Personally, it sounds like they are a self-sustaining population. Confined, and have to be hunted, but do they ever have to artificially add deer to the population?
Comparing them to say Greater Prairie Chickens in southern IL, new chickens have to be brought in periodically to beef up the population, but that’s considered wild. they even artificially control the predator population in the area of the GPCH.
Also having to hunt them because they lack natural predators is something we get with deer in my area as well.
So I would ask, is anyone feeding them or providing medical aid or adding to the population artificially?