ORIGINAL: bluebird2
If 500K hunters quit are you willing to kill 5 or 6 doe/year to control the herd?
You bet I would be. Once I retire I figure I will have enough time to kill that many deer easily.
Just the wife and I can use about three or four deer a year. Then with giving a few deer to the other family members that either don’t have a hunter living in the family any more or are just too old to hunt, even twice that many deer wouldn’t be too many.
But, it is a mute point anyway since there is no reason to expect anyway near that many hunters to quit, even in the next several decades.
R.S. Bodenhorn