I was helping one of the hunters extricate his station wagon from a muddy hole, and by that time I had a feeling that, like many other human enterprises, hunting was a communal affair which might turn out one way or another, but like a battle, had no certain outcome. It was clear, in any case, that very few of these men had much of an idea about the habits of the animals they were hunting. Some species of ducks, for example, feed more readily after sundown and so are more easily found, and more vulnerable. A half century ago, the population of wild fowl was probably less safe than it is now. A yellowlegs, flying up out of a marsh in late autumn, did not have much of a chance to start south. Some local hunter was waiting in anticipation, someone who probably knew the marshes and the shore as his ancestors had known them. If the hunters had an unlimited season on this narrow peninsula, Cape Cod would be in a state of siege the year around, regardless of what happened to the ducks, partridge, quail, or deer. We have the universal problem of room and numbers. After all, the human population is increasing at a faster rate than most birds. Perhaps our populatedness results in less concern for the rest of life simply through lack of association with it. Do we know what we are shooting at? Hunters who blast away into flocks of eiders or Canada geese, leaving many of them wounded, unable to retrieve the rest because they are too far out in the water, are not doing anything but getting rid of their feelings, which are not necessarily worth cherishing. The deer population may not decline because of hunting. Their numbers, their balance between starvation and survival depends largely on the kind of country they live in, on its vegetation. Cape Cod is only a half mile in width in some parts of it, seven or eight in others, but down the middle of it there is a wide belt of low growth, of tangles, shrubs, and low, cut-over woodland which provides good forage for deer and good concealment, even with the human armies in their midst. Hunting deer is thought of as an American heritage, our birthright, part of the Thanksgiving celebration, handed down from fathers to sons. Since deer are one of those species, unlike their predators the wolf and the mountain lion, that have managed to live abundantly in the presence of man, so much so that they sometimes require “weeding” to save them from starvation, hunting them is as legitimate as it ever was, provided the hunting is controlled; but we no longer need them as we did.