All this was a part of their training for their future profession of hunters and fishermen.
As hunters they had not learned to look upon the wild things of the woods as friends and associates.

To them the animals were only beasts whose valuable pelts could be traded at the Post for necessaries of life or whose flesh was good to eat.

Success in life depended upon man's ability to outwit and slay birds or animals, and the lads held for them none of the human sympathy that would have added so much to their own enjoyment.
Now they were to have a new view of life.

Doctor Joe was to open to them a wider, happier vista.

It was not in the least to breed in them discontent with their circumscribed life, but rather to open to their consciousness the opportunities that lay within their reach, and to make their life richer and broader and vastly more worth while.
Doctor Joe explained to the five recruits the Tenderfoot Scout requirements, much as he had explained them to David and Andy and Jamie.