In the deer example, as noted in the article, overpopulation strips forests down. Saplings get chewed down by starving deer, bark gets stripped from others, etc. The elimination of forage impacts other wildlife. By being "nice" to Bambi, you'll have a dead forest in 30-40 years, assuming a condo complex isn't dropped down from the sky.
Apart from extinction, I don't care how the deer population as a whole is managed. Individually, I would prefer to cause the least amount of pain to an animal as possible for the needed outcome, where that outcome is dictated by the needs of society and the individual (and in this specific case, I don't consider entertainment a need). I'm fully accepting of, and vastly prefer. the idea of animals raising in traditional farm settings when we need to cull them, and if they need to be killed, doing so in a quick and humane manner.
I am not disputing that deer need to be managed. If the only way we can seem to do that is through hunting, then okay, I consider it justified. I think effort should also be put into finding alternatives to managing the population. We need this in many other cases as well, where hunting isn't feasible. The salient point for me is that the hunting fulfills a need for society and the ecosystem, and if that need subsides, so should the hunting.
A large bullet through the heart and lungs is probably not going to be much worse than slaughtering livestock. (This is also why states set minimum caliber for hunting deer -- too small increases the risk of the deer dying too slowly.)
The salient point for me is that the hunting fulfills a need for society and the ecosystem, and if that need subsides, so should the hunting.
This is already the way of things. The number of licenses issued for a given year is the DNR's response to the current state of the deer population.
If you truly care about the ethics of the situation, hunting should be vastly preferred as a means of obtaining food over the current status quo of factory farming. A quick death by bullet is far, far better than a life of squalor and misery followed by, far more frequently than we'd like to realize, an agonizing and slow death.
Is it impossible to look for other paths? I don't believe the discussion should be reduced to the two extremes of "shoot them with guns" or "factory farm them". Our current and past situations need not be the only choices when facing the future.
You seem to want to live in a world where animals live peaceful lives and die gently in their sleep. We do not live in such a world. Right now, the alternative to shooting them is to have them violently eaten by predators or drawn-out death by poison. If we do nothing to control their populations, those that survive will eventually age to the point where most will become infirm enough to die slowly by starvation. Unless you propose to sent vets into the woods armed with tranquilizers and materials for lethal injection, a bullet is virtually certain to be the least terrible way for a deer to die.
I said, I didn't have a lot of sympathy for hunters not being able to hunt. Then I clarified, I thought killing of animals should be justified, and gave specific examples of where I thought it was, and was not, justified. For the record, ecosystem management (population control), in the absence of better options, is a good justification for hunting in my eyes.
If the the animal population doesn't need management, do I think enjoyment of hunting or tradition justifies it? No.
> You seem to want to live in a world where animals live peaceful lives and die gently in their sleep.
That, there, is a straw man argument being set up. I haven't said this, and I believe my other responses around this topic have made that abundantly clear. Please don't put words in my mouth.
> Right now, the alternative to shooting them is to have them violently eaten by predators
Yep. So what? There's a reason for that. The life of the predator and the ecosystem as a whole works because of this process. I'm just not sure what I'm expected to believe hunting, for hunting's sake, is supposed to contribute.
Ideally though, I would like vat grown meat. To many, that sounds disgusting. To me, it sounds like a reproducible process that can eventually be perfected to give very specific types of meat as needed. Perfect steaks every time. It solves a lot of other problems at the same time, so bonus.
I'm aware that the previous, and my stance on hunting, is all very pie-in-the-sky. I still think it's a worthwhile discussion.
(In the sense that a controlled deer population results in greater diversity of plant species over the long term. Of course the relative value of plant species and deer are subjective)
There is very little young cedar, directly as a result of deer. If you drive along US 2 in the UP of Michigan, you can see that all the trees along the road look like they are trimmed. It is from deer browse, they eat everything they can reach.
That's why I pointed out that it is better for plants to have less deer. It's subjective, but it's possible to believe that shooting a deer is a direct, net benefit to the environment, rather than a cost.
That's not to say someone won't come up with a justification that I'll fully accept. I didn't say "oh, hunting is horrible, how could a person ever do that!", I said I didn't have much sympathy, and that's because I don't agree with the justifications I've heard to this point.
My personal point of view is that wildlife are both a natural resource and living animals., As a natural resource, the usage should come with some sort of associated cost, to account for the damage it's usage and/or removal causes to the environment (e.g. burning coal has negative externalities that are poorly accounted for to this point). As living animals that feel pain, I think there should be a reason to cause that pain, and or kill them. It needs to be justifiable, but for me the bar is not impossibly high. "I needed the food to survive" is fully capable as a justification in my eyes, while "It's fun" is not. obviously there's a fuzzy space in the middle, which I'm not sure the details of.