The actual payoff however depends on the probability of meeting a hawk or dove, which in turn is a representation of the percentage of hawks and doves in the population when a particular contest takes place. That in turn is determined by the results of all of the previous contests. If the cost of losing C is greater than the value of winning V (the normal situation in the natural world) the mathematics ends in an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), a mix of the two strategies where the population of hawks is V/C. The population regresses to this equilibrium point if any new hawks or doves make a temporary perturbation in the population.