Game preservation is maintaining a stock ofgame to behunted legally. It includes:
Until hand-heldguns were invented, sport hunting was largely for the deer orwild boar (by hounds or bow-and-arrow, butÆlfric of Eynsham'sColloquium written inAnglo-Saxon times speaks of the usual way to catch deer being to drive them into a net), orhare (by a fast dog); theColloquium mentions twostags and awild boar as a typical day's catch.
What are now calledgame birds were caught byfalconry, or had to be netted or snared or trapped orlimed by afowler employed by the owner of the hunting right. When the fowler used falconry, he seems to have needed to catch and train his hawks; theColloquium mentions:
Most game preservation and poaching centered ondeer.
The arrival of firearms changed bird-hunting. At first birds had to be stalked sitting, but changes in shotgun design in the 18th century made it possible to shoot them flying.
[1] During the 18th and 19th centuries game preservation laws became ever more severe in favour of therural gentry and their sport shooting rights. Game in Britain was mostly deer,hares,rabbits,pheasants,partridges, andgrouse. Game caused much damage to crops, and a persistent complaint among the rural population was not being allowed to kill rabbits and hares to defend crops and garden vegetables. In Scotland farmers dreaded grouse invading ripening cornfields to eat the seeds, and deer in a few nights eating the whole of a crop ofturnips intended as winter feed for cattle.
Steady growth of industrial towns in the later 19th century gradually built up a stock of population who when called to court (asmagistrates or asjury members) could not be relied on to automatically support the rural gentry's side of court cases. In 1880 pressure from farmers over damage to crops caused by game and hunting ledGladstone's government to pass theGround Game Act.
The bookThe Long Affray[1] describes 38 violent fights in the 19th century and 3 in the 18th century, some with shooting and/or death, of gamekeepers plus their helpers versus poachers. Between 1833 and 1843 42 British gamekeepers lost their lives in such incidents. Between autumn 1860 and the end of 1861, over 40 gamekeepers were injured inStaffordshire, some grievously, in fights involving nearly 100 poachers.
Mantraps andspring guns were often deployed against poachers, but often caught wrong people: for example, aparson "botanizing", and a naval admiral's three sons who entered a game covert for an innocent reason; if a hunted fox went into a gamecovert thefoxhunt sometimes lost hounds to devices meant to catch poachers'lurchers, and horses by stepping in mantraps.
In the 19th century,democratisation of local government in rural areas gradually reduced the power of the country squires.
As theIndustrial Revolution advanced, large gangs of coalminers and factory workmen sometimes made poaching forays in numbers that forced the gamekeepers' men to back off and watch, such as:
Through this time, selling game was illegal, but there was a widespread undercover system to transport legally shot and poached game (e.g. in the luggage compartments ofstagecoaches) to traders in towns, much of it toLeadenhall Street in London. One thing that encouraged poaching was customers (including thecaterers for the LondonLord Mayor's Banquet) preferring game without shot damage and with no shot pellets embedded in its flesh: this favored game which had been netted or snared rather than shot.
In Britain wild predators and scavengers were very badly affected by being shot bygamekeepers as "vermin" during theheyday of game preservation in the 18th and 19th centuries: for example, the gamekeepers' records of theGlengarry Estate inScotland record killing in 3 years in the 19th century:
Game preservation in France was enforced as severely and rigidly, until theFrench Revolution quickly violently ended the power of the rural gentry, and one of the revolutionary government's first actions was to sweep away the game preservation laws root and branch.