Hunting has definitely enjoyed a resurgence. Census statistics show that the percentage of Americans who hunt-which had been falling for decades-is back up at a 20-year high.

　　 Hank Shaw, author of the new wild bird cookbook Duck, Duck, Goose, and owner of the James Beard Award-winning website Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, calls it The Omnivore's Dilemma Effect. After reading Michael Pollan's best-selling book on where food comes from, many people join a community-supported agriculture group, but some get a hunting license, too.

　　"I can't tell you how many people I talk to who view hunting as a part of a larger, personal goal of sustainable eating, " Shaw says.

　　Of course, characterizing hunting this way blurs many lines. To some, shooting animals cannot possibly be an environmentally friendly activity. The existence of "hipster hunters" is also limited by cultural attitudes toward guns. It's almost impossible to legally own a hunting weapon in Brooklyn. But hunting wild animals requires the preservation of wild land-certainly an environmental plus-and if you're going to eat meat, hunting has a lot going for it that industrial farms do not.

　　Add to this the fact that some game populations have grown unnaturally large due to the lack of predators(掠食动物). The East Coast is filled with white-tailed deer. Geese take up residence on golf courses, and wild pigs wander through the woods. In his 2012 book Nature Wars journalist Jim Sterba argued that more humans live in closer contact with wild animals than at my point in history. Hunting can keep a check on that.

　　Hunting can keep a check on our appetites too. Susan Cameron Devitt, a biologist who recently moved from Florida to Texas, notes that one of the things you learn quickly from hunting is how much labor goes into producing a meal. "If you buy meat at the grocery store, you can eat three servings a day, but if you imagine trying to keep that up with hunting, it just wouldn't be possible, " she says.

Which brings us back to holiday tables? In the original version of Thanksgiving and Christmas, these were special meals, based around dishes you wouldn't eat