Each fall my thoughts return to a boyhood of hunting. Opening day trumped Thanksgiving and even rivaled Christmas. Our rituals and gear provided anthropological fodder.

In fifth grade I created the Concord Conservation Club. Like most rural people of my generation (I'm in my mid-50s), the green path ran through Field and Stream, the leading outdoors magazine. I still see sportsmen as great preservers of habitat. But with few Americans with rural roots, the links between hunting and environmentalism grow tenuous.

There's a growing tension, indeed an antipathy, between younger environmentalists (often vegetarians) and their elders who came to ecology through the "blood sports". Today's mainstream environmental magazines commonly ignore or denigrate hunting and hunters.

The millions of hunters in America, however, play a powerful, direct and active role in environmental protection. Ducks Unlimited protects over 20 million acres of wetland. On their 6,000-acre Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch, the venerable Boone & Crockett Club conducts research to harmonize agriculture with wildlife while providing habitat for elk, mule deer, grizzly bears, cougars, eagles and cutthroat trout. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Pheasants Forever and the Ruffed Grouse Society also protect wildlife habitat by purchasing land and development rights. Hunters have a huge stake in preserving the wildlife they sometimes hunt.

Yet America's hunters are maligned or ostracized. Here's a story from my last trip East:

5:00am Saturday was dark, rainy, cold and windy. Volvo wagons were sleeping in their driveways when a man came out of his garage with two golf bags which he leaned against a GMC Suburban. He walked back to the kitchen and emerged with a thermos and an excited yellow lab. The dog jumped into the Suburban, and the man lifted a golf bag behind the driver's seat. He turned toward the lights of a tow truck pulling into his drive. The man from AAA got out.

"Have you heard a crash? A car hit a deer near here. We just got the call. Driver's all shook up and didn't give good directions. Totaled the front end and busted the windshield. Lucky he didn't get a deer in the face. I gotta drag the car in; third one this week. It gits worse every fall...

"You didn't hear anything? No wonder with the wind and rain. You must be nuts to play golf in this stuff...

"You're what? Hunting ducks with golf clubs? You must be damn good with a driver or you really are crazy...

"You've got what? A 12 gauge and decoys in your golf bags? Are you sure you're OK? Did YOU hit the deer and bump your head?

"Oh, you hide the gear in golf bags! Your neighbors would get real upset if they knew you were a hunter...

"Or even if they knew you kept guns around? Their kids couldn't play with yours? You must be nuts to live here."

The deer in the story, like so many animals, has lost its natural predators. In many areas cars, not carnivores, kill deer.

Organizations like People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and Fund For Animals (FFA) assert that wildlife populations lacking predators will achieve a "natural balance" without degrading their environment. But sound science and commonplace observations reveal how truncated food chains degrade ecosystems. To protect ecosystems, we must acknowledge missing links and respond responsibly. This is a place for tough love.

Hunters can promote healthy game and non-game animals. The Mason Neck National Wildlife Refuge in north Virginia, for example, safeguards endangered bald eagles. But during the 1980s the deer population exploded and exceeded the refuge's carrying capacity by tenfold. Without predators checking deer population, the entire Mason Neck ecosystem was distorted to the eagle's peril. Starving deer consumed entire generations of young trees -- essentially destroying future bald eagle roosts. And the deer weren't faring so well either. Only disease and starvation regulated their population.

Despite the fervent protests and litigation of the Humane Society of America, Mason Neck managers instituted a deer hunting season in 1989. The results are in. Contrary to predictions of human carnage, no hunting accidents have occurred. The deer population, although still too high, is now a fifth of its 1989 size. The deer are healthier, exhibiting increased body weight and antler mass. Lastly, trees and eagles' imperiled ecosystems are recovering.

The new generation of environmentalists often finds hunting distasteful. Vegans rarely join Ducks Unlimited. And some activists invest millions in litigation against hunters and now fishermen. But most have the maturity to understand how this counters habitat protection and healthy wildlife populations.

Hunters affect the natural balance and generate the political will which helps conserve habitat. Members of PETA and FFA have weaker incentives to protect habitat -- so they don't. In contrast, Ducks Unlimited bought protection for over 17 million acres of nesting grounds in Canada, 2 million acres of winter grounds in Mexico, and nearly a million acres of wetlands in the U.S. If anti-hunting groups bought "hunting-free" refuges, they could introduce predators or learn that sparing Bambi can spoil entire ecosystems.

When considering this positive possibility, I suggest we place our hopes and expectations in separate baskets. Anthropologists and economists can explain why hunters are important friends of habitat. While anti-hunting activists may resist the ecological benefits of hunting, they will eventually learn that nature bats last. And the clean-up process is seldom pretty.