I don’t hunt or fish (and I doubt I’d have the stomach for it outside of maybe, maybe, maybe spearing a fish), but in this case, OP said they eat what they catch. Not much different from eating pork from the shop, if perhaps more likely ethical than the mass-corp farms that don’t care for their animals like smaller local farms.

In addition to meat, uncontrolled deer population growth will completely mess up a local ecosystem. They'll wipe out crops and completely change the plant ecosystem, the effect of which trickles down to all of the other critters, causing all of them to have to move & change their habits, which trickles down and so on. Over time they can convert a small forest into a scrub field by eating all of the new growth and underbrush. Like the Yellowstone Wolves experiment, that can change the shape of the land itself. They are also prone to Chronic Wasting Disease, similar to Mad Cow but for deer, and uncontrolled growth will spread it far & wide.

There are many parts of the USA and Canada where wild game is the cheapest meat available, where I live rural Minnesota nearly everyone deer hunts as this is a way to fill your freezer with food quality natural meat. The people that go on big game hunting trips and spending thousands to bag a deer on a game farm give us normal rural Americans a bad name, we do it for food and it brings a sense of community. Hunting season is a huge deal in my area and we love to bond over it.

You know where meat comes from, right?

To eat it, obviously. Are you new?

Before America was America and Canada was Canada trappers and fur traders put a pretty decent dent into wolf populations. Settlements and farmers did as well. Even after the ratification of both countries wolves were hunted near extinction, as well as coyotes and mountain lions. Basically all large predators. We've worked really hard since the 60s-70s to repopulate them. But it's only been 50-60 years compared to more than 200 years of depopulation. So there are not enough large predators to eat the game animals. Without controlled hunting game animals over populate and they die of hunger and disease.

It keeps the population size in check and helps prevent the spread of disease. There are a lot more reasons to hunt than not to because it makes some people uncomfortable. Don't like hunting, don't hunt.

Just like cows, pigs, and chickens….”you gotta kill it before you grill it”

1) They taste really good. 2) Humans are the only apex predators left of any meaningful number since we culled all the other apex predators, so it is on us to not let the population get out of control. There are many cases where deer populations boom and cause starvation among the species. Think about the islands where they introduce animals with no natural predators. This is similar except we got rid of the predators.

They give deer hunting licenses (and other licenses) based on the number of deer that must be culled. There are specific rules involving what type you can legally hunt. There aren't enough predators in the area to keep the population under control.

Bookworm

Bookworm

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Even aside from the people who hunt to eat - we've basically created tons of prime deer habitat (lawns/fields with patches of trees and brush) and removed most of the large predators. We're the large predators now. If people didn't hunt deer, the population would spiral completely out of control and they'd cause mass destruction before succumbing to starvation. With Chronic Wasting Disease, it's more important than ever to keep numbers in check. My sister went to college on a rural, heavily wooded campus that didn't normally allow any hunting, but once a year they had a deer cull because the other options were worse.

So...there's this thing called Google.....