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:
“Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)