Question

Most states have deer hunting seasons designed to reduce the size of the deer herd before it gets so large that deer starve to death during winters with little food. How might having humans as predators rather than wolves be expected to affect the deer population?

Answer 1

The deer population would drop below carrying capacity since forest managers could choose to bring food to the deer.
The deer population would grow larger each year since humans can set rules about how many deer to remove each hunting season.
The deer population would be healthier since killing deer with guns or arrows is much less traumatic for the deer than being hunted by a pack of wolves.
The deer population would be less healthy since humans choose to kill the largest, healthiest individuals while wolves choose the weak or sick ones.

Answer 2

Okay, so, the phrasing of this question has me confused. I'm pretty sure that the correct answer is the one where the deer population is growing larger by process of elimination, even though they're talking about making the population lower.

Forest managers wouldn't feed the deer because that makes them rely too much on humans for food and I sincerely doubt the deer would care about trauma because it's DEAD. Maybe the deer population is less healthy because people have hunted them down? Except we don't know if the humans WOULD hunt down the largest deers; that's just an assumption.

Answer 3

I would go with the last option by elimination: there the deer population would be less healthy.

(A) I would exclude the first because feeding the deer would cause the population to increase beyond the carrying capacity, not below.
(B) The deer population might increase, but (1) up to the carrying capacity, and (2) hunting quotas are set to bring the population back down, so this option is not very likely.
(C) What does killing have to do with trauma?
(D) You might want to check what your textbook says, but this point is briefly brought up in the last sentence of: http://freefromharm.org/common-justifications-for-eating-animals/hunting-wildlife-population-control-ethical-eating/