The Hunter's Game by Louis S Warren

The Hunter's Game 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.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780300080865
ISBN 10	0300080867
Title	The Hunter's Game
Author	Louis S Warren
Series	Yale Historical Publications Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Yale University Press
Year published	1999-09-10
Number of pages	250
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.