I did not know that

I knew that deer population took a huge hit, but I didn't know the estimate was down to half a million animals.

I also didn't know it was all the way up past 30 million now.  And this AFTER the invention and production of a bajillion cars.

That's mind boggling.

Why?  Well, yes, the excise tax on guns and ammo and the efforts of outdoorsmen to pay for, preserve, and manage large areas for deer.  The retirement of sub-nominal farmland far enough from urban areas to not be suburbified.  Plus restrictions on market hunting.  You want to make a species extinct?  Give a population a disease they have no immunity to and make the animals not belong to anyone but still have a monetary value when harvested.  Around Maryland we did what we could to kill off many species of waterfowl, for example.  Out west, buffalo.  Pennsylvania and upstate New York did its part for whitetail.  And you know about the horn poachers of Africa, today.