[naraht]

It's sort of funny, when I went off to College I was fairly anti-hunting (I spent my last two years of High School in the Republic of China, *no* private gun ownership, I believe). My freshman year there was a guy on my floor from the Maryland Eastern Shore. This guy got me researching the situation with the deer on the Eastern Shore (they have no predators other than humans (and human vehicles)). By the end of my Freshman year I was OK with certain types of hunting, specifically for North American herbivores which are in *no* danger of extinction, like deer and the wild turkey.

In my area (about 10 miles north of the northern tip of Washington, DC), we've got parks following some of the major streams of the area and the deer population may be *higher* than it was 500 years ago (no wolves or cougar in the area) and I believe that every year they have the police sharpshooters operate in some of the connected parks to bring down the population. (No private licenses). In Washington DC you've got people ranging all the way from "There should be no deer in the city, wipe them *all* out" to "It's Bambi!"