The Hunter's Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America

Yale Historical Publications Series

by Louis S. Warren

This provocative 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. Not surprisingly, poor subsistence and market hunters resisted, sometimes violently. Dramatic shifts in deer and elk populations―the result of complex environmental dynamics―further complicated the struggles. Warren concludes that the history of wildlife conservation sheds much light on the tensions between local and national priorities that pervade twentieth-century American culture.

Genres: History, Nature, Animals, American History, Environment

250 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 1997

About the author

Louis S. Warren is W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History at the University of California, Davis, where he teaches the history of the American West, California history, environmental history, and U.S. history.

Reviews

[Fred]

This work covered the start of modern game management in an area of western Pennsylvania, that is now long gone. Hillsville, not far from Newcastle PA, a former limestone quarry town no longer exists. The inveterate Italian poachers, who challenged landowners who kept them from hunting, were unknown to me. I was surprised when the surname Candido was mentioned as this is my father’s mother’s birth name, who the author identified Salvatore as a member of the Italian Blackhand. Bottom line, the dearth of hunting Eastern opportunities today will soon no doubt pit hunters against landowners and game managers once again. I more fully understand the dynamic between these protagonists now that I have read this book, and I am much more sympathetic to poachers today.

[Dan Herman]

The conservation story that we all know and love, the story of how Theodore Roosevelt and his contemporaries set aside national forests, national parks, and national monuments, turns out to have a dark side. The dark side gets too much emphasis here but deserves to be known.

[Jeanne McDonald]

The information was interesting and informative, but the writing was quite dense and often repetitive.

[Brian]

Gaining a historical prespective of the past, is always beneficial...especially regarding wildlife.