumb, why don't you just eat less to begin with?"

"Why breed endangered species in captivity? It's so cruel to make them live in cages. Just let them be and stop habitat destruction!"

Some times the most direct options are unavailable to us. people don't want to be farmers, they like fat in their food, and nobody is willing to give up economic progress in the name of saving animals (you may claim to be willing, but trust me, you're not).

Since reintroducing natural predators is impossible in many areas, humans take over as predators, in order to keep the ecosystem in balance.
posted by BeaverTerror at 11:14 PM on February 2, 2008

Shooting innocent creatures is a strange way to demonstrate one is trying to protect them.
posted by mamaraks at 9:52 PM on February 2 [+] [!]

Your statement isn't without merit, mamaraks (and this coming from someone who generally prefers animals to people), but in special cases such as this, it seems like the best of some bad choices. At least personally, I'd rather be taken down quickly, by one clean shot, than starving to death all winter or dying of some unpleasant disease (or, really, even being killed by a predator, which is usually not pretty). And it might not be great for the deer, but in the larger picture, when one takes into consideration the effect on the entire ecosystem, it seems that something needs to be done. We created the problem by taking away their environment and their predators, so we need to find some way to bring things into more of a balance.

The argument I've heard against managed hunting is that it doesn't really mimic natural selection, in that hunters generally go after the prize bucks--basically, the big, strong, shining-example-of-the-species ones, instead of killing off the old, weak, or sick animals that would have been the first of the herd to go.
posted by the luke parker fiasco at 11:16 PM on February 2, 2008

Luke Parker, that difference in hunting patterns will make a difference in the species -- in a hundred thousand years or so. It won't make any difference over the course of a couple of centuries, though. Evolution in big creatures happens at a rate so slow as to make glaciers look zippy.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:26 PM on February 2, 2008

Shooting innocent creatures is a strange way to demonstrate one is trying to protect them.

Yeah, Bambi was a nice movie, wasn't it?

Spend some time in a suburb where deer eat everybody's garden and cause car accidents and you'll ... definitely encounter people still saying what you did. But not as many.

Spend some time where deer are a threat to crops and you'll definitely meet one or two still saying it. But they were city kids.

The thing is, the only alternative is kill them all or allow the reintroduction of major predators like coyotes and cougars. That's just not going to happen. We have occupied their habitat and domesticated it for our purposes. We are indirectly involved in animal husbandry.

I don't see any moral difference between killing a deer and eating it for venison and killing a cow and eating it at McDonald's. I'm not sure what the deal is here, unless you're totally vegan and like Judge Reinhold in Ruthless People (the kidnapper who couldn't harm a spider in his kitchen). "Natural" is to be eaten, not live out its life discussing philosophy with Thumper.

Believe me, the hunters I know ... like venison. They do like a ten-pointer on their wall, too, but I think you have to not know any hunters to believe they're just bloodthirsty.
posted by dhartung at 2:12 AM on February 3, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

My late boyfriend in southern Ohio (very close to WV/Kentucky) had a very large acreage given over in part to Christmas tree farming, which provided a major source of his income and jobs for several local families (not just at Christmas, but all year round, because there's a lot of tree-husbandry to be done throughout the year).

Deer like to eat nice, tender baby pine trees, and so it was necessary to cull the deer, not least because they strip the land bare in exactly the way melissam describes but also because, in a small rural community, it was vital to help preserve the local economy.

The hunting was carried out only during season by permit holders and the deer were butchered for the freezers of the hunters.

With my city-living sensibilities I was all "oh poor widdle deer" at first but very quickly came to see the logic behind it once the economic realities of country living were pointed out to me.
posted by essexjan at 3:09 AM on February 3, 2008

Joining in the chorus of yes, it is necessary.

And Bambi is so darn tasty on the grill!

(seriously, as long as you use the meat, I have absolutely no problem with hunting. Deer are gonna die of SOMETHING, and being shot by a hunter with decent aim sounds preferable to other ways of assuming room temperature.)
posted by konolia at 6:02 AM on February 3, 2008

What other options exist?

Birth control? Top predator reintroduction? Trapping/relocation?

I'm not a fan of hunting, for a lot of reasons. It hurts my heart, and the older I get, the more of a sentimentalist old coot I become. Having one's morning disrupted by a fatal shot to the heart seems a cruel reward for following the normal urges of the day! But my distress is anthorpomorphic in origin. I have to constantly remind myself that animals learn about death when they die. As far as they know, they're immortal.

The fact is, the deer are going to die in 10 years or so, anyway. The nature of that death is fairly variable, and of the alternatives, a well placed shot to the head or heart is probably preferable to being dragged down I-40 under the wheels of a Peterbilt, and ground into a red smear.

Estimates are that 2,000,000 (TWO FRIGGING MILLION!) of these little guys get introduced to the physics problem of deer versus auto, EVERY YEAR! in the USA. But I digress..

Every wildlife expert I have ever met sees hunting as a population management tool in the absence of a balancing predator population. Hunting has fallen out of favor among young men (mostly a boy sport), and what population control was formerly contributed by their ranks is fading. When I was a kid, deer seemed a lot more scarce, but one good friend of mine in a tree breeding project (a PhD pathologist) describes them as 'big rats', a conclusion with which I must reluctantly agree.

Still, training kids to kill troubles me, too. Tolerating cruelty is something that I find hard to sanction. But that damned 'geometric progression' problem... what else to do?
posted by FauxScot at 6:19 AM on February 3, 2008

i have lived in place (tennessee and missouri) where deer hunts have been authorized and/or deer season begun early and/or extended because of the animal population is otherwise threatened by a less humane fate, like starvation or disease. it's probably not as much of a problem in deeply rural areas, but in places where suburbia has crept into their territory, it actually is a problem.
posted by thinkingwoman at 7:16 AM on February 3, 2008

There was an interesting article about this very question in November's National Geographic ("Hunters: Conserving the Land"). (online version.)
posted by frobozz at 7:23 AM on February 3, 2008

The introduction of red deer to New Zealand is a very good example of what can happen when a deer population gets out of control. Red deer from England were imported as trophy game in the mid 19th century. However, New Zealand has no large predators so the deer population was able to grow absolutely unchecked. This did a massive amount of harm to native species and the environment, which had never had to support herbivores the size of deer. They were classified as a pest animal and it took a lot of hunters and government programs to keep NZ's environment from being completely altered forever. In the late 60s, the kiwis got smart, started farming the deer and exporting the venison. Things are a lot more under control now, but a similar situation is entirely possible in any environment without large predators (i.e. most of the US).

An aside, but one thing I really don't understand is all the "hunting is cruel" comments. Have you ever seen a pack of wolves tear a doe apart? Or watch a coyote stalk an injured, bleeding calf, waiting for it to die? I've seen both and believe me, nature is far more ruthless than man when it comes to getting rid of deer. I was born and raised in Wyoming, grew up around hunters (although no on in my immediate family did), ate a ton of game meat and realize that while some hunters do just want a head on their wall, most of them are tremendously respectful with their hunting practices. Hunting licenses are also carefully monitored by the Fish & Wildlife Service (at least in Wyoming) to prevent over-hunting.

But really, deer don't just lie down and go to sleep when they die. The vast majority of the time, they're killed painfully and brutally by another creature, starve to death, freeze to death or die of disease. Compared to their usual exit from the world, a bullet from a .30-06 is a pretty peaceful way to go.
posted by Nelsormensch at 8:04 AM on February 3, 2008

Hunters will tell you whatever is in the interests of guys who like to shoot animals for fun. Governments will tell you whatever brings in the most money (in hunting license fees, cabin rentals, etc.) in their area.

If it were good for deer to keep the population down, and if the goal were actually to be good to the deer, it would be best to do it painlessly, but no hunter is in favor of any sort of sterilization initiative or other program that would keep him and his gun from the deer. If you found a way to keep the population down painlessly and without blowing their brains out, what excuse would hunters be able to pull out of their asses for their annual Elmer Fuddery? None.

If it were better that a few deer were shot, regardless of the pain, rather than that a lot of deer went hungry (or ate crops or ran in front of cars or whatever) over the coming years, it would be best to just shoot every last deer in the area one year and have it over with (to protect many future deer from hunger and bullets and cars), but no hunter is in favor of any initiative that would end hunting in his area. Or if you'd rather not see all deer killed in the area, why not blast almost all and let the few survivors enjoy long-term superabundance of food and peace while hunting is shut down for as long as it takes the deer to rebuild their population?

But the ideal state of affairs for a deer hunter is constant deer overpopulation with no legal remedy offered but to shoot a few of them every year.
posted by pracowity at 8:06 AM on February 3, 2008

Deer carry ticks with Lyme's disease. Here in the metro DC area, Lyme disease is quietly reaching exposure levels never seen before. One article.

Deer are quite happy running around our suburban areas, where leftover food in trash and wonderful rich gardens abound. They have no natural predators in these areas and reproduce unchecked. So, around here there are a lot of culling plans popping up in the last few years.
posted by poppo at 8:09 AM on February 3, 2008

I was constantly told that hunting was in the deers best interest. The rationale being that if the hunters didn't kill some of them off, there wouldn't be enough food to support the entire population, causing many of them to die off over the winter.

Browsing through other posts I think most people hit this on the head. The deer have exploded because of two reasons.
1) no more predators
2) edge habitat that deer love

In the best interest of the deer *species* as a whole would be to re-introduce wolves and if you are a hunter to kill a pregnant doe. Killing a buck basically means more doe nookie for the other lucky bucks - that is about it.

I suppose if you kill enough bucks, then there simply aren't enough deer to overbrowse and cause a deer famine, but obviously if the primary motivation for "culling" is to control the deer population and *not* being able to shoot and kill animals then you'd re-introduce wolves. After all, before modern humans, *somebody* or something had to be controlling the deer population. So the hunters arguments are a bit fatuous here.
posted by xetere at 8:22 AM on February 3, 2008

I'll add that as a WV native...not everyone hunts in the state. In fact, only a few of the people I knew hunted anything let alone deer.
posted by mmascolino at 8:35 AM on February 3, 2008

I suppose if you kill enough bucks, then there simply aren't enough deer to overbrowse and cause a deer famine, but obviously if the primary motivation for "culling" is to control the deer population and *not* being able to shoot and kill animals then you'd re-introduce wolves. After all, before modern humans, *somebody* or something had to be controlling the deer population. So the hunters arguments are a bit fatuous here.

Yes, most ecologists want the reintroduction of predators to be the ultimate goal. In many areas, humans have been deer predators for a long time...Native Americans certainly killed deer, but making humans the keystone predator does have some obvious problems like only killing big huge bucks, etc.

Unfortunately, humans are pretty lame. They like to live in subdivisions, raise herds of cattle, and generally take up lots and lots of land. Hence reintroduction of wolves is kind of hard...if not impossible.

I would note that sterilization is, at this time, not a viable method for population control. Ecologists are working on it, but there are some issues. Chemical sterilization is hard to target (we don't want to sterilize the wrong species!) and yeah... how many vets are going to go into the woods to sterilize deer for free?

Honestly, I think culling is, at this time, the best solution. However, notice I said culling, not hunting. Culling is typically done under the supervision of people who manage ecosystems, hunting is done by people who like it and want to do it. Hunters have such a powerful lobby that populations are usually managed for the good of hunters rather than for the good of the ecosystem.

Hunters are a huge obstacle to the reintroduction of wolves in many areas. See the recent debate about culling wolf populations in order to keep elk and deer populations high...for hunters. Gee, wolves are impacting deer? Gosh, how awful, seeing that they have to eat deer, whereas the hunters can pull up to Starbucks and order a nice soy latte.

The Bush administration says the rule change is necessary because the previous standard required states to show that wolves are the primary cause of a decline in wild ungulate numbers. That threshold has proven impossible to meet because nearly all elk herds in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana are above population objectives, and wolves have never been determined to have been the primary cause of a population decline.

Hunting is certainly better than factory-farming of meat in terms of both animal welfare and environmental impact, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing.
posted by melissam at 9:42 AM on February 3, 2008

Plenty of good information and references in this thread, but check Deer Wars, a recently published book on the history and politics of deer management in PA if you are interested.
posted by buttercup at 10:08 AM on February 3, 2008

In the U.S., we have historically and systematically eliminated natural predators of deer in most places. More recently we've also extensively transformed the landscape into habitat that boosts deer numbers. Deer thrive in forest fragments because they shelter in the forest during the day and then graze outside the forest (crop fields, lawns, gardens, golf courses) at night. The more we fragment and urbanize the landscape, the higher the proportion of forest edge to land area. Translation: lots more deer can live in the same amount of space. But there's less forest than before. Now the situation in many localities is that the deer population has reached or surpassed the carrying capacity of the local habitat. Which means deer are harming ecosystems by overgrazing plants and some die of starvation in some areas. What Ostara describes is a very common effect of a dense deer population. Habitat fragmentation plus deer grazing is currently a one-two punch in terms of negative effects on other species. Deer have overly benefited from our activities, so killing some of them doesn't strike me as a problem as long as it's done properly. Hunting is not controlling deer populations in most areas.

I do not judge all animal killing to be bad. It very much depends on context, and in this case the hunters are supported by recommendations from wildlife managers and scientists. The problem is, the deer populations in many places at this point are probably beyond even their help alone. More and more wildlife managers are making decisions to start culling their local populations.

If ecologists ran the show there would be more deer culled than hunters currently kill and ultimately, a push to reintroduce other predators.

Reintroducing wolves is just not feasible for most areas.

The argument I've heard against managed hunting is that it doesn't really mimic natural selection, in that hunters generally go after the prize bucks--basically, the big, strong, shining-example-of-the-species ones, instead of killing off the old, weak, or sick animals that would have been the first of the herd to go.

Natural selection isn't the issue here. That happens over a very, very long time scale. Hunting and population control happens much more quickly.
posted by Tehanu at 10:59 AM on February 3, 2008

believe me, nature is far more ruthless than man when it comes to getting rid of deer.

This is so true. I'm pretty sure if we asked the deer they'd vote to keep wolves out of the picture (same with seals and polar bears, otters and orcas etc). The problem with deer though, is that they're a lot like humans: they overbreed and they overrun an area pretty quickly and, while it's not necessarily an issue for the deer, it is an issue for the other creatures they share the habitat with. Basically there are a lot of "extra" deer and we may as well eat them as not. Why prodice all that protein at low cost and let it go to waste (no predators, few scavengers left either) while simultanesouly running factory farms to produce inferior quality protein at high cost? Makes no sense to me.

I also find the "hunters just kill things because they're barbaric!" arguement weird. Way more animals are killed by cars than by hunters and I don't see anyone here vowing to stop driving to save Bambi. The truth is that if you've built on undeveloped property, commuted to work or consumed at regular western standards you've probably been responsible for the deaths of far more cute furry animals than even the most avid hunter.
posted by fshgrl at 11:12 AM on February 3, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Steven C. Den Beste writes "Evolution in big creatures happens at a rate so slow as to make glaciers look zippy."

I wonder how true that is when men are acting in concert to affect change (even unintentionally). Animal husbandry practises in animals like cows and pigs can sure make a difference in less than a lifetime.
posted by Mitheral at 2:18 PM on February 3, 2008

I have no problem with people enjoying hunting -- it seems like a very human instinct -- but to then kill vast amounts of other animals so there are more prey to kill, that takes things to a whole new level. The argument "we should kill wolves so we can hunt more deer" is going on right now in the courts. The US Fish & Wildlife Service proposed a rule that would give states more "flexibility" to kill wolves, which is now being challenged in court (NYTimes, LA Times, Earthjustice), and the feds are now working to completely remove the wolves from the endangered species list.

There's also the state of Oregon's plan to kill 2000 cougars in Oregon out of a population of only 5000-6000 total. The lobby there is not the hunters of the cougar's prey, as much as it is the industries around trophy hunting of cougars themselves, plus some livestock ranchers. Here's background.
posted by salvia at 2:41 PM on February 3, 2008

Coming from Michigan, there've been statewide programs to poison deer because they're over-running the ability of the environment to sustain 'em.

I'm a vegetarian and I don't hunt, but I know that over the last couple of years there was a big upsurge both in the number of deer that I saw around my house (which was relatively urban) and the dead deers on the road. If the hunters on the land near us weren't such cocks, I'd welcome more of them.
posted by klangklangston at 11:41 AM on February 4, 2008