I look forward to following EDB.

Right, because hunters are feeding the *wild animals* with mastening feed which also includes animal meals.

Available food is what is controlling the number of prey and also hunter.

If there is not enough food, population shrinks, if deers are feed more fawns are born and grow up.

If predators kill much prey, but there is still enough food, than the remaining animals reprocreate more.

Under pressure, no matter if hunters, wolf or cougars, the prey is stocking up its number the more individuals are killed.

Only if there is not enough food anymore, the number of prey steadily decreases and then the predators also decrease because there is no longer as much food as before.

Best example are isolated island around the UK, south sea and other places.

On these isles animals like horses, goats or wild herbivores are without predatores…but they do not turn the islands into desert or reprocreate until there is no more room on the island.

There is always a steady number of individuals. More reprocreation after a hard winter when more individuals have died and less born youngs when there is a higher number of individuals which have survived.

No predatores…but still a healthy population.

Humans and the feed they give to deer is what is increasing their numbers so drastically.

Because hunters want as much animals as possible to hunt and also strong/big as possible.

The feeding also gives them a reason the continue hunting because *there are just too much deer for the ecco system*..which the hunters/landlords themselves caused.

What happens if hunters do not feed or care for the *animals which are too much* is showen all over history.

Like with the buffaloes, or the wild cattle and horses and elks in europe…if hunters hunt to decrease a number of animals they will do it..until the animal vanishes from existence.

The only reason it does not happen with deer or wild boars is because hunters do not really want to decrease the number of deers, just to feed them to get more deers and hunt them.

To say that hunters are helping the planet with killing the to great numbers of animals is just a joke.

Hunters kill mostly the healthy and strongest animals because..who would want to eat ill animals or have a small trophy on the wall?

Wild predatores are the only ones which can for sure tell which animals are the weakest or ill and hunt and eat these animals.

I don’t necessarily have a problem with hunting per se, if you’re a carnivore who’s doing that INSTEAD of getting meat from corporate agriculture — it’s way more sustainable & more ethical than our current system of CAFO-driven animal agriculture.

But: overpopulation among prey animals is caused by hunter annihilation of predator animals. Anyone following the wolf massacres in Idaho? One reason given by the governor for the unprecedentedly long season for wolf-hunting (right into birthing time, when females w/ pups can be killed, no problem, when wolves only came of the Endangered list about 5 minutes ago) is ‘to protect sport hunting prey-animal populations.’ For hunters to systematically kill off the wolves and cougars, and then claim to be doing us a favor by controlling the deer population… that is some pretty weak logic, it seems to me.

Also: when animals overpopulate, and many die b/c the environment can’t support them, the heaviest toll is taken on those who reproduce — b/c the nutritional demands are greater for gestating animals, they’ll be harder-pressed to survive lean times. Then there will be less young born the following year, and the overpopulation will gradually be curbed. Shooting males doesn’t limit birth; if the goal (as stated) is population control… um, maybe some more ‘thinking-through’ is in order?

If someone’s gonna choose to eat meat, I’d say definitely hunt rather than buy from factory farms that pollute land & water for miles around, contaminate surrounding crops with e. coli & salmonella, use a RIDICULOUS amount of water resources, contribute to antibiotic resistant bacteria, and produce hormone-laden ammonia-soaked beef… definitely, hunting is better than *that*. But at the same time, a lot of the justifications for sport hunting seem to involve some pretty twisted logic.