Is there any vegan deer contraceptive?

[Hughes]

I know PZP is made with pig protein. Is there any vegan contraception for deer? If not, what are other non-lethal alternatives to hunting to curb population growth. Providing sourcable links attesting to their effectiveness would be a help.

[teddy bear]

[Horsefriend]

I've never fully understood population control. If the deer get overpopulated and there isn't enough food for them, then they'll die anyway. What am I missing?

[panthera]

There's plenty of food (except in particular circumstances like a really bad winter snowstorm). It's just that we don't like having "nuisance wildlife" "encroaching" on human territory. We like to have our plants be purely ornamental, not food/habitat for wildlife. And we don't like to see animals hit by our cars.

Certain people like to talk about how they don't want deer to face the problem of a food shortage. So they very kindly prevent such a thing from happening.

[Horsefriend]

I'd be honored to have deer in my garden.

[panthera]

If they stopped hunting, the population would stabilize. I wish I'd kept my textbooks, but I've been moving and didn't want to lug them around.

There are variables like the fecundity and fertility of females that figure into a population index. If hunters kill a certain number of deer, the does may start having fawns earlier, and have more of them. That is just fine with them, since they will have a nice excess that they will "have to cull," in order to "help with the overpopulation problem."

That's what wildlife managers "shoot for," because that is part of their mandate. Wildlife is considered a "resource" to be managed, not something to be protected, unless it's deemed to our benefit to protect it.

Here's the name of the textbook that I used:

Wildlife Ecology and Management (5th Edition)

* ISBN 10: 013066250X
* ISBN 13: 9780130662507
* Authors: Eric G. Bolen - William Robinson
* Edition: 5
* Release: 2002-07-20

The course was "Principles of Wildlife Management."

I'm really sorry (and disappointed) but the posts that contained actual quotes from it were lost in a server crash. I'll see if I can find anything else.

To be honest, though, I've found these debates to be ultimately less useful than I'd hoped.