Except sheep are domesticated and can be herded around.

You could get sheep through a null-sec gate.

Natural selection was at work:
Miners were getting better at their trade, learning to tank, cooperating and adapting to ganking tactics.
Stupid sheep were dying off.

But then CCP decided to dump a huge truckload of 'stupid miner food' into the playpen.
And now they are multiplying, and getting dumber.
Good job CCP way to reward bad play.

Well it used to be rather good money but now that the isk is gone there no point in going after the badly tanked miners which is why we now have fleets of untanked bot barges in lonetrek. And as everyone knows, mass botting only leads to bad prices on the markets.

To the op:

You high-seccers are not doing your job very well. Many systems have been striped of assets recently.
So I went about searching for who is doing it. I found several roaming bands of Goons usually 300 to a titan.
They go into a system about 20000 strong and clear out all of the infracstructure in short order. Then like a locust move on to the next one.
Note we are not talking about buffed T2's or even faction ships, but the cheap T1 BS's. And they are still max kill fit. You miners are just a lazy bunch that are to lazy to go look for the Goons and hunt them down.

As far as your deer hunting story goes. You guys are drinking too much beer on the job then you go out to your favorite tree stand and wait for the prey. Guess what those Goons that you like to hunt have all moved on and you are still sitting in the same damned tree. Get off your ass and go get them.

The only way to buff mining profits is to nerf mining.

Wrong. Market prices plummet, the miners that are doing it will keep doing it because it's an easy activity that they can now safely AFK. Prices will not go up: that is a fiction brought on by a misunderstanding of basic economic theory of supply and demand.

..stuff..

This isn't RL.

Its no coincidence that ice mining sucked for years untill the two ice interdictions hit. We effectivly wiped out the vast bulk of miners who were either bots or very bad at it. Coupled with market panic we brought about a three fold increase in profits for miners. Then the barge buff happened and the ganking stopped. The result?

A collapse of the ice prices and the spawning of large bot fleets and porly tanked scrubs flooding the market again. Turns out, ganking is a good thing for miners.

You do realise that if you fit a tank you are more or less safe right?

the usual fluff about how good he is....

Just like CCP 'fixed' mission drops because miners ( who obviously sucked at mining ) QQ'd that mission runners were getting too many minerals from mission drops. One person boo-hoo'd about how unfair it was after they had trained up all those skills for mining ( as opposed to the racial BS, weapon and defense systems a mission runner trains. I have both - mining was 'easy'... ).

Just how many times does CCP have to come riding in to play White Knight for the mining 'community' who refuses to play smart and adapt?

But I thought the resources were infinite. What difference does where they come from make?

You don't think an increase in the mining population will look an awful lot like the drone regions' contribution did?

I guess time will tell. But I think initial indications are "It probably will."

So let me get this right. As a miner, you think it is better for say, trit prices to go from 6-7isk/unit to 3isk/unit?