The hunter's game
Subtitle: poachers and conservationists in twentieth-century America
By: Louis S. Warren.
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New Haven, CT
Language: eng
Number of pages: 227
Subjects: Hunting -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Poaching -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Hunting customs -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Wildlife conservation -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Wildlife management -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
Description: This book takes a new look at the angry struggles between American conservationists and local hunters since the rise of wildlife conservation at the end of the 1800s. From Italian immigrants in Pennsylvania to rural settlers and Indians in New Mexico to Blackfeet in Montana, local hunters' traditions of using wildlife have clashed with conservationist ideas of "proper" hunting for over a century.

Louis Warren contends that these conflicts arose from deep social divisions and that the bitter history of conservation offers a new narrative for the history of the American West. At the heart of western - and American - history, Warren argues, is the transformation of many local resources, like wildlife, into "public goods," or "national commons.".

The Hunter's Game reveals that early wildlife conservation was driven not by heroic idealism, but by the interests of recreational hunters and the tourist industry. As American wildlife populations declined at the end of the nineteenth century, elite, urban sportsmen began to lobby for game laws that would restrict the customary hunting practices of immigrants, Indians, and other local hunters.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [183]-219) and index.