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Exactly correct. It just can't scale to the level need without just being literal deer farms. A poor family with access to hunting may be able to feed themselve

Exactly correct. It just can't scale to the level need without just being literal deer farms. A poor family with access to hunting may be able to feed themselves here and there but not systemically. Even hunters forget that when you kill a doe, you are killing 4-8 future deer, not just the one today.

ahi 2y ago
Roughly 250k are harvested each year in Michigan, and the state practically begs hunters to take does to prevent those 4-8 future deer. That's a significant volume of meat, but there's 2 problems. 1) Many hunters are already what most on HN would think of as rural poor. That meat isn't going wasted. The food pantry would just be an extra step. 2) Processing a deer in the garage is common, but definitely a learned skill and time consuming. Professional processing is available, but results in $/lb higher than most industrial proteins available.
- bluGill 2y ago
  There needs to be a process for food pantries so have people who will come to your garage to process your deer for the share of the meat. Many poor would be able to come to your garage on a Monday night (you get home Sunday night and process them on Monday) for a share of the harvest. Processing deer goes better with extra hands and some of the work is very easy to teach. I'm not sure how many poor are really able to take a Monday night to learn how to butcher a deer, but...
ctoth 2y ago
> Even hunters forget that when you kill a doe, you are killing 4-8 future deer, Hunters ... Do not forget this. This is why, for instance, many states have antlerless weekends. Florida Zone B (where I grew up and which I'm familiar with) only allows you to shoot does (antlerless deer) during general gun season December 27-29 this year.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
This is the wrong way to think about it. With reasonable game management, killing a doe has no impact on future deer because the population is at carrying capacity. In that case, killing a doe means one less deer starves over winter. Where I live, government biologist have recommended several times to issue doe tags to increase the population and been rejected. Over the winter, old infertile does outcompete the young deer who starve.
- JoeAltmaier 2y ago
  Yet the topic was all about non-reasonable game management. What would be required to feed people routinely. It was in fact the entire purpose of the conversation to 'think about it' like that.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    The post I responded to stated "Even hunters forget that when you kill a doe, you are killing 4-8 future deer, not just the one today." as if this was a general truth, outside the context of your thought experiment. The article is about if some game (specifically unwanted meat) can help feed some people. If the conversation is about if we can feed the entire US population on wild deer, then of course not. The numbers dont work. The numbers don't work out because there isn't enough carrying capacity, not because it is impossible to kill a doe without lowering yield per sector.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

ahi 2y ago

Roughly 250k are harvested each year in Michigan, and the state practically begs hunters to take does to prevent those 4-8 future deer. That's a significant volume of meat, but there's 2 problems. 1) Many hunters are already what most on HN would think of as rural poor. That meat isn't going wasted. The food pantry would just be an extra step. 2) Processing a deer in the garage is common, but definitely a learned skill and time consuming. Professional processing is available, but results in $/lb higher than most industrial proteins available.

bluGill 2y ago
There needs to be a process for food pantries so have people who will come to your garage to process your deer for the share of the meat. Many poor would be able to come to your garage on a Monday night (you get home Sunday night and process them on Monday) for a share of the harvest. Processing deer goes better with extra hands and some of the work is very easy to teach. I'm not sure how many poor are really able to take a Monday night to learn how to butcher a deer, but...

ctoth 2y ago

> Even hunters forget that when you kill a doe, you are killing 4-8 future deer, Hunters ... Do not forget this. This is why, for instance, many states have antlerless weekends. Florida Zone B (where I grew up and which I'm familiar with) only allows you to shoot does (antlerless deer) during general gun season December 27-29 this year.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

This is the wrong way to think about it. With reasonable game management, killing a doe has no impact on future deer because the population is at carrying capacity. In that case, killing a doe means one less deer starves over winter. Where I live, government biologist have recommended several times to issue doe tags to increase the population and been rejected. Over the winter, old infertile does outcompete the young deer who starve.

JoeAltmaier 2y ago
Yet the topic was all about non-reasonable game management. What would be required to feed people routinely. It was in fact the entire purpose of the conversation to 'think about it' like that.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  The post I responded to stated "Even hunters forget that when you kill a doe, you are killing 4-8 future deer, not just the one today." as if this was a general truth, outside the context of your thought experiment. The article is about if some game (specifically unwanted meat) can help feed some people. If the conversation is about if we can feed the entire US population on wild deer, then of course not. The numbers dont work. The numbers don't work out because there isn't enough carrying capacity, not because it is impossible to kill a doe without lowering yield per sector.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]