Game laws are statutes which regulate the right to pursue and take or kill certain kinds of fish and wild animal (game). Their scope can include the following: restricting the days to harvest fish or game, restricting the number of animals per person, restricting species harvested, and limiting weapons and fishing gear used. Hunters, fishermen and lawmakers generally agree that the purposes of such laws is to balance the needs for preservation and harvest and to manage both environment and populations of fish and game. Game laws can provide a legal structure to collect license fees and other money which is used to fund conservation efforts as well as to obtain harvest information used in wildlife management practice.
Historically, game laws such as the British Night Poaching Act 1828 and Game Act 1831, both still in force in modified form, and still more their predecessors,such as the notorious Black Act of 1723, enacted savage penalties for poaching in Western countries.
Recently, due to threats of anti-hunting sabotage, every state in the US has enacted hunter protection laws to protect the civil rights of citizens engaged in hunting.
Famous quotes containing the words game and/or law:
“I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people, being always excited; women, wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now & then, but every turn of the card & cast of the dice keeps the gambler alive—besides one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing else.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The Reverend Samuel Peters ... exaggerated the Blue Laws, but they did include “Capital Lawes” providing a death penalty for any child over sixteen who was found guilty of cursing or striking his natural parents; a death penalty for an incorrigible son; a law forbidding smoking except in a room in a private house; another law declaring smoking illegal except on a journey five miles away from home,...”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)