The purpose of the Wash. Post writer/article was not to tell the story about conservation efforts as the prime focus but to diss the hunter and THEN talk about the successful conservation program.
I’m not a hunter and wouldn’t kill such a magnificent animal, but culling is one way of preserving oversized herds which can face starvation if they overgraze a limited area.
Leave it to the Post to bias the reader against a hunter before they learn the whole story. The Post has been doing that to America for over 50 years (I started reading the Post in 1966. It got so biased against the US over Vietnam, then against Israel, pro-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua and El Salvador that some of us formed Accuracy in Media in 1969 to fight this bias. Others formed CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in the 1980’s to counter terrible bias against Israel and even Iran).
Nothing has changed and with Bezos owning the Wash Post, things have only gotten worse. I can’t distinguish between the Compost and the old Tass, Pravda, Izvestia, and New Times.
Yes we have a big problem with the deer population over here in the UK - we have the largest numbers in over 1000 years apparently! Quite a lot of culling goes on, as obviously there are no natural predators over here (we killed our last wolf in the 18th century). It needs to be done as the deer are eating crops and also responsible for the reduction in the number of woodland birds as they eat the foliage that some species rely on. It's quite easy to get a firearms licence here if you have a need for one (gun club member, gamekeeper/hunter etc).