veryape, do you think that it's possible that some of us hunt for BOTH the kill and the food? Hint: most of us do it for both of those reasons.
On the topic of domesticated deer meat - what happens when you domesticate something? It gets fat because that's the way the raisers want them to be. Well, sorry to break it to you, but one of the most attractive qualities about deer meat is it's LACK OF FAT. If you domesticate deer for meat, then you negate that lack of fat quality.
Not to mention the fact that for a $25 permit and a $50 locker fee, a hunter can walk away with up to 100 pounds of deer meet(40-60 pounds is most common). Do you have any idea what it costs for ultra lean hamburger per pound? Answer: about $1.75 a pound. Deer meat is even leaner than the ultra lean hamburger. And then, for another $25 a hunter can apply for a doe only permit for another 40-60 pounds of meat. That is almost 120 of meat for $100.
This also includes lean steaks, sirloins, and hams that you could get from a deer. It is INCREDIBLY cost effective for a hunter to supply the dinner table with deer meat. My unlce who has 4 children can save about 50% when substituting deer meat for domesitcated cow meat from the grocery store.
About the starving and disease thing - come to the midwest. This winter will be a very, very bad winter. Many deer will die because the ground has been covered with snow for almost two months now. It would have been even worse if shotgun season hadn't thinned down the heard. About 7 years ago, the state limited the number of kills that you could have, and dropped several of the different types of seasons. Well, around 100,000 deer died because of disease that year.
I won't even go into the number of automobile accidents that are prevented because of thinned herds. The tons of corn and soybeans that farmers loose a year to deer. Or the hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage that deer do to gardens, flowers, and shrubbery on peoples land.