I suppose it was inevitable that eventually, when talking about the elk hunt, I'd hit a raw nerve in someone. But I didn't expect the most hostile response to come from my own brother, no stranger to a good hamburger. On Labor Day weekend I'd arrived at the family cottage in Ontario's lake country with a bandaged forehead and stories about learning to shoot. This didn't sit well with my brother; our conversation started out testily and deteriorated from there. "I just don't believe in hunting,-¿ he said, crossing his arms and glaring.

I'd heard this line before, and often from meat eaters, not all of whom recognized the irony. My question to them was always the same: Would it be a problem if I bought elk steaks at the store? For that matter, what about ground beef? Commercial meat producers feed hundreds of animals per day through machines with names like the Belly Ripper, the Hide Puller, and the Tail Cutter, and though the slaughterhouse cows are intended to be dead by the time they meet these grisly renderings, often they are not. To eat meat and then denounce the elk hunt was hypocritical, but there was no budging him. The argument ended bitterly as he and his wife left, packing up their DVD of nature photographs from a recent hiking vacation.

"I hope that elk's scream haunts you for the rest of your life,-¿ my brother had said as he'd left. Those words echoed in my head. Such furious anger from someone I loved caught me off guard. It seemed unfair and misplaced. Killing is the most profound act imaginable, but in centuries past, it wasn't optional if you wanted to survive. And even now, while others do the dirty work, out of sight and mind and conscience, that predator DNA ticks on inside us. What I was proposing to do here was perform the necessary act of getting my own food, rather than subcontract that task to a middleman.

Back in New York, I e-mailed Dave about the family dustup, and when I arrived at the train station that Saturday, he greeted me with a wry smile.

"So now you're seeing the other side of big-game hunting,-¿ he said. As we drove north to Tamarack, he described an altercation he'd had once in the -Johannesburg airport.

"I had just checked my guns back out from the police and some middle-aged lady marched up to me with smoke coming out of her ears and said: -¿You're going hunting, aren't you?'

"-¿Yes ma'am, I am.'

"-¿What are you hunting?'

"-¿Eland.'

"-¿What's an eland?'

"-¿It's the largest of the antelopes and it's a beautiful silvery gray with gentle brown eyes and heavy spiral horns,' I said and then lied: -¿There are hardly any left and so I'm going to kill one for myself before they're all gone.'-¿ He paused. "And as she turned beet red, I said, -¿That's what you wanted to hear, isn't it? Now kindly go away.'-¿

I knew that Dave was trying to teach me more about hunting than the mere mechanics of shooting. He'd described how it feels when the animal goes down, what it means to actually end a life. During these conversations I'd felt bluff and full of adrenaline, untroubled by potential remorse for the elk. But Dave, with his decades of experience, was more sanguine: "Any of three things will happen when the moment comes,-¿ he told me. "One, you'll pull the trigger. Two, you'll get buck fever and freeze. Three, you'll decide you're unwilling to shoot. Not from panic, but from a conscious choice.-¿

The date was September 10. Summer was sliding by, hunting season was around the corner, and even the trees had a brisk fall energy. I picked up my rifle. Lying prone, I emptied the magazine and killed the paper elk three times. "Very nice,-¿ Dave said and turned to fire off a few rounds himself. He was testing a gun that he appeared to like. It was black and sort of cruel looking with none of the warm woodiness of the others I'd seen, but something about the way it shot pleased him, and at that moment I realized that rifles, like high