The Killing of Animals in its many aspects

[russotto]

godwulf, just because you can't see the difference between a human and an animal doesn't mean the hunters labor under the same handicap.

Kitsune, don't worry about the natural order of things. On the one hand, humans are predators and deer are prey, so killing them IS the natural order of things. On the other, humans have already killed off the other large predators, so the natural order of things is already interrupted. And while I wouldn't mind re-introducing a wolf population to handle the deer in Valley Forge Park, Fairmount Park, etc, lots of other humans would disagree.

Mice are a bad example because there still are plenty of mouse predators. Alligators are a bad example because they (like wolves, like people) are top predators; their populations are limited by available prey, not by predation.