If you have a garden with 100 tomatoes in it that produces 10 a day, you can eat 10 and maintain the population at 100.
If you have a garden that has 50 tomatoes and produces 5 a day, and you're eating 5 a day, then you're maintaing the population at 50. A reduction in tags doesn't mean anything. You're eating half of what you used to, just because you stopped eating the extra 5 tomatoes doesn't mean squat. Those tags existed to kill. Those deer have been killed. The deer that those tags existed for in the past no longer exist. If the deer no longer exist, then removing the tags doesn't mean anything.
It's like if you showed a movie in a theatre with 100 seats. You could sell 100 tickets per showing. You could sell tickets for 24 bucks and 15 bucks. After a few weeks you're only filling 50 seats, so you move the movie to a smaller theatre with only 50 seats, if you stop selling the 15 dollar tickets nothing's really changed. Those tickets are for seats that no longer exist.