An award-winning historian tells the story of hunting in America, showing how this sport has shaped our national identity. From Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, hunting is one of America's most sacred-but also most fraught-traditions. It was promoted in the 19th century as a way to reconnect "soft" urban Americans with nature and to the legacy of the country's pathfinding heroes. Fair chase, a hunting code of ethics emphasizing fairness, rugged independence, and restraint towards wildlife, emerged as a worldview and gave birth to the conservation movement. But the sport's popularity also caused class, ethnic, and racial divisions, and stirred debate about the treatment of Native Americans and the role of hunting in preparing young men for war. This sweeping and balanced book offers a definitive account of hunting in America. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of our nation's foundational myths.

Experience the grandeur, excitement, and peril of the quest for big game in the West from 1800-1900 in this vivid interpretation with engaging narrative, direct quotations, and historic imagery. Hunting the American West is a thoroughly illustrated, narrative history of big-game hunting in the nineteenth-century American West. The engaging narrative draws extensively on the writing of original participants and observers of the subject and - along with an abundance of pictorial materials - affords unusual insight into the diverse methods and motives for hunting big game in the Old West. No other work on the subject conveys the feeling and character of the hunt in its various eras and styles, or its profound consequences, as convincingly.

This report provides a detailed snapshot of our nation's passion for wildlife and nature. It serves as a road map to guide efforts to reach more Americans to provide them with opportunities to hunt, fish, and enjoy America's wildlife and wild places. Bird/wildlife watching, hunting, fishing are not just favorite pastimes, but they share revenues from sale of licenses and tags, as well as excise taxes paid by hunters, anglers, and shooters to continue to support vital wildlife and habitat conservation efforts in every state. The report outlines the details for compilation of information and surveys to different populations and provides highlights along with statistical information represented in tables from the data collected. Click these resources for more products relating to this topic: Animals & Wildlife resources collection Fisheries & Aquatic Life resources collection

This innovative study re-examines the dynamics of race relations in the post–Civil War South from an altogether fresh perspective: field sports. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wealthy white men from Southern cities and the industrial North traveled to the hunting and fishing lodges of the old Confederacy—escaping from the office to socialize among like-minded peers. These sportsmen depended on local black guides who knew the land and fishing holes and could ensure a successful outing. For whites, the ability to hunt and fish freely and employ black laborers became a conspicuous display of their wealth and social standing. But hunting and fishing had been a way of life for all Southerners—blacks included—since colonial times. After the war, African Americans used their mastery of these sports to enter into market activities normally denied people of color, thereby becoming more economically independent from their white employers. Whites came to view black participation in hunting and fishing as a serious threat to the South’s labor system. Scott E. Giltner shows how African-American freedom developed in this racially tense environment—how blacks' sense of competence and authority flourished in a Jim Crow setting. Giltner’s thorough research using slave narratives, sportsmen’s recollections, records of fish and game clubs, and sporting periodicals offers a unique perspective on the African-American struggle for independence from the end of the Civil War to the 1920s.

Historical perspective. Wildlife values in a Changing World. New patterns on land and water. Influence of land management on wildlife. Special problems of waters and watersheds. Pesticides and wildlife. Wildlife demage and control. Legislation and administration. Evaluation and Conclusions.