I mean, kinda yes, kinda no. We generally weren’t hunting predators primarily for meat, but for community safety. The meat from predators was a byproduct of not wanting a bear or something to decide our children would make for a tasty snack.

It’s just those predators were also what kept prey populations under control, so now we have to take over that role in order to prevent their extinction. Left to their own devices, they’ll overgraze and kill the areas ability to support them, and then they all die because the area won’t necessarily bounce back quickly enough as they die of starvation.