This is simply not true. The assertion is wild on its face.
But there's this possibility: maybe you're not seeing them in New England, because hunters have specifically targeted them for their racks and you're running out of big bucks -- which is my point.
Come hunting with me out West and I'll show you plenty of big bucks, as long you promise not to take them and go for the average ones like I do.
I think some of our Texans might want to weigh in on this, but last time I was in West Texas -- where the deer are super plentiful -- I noted a marked reduction in size and robustness since the last time I hunted there a couple of decades a go. I suspect hunting for racks is making them visibly smaller.
I don't know how you arrive at this conclusion. Dominant bucks don't wear themselves out and die from fighting and breeding. Dominant bucks actually have a pretty nice life, relatively speaking, until someone decides to hunt them specifically for their rack. (Although I'm deeply amused by the notion of a buck f***ing himself to death...)
Again, not correct. Hunting licenses in general contribute substantially to wildlife management, and general land management policies contribute mightily as well.
The specific economic activity associated with trophy hunting is a drop in the bucket by comparison and utterly unimportant from a wildlife management perspective.
Hunters -- and I repeat, I am a hunter -- who are focused on taking the biggest and the best damage the gene pool badly and there are plenty of examples. The small size of the American bison being one of the most visible.
If a hunter chooses on the basis of trophy value, they will inevitably harm the gene pool.
But your hypothetical is not the scenario I propose. I'm not talking about taking yearlings. I advocate taking thoroughly ordinary fully adult deer and specifically choosing NOT to take the biggest in the strongest in favor of going for the ordinary.
Ivory poaching can be trophy hunting, but it's not necessarily. Ivory is used for other things as well - similar to how people don't just hunt deer for trophies. Either way, ivory poaching is invariably worse than your average hunting of a trophy buck - elephants are more scarce and often the only part that is taken is the tusks. I know that a lot of trophy hunters are often interested primarily in the rack but I don't see the rest going to waste, that's just generally forgotten by critics... Could be wrong, of course.
