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Comment by zzalpha | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like we need to do our job as apex predators. 'course, that won't make some animal rights folks happy, but until the natural predator population rebounds (which it may never do), it's our responsibility to at least clean up our own mess and do the job for them.

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It's the wolves that are the apex predators, not us. Natural hunters prey and the very young and old, the sick and weak. Human trophy hunters target almost exclusively mature males. Not only does this do nothing to thin the herd of its weakest members, it does little to make a significant reduction of population. There is no reason to think that if half of the male population were culled, any fewer does would be pregnant the following year.

Not all hunters are trophy hunters, that is just a subset of hunters. Numbers from my state show close to a 50/50 split between antlered/anterless (Note: Anterless may contain some bucks, but the hunter thought they were shooting a doe)

http://wvmetronews.com/2015/01/16/final-numbers-on-2014-deer... The breakdown on each season: Firearm Buck season 37,766 bucks, antlerless firearms hunting, 39,514 antlerless deer, archery season, 21,653 deer and 5,290 deer during muzzleloader season.

But are the anterless hunters doing it because they want to? Or because they are forced to by law?

Meaning, all hunters are actually trophy hunters, just that for every trophy they bag, they must haul out -- at their own expense -- non-trophies.

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