BLEHH x3 rule
also apparently the deer population are going to rapidly fall due to chronic wasting disease because it’s 100% fatal and really spreadable or something
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also apparently the deer population are going to rapidly fall due to chronic wasting disease because it’s 100% fatal and really spreadable or something
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in the usa the deer population exploded with the removal of their natural predators and the expansion of industrial agriculture. these days most places theyre overpopulated, which causes issues for them, humans, and the environment. we’ve made efforts to control the deer population through hunting, but we’re not even close to hunting them enough to make a dent and theres a stark lack of political will for the dramatic expansion of deer hunting that would be required to make a difference. the leading cause of death of deer is being hit by a car, and its by a lot, and even that doesnt really make a big difference. chronic wasting disease is a prion disease which lasts a long time outside of a deers body and is very contagious, which is why its a concern, and their overpopulation makes it potentially much worse. the best thing we could do for deer is bring back their natural predators, especially wolves. most people dont want to hear that though because it means having wolves around.
Maybe disguise the deer as school children?
lmao good one
We could literally all be eating deer instead of beef in the US if we took full advantage of the deer situation. It would be cheaper and better for the environment.
Absolutely not, not even close.
There are 86.2 million cows in the US right now. Milk cows make up 9.57 million. These will also be slaughtered, but after many years.
There are an estimated 30 to 35 million deer in the US. That’s a huge difference. 30 million cows are slaughtered each year.
Plus an adult deer weighs 203lbs on average while a full weight cow weighs around 1,200 pounds. So you need 6 adult deer to make the weight of 1 cow.
Deer would be extinct locally within 6 months if we tried to replace beef consumption this way.
www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2026/01-30-2026.php
deerassociation.com/how-many-white-tailed-deer-ar…
www.esf.edu/aec/adks/mammals/wtd.php
…sdstate.edu/how-much-meat-can-you-expect-fed-ste…
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7134563/
Things would have to change yes, and we will all be eating less meat in the future anyways. The Native Americans had basically sculpted sections of North America into a huge deer factory using controlled burns, this process could be accelerated again and is much much better for the environment and much much more efficient at getting sunlight to be meat than modern agricultural practices. (Besides being an ethical way of farming meat.)
I would also like to point out how the modern meat industry is basically an extension of big oil, the abundance of beef we have enjoyed relies entirely on fertilizers made from refining oil. We all know that this is unsustainable and it is why beef prices go up so high when gas goes up.
I think you’re really overestimating the scale. The population of the US and Canada prior to European arrival was at the highest estimate 13 million.
The modern population of the US alone is 340 million. Essentially you’d have to be exceedingly wealthy to have deer meat once a month under that plan.
Additionally, the Natives did manage forests to be much more productive, but the largest population growth seen throughout North America followed the introduction of domestic crops such as corn. The forests did produce more food than today, but you’re overstating their effectiveness. And I won’t even get into how many of the cultures of North America weren’t even reliant on deer.
Honestly the only way to get calories in an environmentally conscious way would be to cut out meat entirely. Nothing the Native Americans were doing would come close to even being able to feed the modern population.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Population_history_of_the_Indi…
There are simply too many people on earth for us all to continue eating the amount of meat we do, this will become more and more apparent as our reliance on crude oil wanes. I also don’t think there is neccesarilly a connection between abundance of food and population size when it comes to societies like they had. I have heard that in some parts their diet was over 90% meat, which was possible because of the way they managed prairie and woodland ecosystems. Its obvious to me that we are going to have to give up factory farming in the next 100 years, and whatever the human population is by then will have to be sustained by practices not rooted in refining crude oil. That means we wont be able to grow corn or soybean monocultures for livestock feed. There is also the physics angle behind all of this which is what makes me believe we could really be eating a decent amount of dear. The ratio of sunlight that gets converted into meat is a lot higher when you have a proper native ecosystem harvesting it and channeling it up the food chain than you achieve when you just grow corn to feed to cows.
Unfortunately the archaeology disagrees with that. You also seem to be making these really broad statements encompassing a variety of cultures over 30,000 years.
The fact is Native American populations exploded and grew in “complexity” with the arrival of domesticated crops such as corn, beans, and squash. That’s when we saw permanent settlements develop across various cultures. Simply put they were able to feed more people and move less because they had more food. You see this pattern repeat over and over as these crops spread across cultures.
There’s a lot to breakdown here. Let’s start with “their” diet. Diets varied wildly culture to culture, region to region, and across time. The diets of the Mississippian culture of the Southeast looked radically different than the diets of the contemporary peoples of the Pacific Northwest. Even looking at contemporary groups in the southeast you see that people on the coast got most of their calories from marine sources, but you go inland and you see a huge increase in the reliance of corn.
The only groups I can think of hitting that 90% number would be the various cultures of the Plains, the Innuit, and mostly every group during the Paleo period (it was the ice age after all pre-domestic crops).
Our food future is local, what meat there will be to eat will have to come from nearby and every neighborhood is gonna have to start growing its own vegetables. I almost definitely underestimate the average appetite for meat. In any case, right now is a great time to shoot a deer or two if you want cheaper meat over the next year.
100% agree, wolves and some cases mountain lions and jaguars. Problem with these animals they will potentially kill humans and we have to be ok with that
i think i remember seeing a presentation advocating for reintroduction that showed more people are killed during vehicle collisions with deer than would ever be killed by their predators. wolves and cougars tend to stay away from people, especially with boutiful deer to eat. if they kill a person its mostly people who are deliberately fucking with them. peoples fear of large predators is more due to paranoia and ignorance than real danger.
Best animal without a doubt.
BLEEEEEEHH