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Pain is a part of life. Every animal will feel pain at one point or another. If an area's deer population is too high to be supported, there will be a lot of

Pain is a part of life. Every animal will feel pain at one point or another. If an area's deer population is too high to be supported, there will be a lot of pain. Deer will starve to death. Deer will wander out looking for food and be struck by automobiles. Deer will contract CWD and that's really not a good way to die. I don't think that anyone would claim that a rifle bullet is a "good" way to die but it is a lot less torturous than these others.

nacho_weekend 12y ago
This is a key argument here. In a hypothetical, perfectly moral ecosystem, could we find some way of "birth control" to limit the population AND the pain? Perhaps, the population of deer is staggeringly immense, and the financial compensation and minimal fiscal benefit behind such a plan seems like a potential path of waste and failure behind whomever enacts the program. So we enter a cost/benefit analysis of the situation, and the cost of "humane" solutions are immense. On the other hand, ethical hunting is a "lesser of two evils" that you've mentioned, but more importantly, it brings money back into the organizations protecting the environment. Many people don't realize the cost of a single hunting tag is very well calculated, regulated, and almost 100% of the profits go into ecosystem preservation and conservation. Closest thing to a win-win scenario we can get at the present, not to mention the act of hunting can be an industry in and of itself generating revenue and business.