ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank to numerous hunters, Tsuyoshi Takeshita, Takuhiko Suzuki and Shota Yamamoto who provided samples of sika deer for us. Most of the deer samples were collected as a part of the Komoro Wildlife Product Commercialization Project. We are grateful to the Advanced Analysis Center of National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO) supporting the experiments involving stable isotope analysis. We thank Y. Suda and the members of the Wildlife Damage Management Laboratory at Central Region Agricultural Research Center, NARO for their constructive suggestions and help with the experiments. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 19K20492.