Riding with Colonel Roosevelt:
The Wildlife Heritage as Ethical Motivation
Jim Posewitz: Orion The Hunter’s Institute
219 Vawter Street, Helena, Montana 59601
October 2003
INTRODUCTION
Some observers of hunting in American note that a significant proportion of the public is not anti-hunting, but anti-hunter. Exposure to anecdotal stories of bad hunter behavior follows each hunting season like falling leaves follow the splendor of autumn. While the American public remains in support of hunting, the hunting community would be well served if we could elevate both the image and the reality of hunter behavior.
“Hunting is part of our heritage.” That response is often used when hunters are challenged. It usually follows the “necessity to manage wildlife” as part of our justification. Personally, I think it is a far better defense, however, we seldom visit and rarely teach the stories embedded in ‘our hunting heritage.’ Given today’s ethical dilemma, these subjects may be the most important tools we have. It is possible that the strongest motivational message for ethical behavior that we can generate is something we already have. It is possible, that if we can place today’s hunters in the context of being part of the greatest wildlife conservation saga in human history, the tendency to participate dishonorably will diminish, if not vanish.
THE HERITAGE STORY – A SAMPLER
THE PEOPLE’S GAME
Most people on earth can not even dream about being a hunter. A good place to start heritage education is to address how it came about that any person in America can be a hunter. As with any philosophical question, the discussion must start with a thoughtful question. We all know the most universal ‘thoughtful question’ asked in our nation each fall. Did you get your deer? It is a question posed in every state from densely populated New Jersey to the wide-open spaces of Wyoming. In New Jersey more than 50 thousand hunters are likely to say yes, in wide-open Wyoming probably a few more.
If the second question asked was “How did it get to be your deer?” I suspect the answers would range from, “duh” to “because I shot it.” The heritage story of how wildlife in America got to be the people’s resource, rather than attaching to property, is an important part of our history. Since much American law developed from English law some examples from that country form an important contrast. The game law of King Canute (1016) prevented people from hunting on the king’s land on the pain of death. William I enforced the laws based on the European Code, with punishments ranging from death to mutilation. The following is an example: “Whoever shall kill a stag, a wild boar, or even a hare, shall have his eyes torn out.”
In 1216 rebellious barons engaged the king of England in battle to win some independent rights. The result was the Magna Carta, and a Forest Charter that softened the penalty for taking royal game. “No man shall henceforth lose either life or member for killing of our Deer; but if any man be taken and convicted for taking of our Venison, he shall make grievous fine, if he hath anything whereof.” Note the possessive terminology. In England the ownership of game passed from people of privilege to an attachment to property. Wildlife never became a public resource or the people’s game. Flash-forward to the 21st Century and in England the aurochs, boar, bear, beaver, wolf and reindeer are extinct and residual hunting by people of privilege barely hangs on.
The American Revolution separated us from the control of the king and produced a system where free people would govern themselves. The issues of water, fish and wildlife were not mentioned in our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, or Bill of Rights. The legal void was filled by a series of court decisions.
In 1842 the U. S. Supreme Court began a series of decisions that eventually designated water, fish and wildlife as resources held in trust by the states for the benefit of all the people. Resolving a dispute over gathering oysters in tidal waters of New Jersey, the Court’s words were:
“When the revolution took place, the people of each state became themselves sovereign; and in that character, held the absolute right to all their navigable waters, and the soil under them; for their own common use, ….”
“…dominion and property in navigable waters, and in the lands under them [were] held by the King as a public trust” and further, it “… must be regarded as settled in England, against the right of the King, since Magna Carta, to make a private grant in such lands and waters.”
In a later case, involving the transport of illegally taken game the court got wonderfully more specific with the following language:
“… the development of free institutions has led to the recognition of the fact that the power or control lodged in the State, resulting from the common ownership, is to be exercised, like all other powers of government, as a trust for the benefit of all people, and not as a prerogative for the advantage of the government, as distinct from the people, or for the benefit of private individuals as distinguished from the public.”
From these court decisions we learn why, 161 years after the New Jersey case, you can go afield to hunt your deer. We also know that it is an expectation based on the American Declaration of Independence and the revolutionary fighters that gave life to our country. Knowing these things certainly should motivate all of us to accept the privilege of hunting humbly, gratefully and responsibly.
THE CONSERVATION IDEA
Although the courts ruled that fish, wildlife and water in America would be the people’s resource, our nation had a long way to go in learning how to live with these resources. Our history is full of examples of unrestrained exploitation of all our natural resources, including the people’s game. Part of our heritage story is the very idea of conservation itself and some trace that idea to George Perkins Marsh (1801 – 1882).
In 1800 Mount Tom near Woodstock, Vermont burned. A year later George Perkins Marsh was born. Marsh grew up watching the mountain trying to emerge from its own ashes while being grazed by sheep and cattle. He also watched floods take the family bridge and a mill they had built. Along the way, President Zachary Taylor (1849 – 1850) named Marsh ambassador to Turkey where he was able to gain a vision of what human civilizations had done to landscapes, nature and ultimately to themselves.
Marsh had keen powers of observation and a scholarly interest in weather, geology, flora, fauna and the remains of fallen civilizations. He soon realized that man had everywhere done major damage to natural systems. Marsh synthesized his experiences into a book, Man and Nature, a plea for conservation of nature in America. At the time, our landscape was still a “New World.”
Today, we read the writings of conservation leaders like Aldo Leopold, Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt (TR) for insight and guidance. In their time these people read Marsh. Gifford Pinchot called Man and Nature “epoch-making.” Few individuals had more influence on the conservation thinking of TR than did Pinchot.
THE PEOPLE’S CHAMPION
As the 20th Century neared, America had a number of individuals convinced that the nation needed a conservation ethic. Among them: Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, George Bird Grinell, and William T. Hornady. The problem they faced was winning the hearts and minds of the people. As Roosevelt observed upon entering the presidency:
“The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still (persisted), and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition. The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the public mind.”
Roosevelt and his associates concluded that the protection of our forests was the vehicle to use to introduce conservation. Forestry had advantages as a lead issue since water supply, flood prevention, and renewable timber crops could all be part of the sales package. In his autobiography TR noted:
“The conservation movement was a direct out growth of the forest movement. It was nothing more than the application to our other natural resources of the principles, which had been worked out in connection with the forests. Without the basis of public sentiment which had been built up for the protection of the forests, and without the example of public foresight in the protection of this, one of the great natural resources, the Conservation movement would have been impossible.”
THE PERFECT MARRIAGE: PUBLIC TRUST PRINCIPLES
AND TR’S PHILOSOPHY
The writings of Roosevelt reveal little recognition that he was aware of public trust court decisions associated with fish and wildlife. However, his philosophy relative to the beneficiaries of conservation is well documented. It is a philosophy perfectly aligned with the court’s public interest decisions. Writing in “Wilderness Reserves: The Yellowstone Park” TR addressed the democracy of conservation. “Above all, we should realize that the effort toward this end is essentially a democratic movement. It is … in our power … to preserve large tracts of wilderness … and to preserve game … for … all lovers of nature, and to give reasonable opportunities for the exercise of the skill of the hunter, whether he is or is not a man of means.”
In another essay, “Bird Preserves at the Mouth of the Mississippi,” TR returned to the topic. “The movement for the conservation of wildlife, and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources, are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method.” When TR spoke of the inclusive nature of the democratic approach to conservation he included posterity – that would be you and me. “The ‘greatest good of the greatest number’ applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations.”
Roosevelt also identified the enemy we one day would have to confront. “The professional market hunter who kills game for the hide or for the feathers or for the meat or to sell antlers and other trophies; market men who put game in cold storage; and the rich people, who are content to buy what they have not the skill to get by their own exertions – these are the men who are the real enemies of game.”
THE ‘ROOT’ OF ROOSEVELT
As hunters, and as individuals looking for ways to motivate ethical choices, it is critical that we take a moment to address what motivated TR and where his vision for conservation came from. Historical writer Stephen Ambrose compared Thomas Jefferson and TR in an article published in the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal. He wrote: “There is as much contrast as comparison. Their skills, for example. Jefferson loved music and playing the violin, while TR’s principal hobby was rifles and hunting.”
In 1883 Roosevelt went on his first western big game hunt in North Dakota. After considerable searching he was successful and wrote the following to his wife Alice.“Hurrah! The luck has turned at last. I will bring you home the head of a great buffalo bull, and the antlers of two superb stags.” He concluded the letter with: “I am in superb health, having plenty of game to eat, and living all day long in the open air.”
In February of the next year tragedy struck the Roosevelt family. Alice died shortly after giving birth to their daughter, his mother died that the same day – in the same house. To recover from these personal losses TR placed his daughter in his sister’s care and returned to North Dakota to heal body and spirit. He wrote his friend Henry Cabot Lodge: “I heartily enjoy this life, with its perfect freedom, for I am very fond of hunting and there are few sensations I prefer to that of galloping over these rolling, limitless prairies, rifle in hand, ….” TR’s vision for conservation was born of his passion for the hunt. Biographer Nathan Miller states, “Roosevelt became the champion of conservation – an idea that had begun with a lonely hunt in the Bad Lands.”
A HUNTER AS PRESIDENT
In September of 1901 an assassin shot President William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt became America’s president. During his seven and one-half years in office, TR introduced the nation to conservation and took direction action. As president (1901 – 1909) he:
• Increased the national forest reserves of the United States from approximately 43 million acres to 194 million acres.
• Created five national parks.
• Designated eighteen national monuments including the Grand Canyon
• Established fifty-one federal bird preserves.
• Created the first four federal game preserves.
In total TR set aside 230 million acres for conservation – 84,000 a day for the seven and one-half years that he was our president. To top it all off TR called seven different national conferences to address conservation in America.
CONCLUSION
There is much more to the hunter’s heritage of North America. While TR and his associates launched a great movement, it all nearly collapsed when the Great Economic Depression and Dust Bowl hit the American landscape. In those dark days Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) was in the White House and he gave us a renewed conservation spirit. FDR called the first North American Wildlife Conference, signed the Pittman-Robertson Act, created the Civilian Conservation Corps – and above all else gave America hope. That generation produced a whole new collection of conservation heroes – most of them hunters.
We are now 100-years out from TR’s time as our president. When he entered the White House there were an estimated 41,000 elk left in all of North America – today there are nearly a million. Wild turkey had slipped to within 100,000 birds of extinction – now there are over 4 ½ million. The unique American pronghorn had faded to about 12,000, now over 1 million grace our sage and grasslands. The white-tailed deer had dwindled to about ½ million; we are now endowed with well over 33 million. Each of us now taking to the hunt is endowed by this wonderful legacy – and is responsible to the legacy’s future. Each time we take to field and forest, we become a part of a unique North American Experience. The more familiar we become with all parts of this remarkable story, the less likely any of us will be to make a bad ethical choice as we engage in a spirited fair chase of game. Being a part of something as wonderful as hunting in America is simply too precious to abuse.
I close with observations of two Englishmen who visited America during the Theodore Roosevelt Presidency.
“Do you know the two most wonderful things I have seen in your country …Niagara Falls and the President of the United States … both great wonders of nature.”
“Roosevelt is not an American, you know. He is America.”
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