Fair chase

Fair chase is a term used by hunters to describe an ethical approach to hunting big game animals. North America's oldest wildlife conservation group, the Boone and Crockett Club, defines "fair chase" as requiring hunted big game animals to be wild and free-ranging. "Wild" refers to an animal that is naturally bred and lives in nature. "Free-ranging" means an animal that is not confined by artificial barriers.

Fair chase has been the honor code of North American hunters for over a century and the principle underlying many of North American hunting laws, and is taught to new hunters in hunter certification courses.

Fair Chase is also a registered trademark of the Boone and Crockett Club.

The concept and the popularization of the term "fair chase" is credited to Theodore Roosevelt and perpetuated by the Boone and Crockett Club, a conservation organization of Roosevelt's creation.

Ethics, or a code of conduct, in hunting first emerged centuries ago among European hunters who were primarily the wealthy landowners and royalty. While the commoner hunted to stay alive, the aristocrat hunted for sport, and it was this sporting approach that separated the two. These ethics did not transfer to the majority of immigrants that settled in the New World. Basic human survival and commercial enterprises had no room for a hunting ethic. After two hundred years of the unregulated taking of wildlife by subsistence, recreational, and commercial market hunters, the negative effects were inescapable. By the end of this "era of extermination", wildlife and especially big game populations were in dismal condition. Some species had already been lost to extinction and many others were on the brink.

In the early part of the 20th century, a sense of pride and accomplishment began to emerge among sportsmen that came with their newly accepted responsibility to conserve. Doing right by the game being hunted meant working with conservation and population recovery efforts, including the creation of the National Wildlife Refuge System. As for the hunt itself, using restraint shifted the emphasis of measuring success from the quantity of game taken to the quality of the chase. The hunting experience became more important than the number killed, and success was now more memorable because the hunting experience became sustainable in the long term.

The earliest recorded North American usage of the term "fair chase" is in the fifth article of the Boone and Crockett Club constitution, adopted in February 1888. At this time in American history there were no laws governing the talking of game for food or for sport. Water-killing deer (driving deer with hounds or pushers into lakes where hunters waited in boats to either shoot, club, or cut the throats of deer) was also a widespread practice, especially in the Adirondack Mountains.

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