From Today's New York Times

To the Editor:

Re "For Environmental Balance, Pick Up a Rifle," by Nicholas D. Kristof (column, Dec. 4):

Yes, deer overpopulation is a serious problem in parts of our country. But the correct solution in the short term includes the development and employment of birth-control techniques for deer. In the long term, the correct solution includes re-establishing ecological balance through the reintroduction of the predators that we hunted into local extinction.

Mr. Kristof defends hunting by calling it "natural," but not all "natural" activities (making war, for example) are morally acceptable.

The factors that make it generally immoral to kill a human are the same factors that make it generally wrong to kill a deer: making a sentient creature suffer and, more important, taking from that creature the thing that is of greatest value to it, the remainder of its life.

Hunting is not wrong where the practice is essential to maintaining human life. But it is wrong to hunt in the United States in the 21st century.

Howard Pospesel
Grand Island, Fla., Dec. 4, 2005