this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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I used to be very opposed to deer hunting. Until I took a biology course and there was some discussion about how humans have eliminated, or nearly eliminated all their natural predators in the United States.
The way their population ends up being controlled in the absence of those predators is disease, famine, and cars. Unless we hunt them sufficiently in areas where wolves in particular have been eliminated.
If you are hunting and wasting the resources of an animal you've culled, it's absolutely unethical. But if you're using all of the resources you can provide by the animal, and you're hunting in an area where the only natural population control mechanisms are famine and disease, I'd argue that's the most ethical way you can hunt in a modern society.
Why is leaving the carcass to degrade naturally unethical? Is it better for the nutrients in the meat to end up in a water treatment plant or dumped into a river? Or do you prefer most of the nutrients to be used exclusively by humans?