Admittedly, it is difficult for non-hunters like me to understand how people who make a hobby of killing animals also say they want to protect them. On the other hand, eating packaged store-bought meat (or feeding it to your child, as I do) raises its own ethical questions. While the bloodless, neatly wrapped meat I buy at the supermarket is divorced from the actual killing process, the lives and slaughter of animals raised for this market are often more brutal and certainly more environmentally destructive than the lives and slaughter of those living in the wild.

I did not press Ms. Cassens, who has hunted since she was 10, about her rationale for this pastime because my reporting focus, not to mention the reason I’d been invited on the trip, was to learn about her choices in ammunition. But watching how she stalked her prey — routinely giving up shots, for instance, that risked injuring or hitting a non-target animal — and how she understood and sought to safeguard this habitat, I got a glimpse of what it means to be a conservationist hunter. Ms. Cassens emphasized the difference between intentional, humane and sustainable killing, like that involved in licensed hunting, and the unmanaged killing that happens in poaching or the unintended, cruel and reckless sort of harm that comes from poisoning non-target species and polluting their habitats by using lead bullets.

Since humans have eradicated many animal predators, hunting is often cited as a wildlife management tool, essential for culling species that now reproduce beyond their habitat’s carrying capacity.

Hunters also play a role in conservationism, as they tend to be the people who spot and report poachers to the wildlife authorities. State wildlife agencies rely heavily on money generated from hunting license fees and excise taxes on guns, ammunition and angling equipment.

Surely the most controversial version of this sport is trophy hunting, which usually entails the killing of big game for a set of horns or tusks, a skin or a taxidermied body.

Like many hunters, Ms. Cassens distanced herself from those who kill strictly for the trophy. “Our meat is dinner six nights a week,” she said. Nonetheless, many critics see hunting in any form as barbaric, even when it’s for sustenance or ecological reasons. The vast majority of hunted species — such as waterfowl, upland birds, mourning doves, squirrels and raccoons — provide minimal sustenance and do not require population control, according to the Humane Society of the United States.