MY TITLE ALLUDES TO HUNTING. THE IMAGERY IS DELIBERATE: I intend a somewhat predatory engagement with the subject. How do ecological factors affect hunter-gatherer decisions about the harvest of non-produced food resources? What are the ecological strategies of the food quest? And, especially,. how does one go about asking these questions? What is a productive or heuristically useful research procedure? I will suggest that the analytic process is a little like foraging itself. The inquiry is, in a sense, the quarry. © 2009 by Temple University Press. All rights reserved.