I must quibble here. The phrase
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animals belonging to the state
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has been used. When I took Conservation Law in college (granted it was a while ago) I was taught in no uncertain terms that in America, the wildlife belongs to "we the people," for whom the state holds it in trust. This is in direct opposition to the situation in Europe, where all the game belonged to the King, and could be taken only at the King's sufferance. Even today in Europe, traditionally anyhow, if you legally hunt and kill a game animal, it then belongs to the landowner on whose land the game was taken, not to the hunter. (I plead complete ignorance of current European game laws.)
It gets awkward because the wildlife has this habit of crossing local, state, and national boundaries, let alone on & off my own acreage, but the state manages it--or tries to, with varying degrees of success--for all of us.
IT ISN'T THE STATE'S DEER. The state sets up rules under which I can "reduce it to possession," but until I do that (when the deer becomes my personal property) it's OUR deer, not the state's. Same goes for mice, woodchucks, warblers, largemouth bass, salamanders, and bald eagles.