The right to hunt for food

THE RIGHT TO HUNT FOR FOOD Get your deer yet? is the fall topic of cafe conversation all across Northern Michigan - not particularly highbrow stuff by the standards of urban cafe society, certainly, but there it is: Get your deer yet? Not yet, but I'm workin' on one. How 'bout you? Got me a little spike yesterday morning. Ain't gonna make the record books, but it's meat in the freezer for the winter. "You …

…who do not live by the rules. The presumption runs deeper than that: popular culture is so far removed from the natural rhythms of the countryside that we are no longer able to understand something that human beings have done since they first walked on earth. Unable to understand, some condemn it. When we lose the hunters we will also have lost the countryside, the game and our own humanity; we will have lost everything.