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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

One thing i’d genuinely like to see more of in the US is easy and sanely priced access to wild game.

Deer populations being what they are, and populations of environmentally troublesome species such as feral boars being what they are, it seems like a net win.

i would love to be able to get my hands on venison or boar that’s been processed in a USDA-approved way, because the meat’s high quality, the animals had lives entirely free of cages and farms, and we really do kind of need to balance out herd sizes in the northeast.

it is currently a regulatory nightmare to do this at scale, which is why nobody does. I can solve my own problem with a 6 week wait and a slug gun, but it’d be nice to address the conservation need at a more moderate scale.

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I live in New Zealand, and I recently switched basically entirely over to wild game for red meat. I can buy it in my local supermarket, it's more expensive than cheap meat but actually less than the high-welfare farmed meat that I bought previously. It's also very tasty. I'll probably start ordering directly from the provider (http://www.game-meats.co.nz/) soon since they offer a much wider range of products than the supermarket has.

Here in New Zealand there's an additional bonus that deer and boar are invasive introduced species which are considered noxious pests, so I like supporting an industry which controls them.

What a coincidence. In the US they are also pests, often regulated under relaxed hunting laws. Them and certain varieties of rabbits.

> One thing i’d genuinely like to see more of in the US is easy and sanely priced access to wild game.

That could pose a problem with Chronic Wasting Disease (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease). Prion illnesses are no joke, so widespread consumption of wild game in North America presents a small but concerning risk of spreading the disease to humans.

Chronic wasting disease wouldn't affect wild hogs, though, and wild hogs are destroying the environment in Texas.

The people in Texas are doing far more damage to the environment than any number of hogs could.

That doesn't make your parent comment wrong, though.

If you honestly believe hogs are destroying the environment in Texas, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s about as hyperbolic as it gets.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-plague-of-pi...

Do you honestly believe that hogs are destroying the environment of Texas?

If so, then I guess we have different definitions of “destroying the environment.” Some damaged farmland, a few possible fishkills, and some erosion are blips on the radar compared to the damage done by industrial farming, suburban sprawl, oil companies, etc.

I guess it is nice to have a scapegoat though — or in this case a scape-hog.

Arby’s has done venison sandwiches but of course it’s farmed meat.

Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin hunters take 300,000 deer each season, each state probably has 4-5 times that total population.

To put that into perspective, the USA slaughters something like 40 million cattle per year.

From my understanding many fast food chains shy away from using hunted meat for supply chain reasons.

The problem is that if it becomes profitable then the "wild" game will slowly transition into farming.

it’s already happened, but supply is low and prices are correspondingly exorbitant.

Deer and pig populations are indeed out of control in many places due to a lack of predators. More hunters are needed. An intriguing example of pest control was a series of videos of wild hog hunting in the most Texan way possible: from a helicopter. Exterminating 80-100 hogs per flight! Hopefully something is being done with all of that pork, but I do imagine regulation makes it very very hard to sell.

I know some folks give it to charities. Others eat it. But a lot gets wasted. Ultimately they're pests, so wanton waste doesn't apply.

This seems like a problem that could be easily solved by reintroducing wolves. Of course, then you have two problems.

Wolves tend to leave people alone. Bears on the other hand...

Wolves are the classic problem in ecology because while they have clear and obvious benefits to the ecosystem, people are really freaked out by them. And ranchers tend to think of any livestock theft as deserving of capital punishment. It's almost impossible to have a rational discussion about any of our fellow apex predators.

In most (all?) states in the US selling hunted game, such as deer or boar, is illegal.

Conflicted opinions on this. I very strongly support the right to hunt, and also find it vastly more humane for the animals. On top of this I also tend to take a libertarian slant on most things. However, in this specific case you have a textbook tragedy of the commons waiting to happen. The reason game is so widespread is specifically because of these laws. When it was legal to hunt and sell game meat/products we hunted numerous species far beyond sustainability.

Maybe one solution would be to offer limited vouchers that enable an individual hunter to market some fixed amount of game -- not all that different from how wild fishing/crabbing/etc is handled. But I think it's clear that without extremely judicious management here you'd likely see over-hunting rapidly take hold, and that's no good for hunter, animal, or society.

it’s not illegal to sell game meat per se, but the hoops you have to jump through are (probably intentionally) prohibitive.

it’s illegal to sell anything without a USDA stamp on it, and economy of scale means that it’s not profitable to have an inspected and cleared process and processing facilities just for game.

Other perfectly reasonable nations don’t do this—and in part due to the fact that deer are an invasive pest in New Zealand, you can buy wild game meat pies in gas stations for about 3 bucks there.

Doesn't the US already have hunting seasons and quotas?

It does, but we're talking about seriously overpopulated animals which are destroying ecosystems - wild pigs are the biggest concern there. For those, even where there are permits, there usually aren't quotas. And despite no limits, there aren't enough hunters to keep them in check.

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