| The Words of Theodore Roosevelt |
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"Above all, we should realize that the effort toward this end is ... 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."
"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life; … to preach the highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph." "When hunting him (wapiti) there is always sweet cold water to be drunk at night, and beds of aromatic fir boughs… He must be followed on foot, and the man who follows him must be sound in limb and wind." "But the mountains are the true ground for the wapiti. Here he must be hunted on foot, and nowadays, since he has grown wiser, skill and patience, and the capacity to endure fatigue and exposure, must be shown by the successful hunter." Paul Schullery, Op.Cit. "We knew toil and hardship and hunger and thirst, … but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours was the glory of work and the joy of living." "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." As the 20th Century was dawning, Roosevelt and others like George Bird Grinnell were establishing the social and cultural values of wildlife and hunting. They were values strong enough to inspire a nation to conservation. When the first wildlife management text was written in 1933 Aldo Leopold addressed today's subject in the very first chapter. "Game farming … propagates wild species …, usually for later release as wild seed stock, or as a supplement to the wild crop." "The production of tame game for use as meat is animal husbandry. Its harvesting is hardly recreation. … the recreational value of game is inverse to the artificiality of its origin, and hence … to the degree of control exercised in its production." Aldo Leopold. Game Management, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY, 1933. It is interesting that Leopold could only see game farming as a ‘raise and release' enterprise, the notion of slaughtering captive game animals as hunting was apparently beyond his imagination. References Cited: - Paul Schullery. Theodore Roosevelt Wilderness Writings, Wilderness Reserves: The Yellowstone Park, Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City, Utah 1986. |
"It is foolish to regard proper game-laws as undemocratic, … On the contrary, they are essentially in the interests of the people as a whole, because it is only through their enactment and enforcement that the people … can preserve the game and prevent its becoming purely the property of the rich … the man of small means is dependent solely upon wise and well-executed game-laws for his enjoyment of the sturdy pleasure of the chase."