Hunting: Home

Whether fulfilling subsistence needs or featured in stories of grand adventure, hunting loomed large in the material and the imagined landscape of the nineteenth-century West. Epiphany in the Wilderness explores the social, political, economic, and environmental dynamics of hunting on the frontier in three "acts," using performance as a trail guide and focusing on the production of a "cultural ecology of the chase" in literature, art, photography, and taxidermy. Using the metaphor of the theater, Jones argues that the West was a crucial stage that framed the performance of the American character as an independent, resourceful, resilient, and rugged individual. The leading actor was the all-conquering masculine hunter hero, the sharpshooting man of the wilderness who tamed and claimed the West with each provident step. Women were also a significant part of the story, treading the game trails as plucky adventurers and resilient homesteaders and acting out their exploits in autobiographical accounts and stage shows. Epiphany in the Wilderness informs various academic debates surrounding the frontier period, including the construction of nature as a site of personal challenge, gun culture, gender adaptations and the crafting of the masculine wilderness hero figure, wildlife management and consumption, memorializing and trophy-taking, and the juxtaposition of a closing frontier with an emerging conservation movement.   The University Press of Colorado gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University toward the publication of this book.

Do hunting and fishing lead to the development of environmental virtues? This question is at the heart of philosopher Charles List's engaging study, which provides a defense of field sports when they are practiced and understood in an ethical manner.  In his argument, List examines the connection between certain activities and the development of virtue in the classical sources, such as Aristotle and Plato. He then explores the work of Aldo Leopold, identifying three key environmental virtues that field sports instill in practitioners in the kind of conservation advocated by Leopold and others. Hunting, Fishing, and Environmental Virtue will appeal to academics interested in the ethical issues surrounding hunting and fishing, professionals in wildlife management, and hunters and anglers interested in conservation.

Hunting is one of America's oldest pastimes, considered a part of American identity and a way of connecting with the natural world. The practice is also connected to a range of other issues, including wildlife conservation, indigenous rights, animal welfare, and gun violence. This collection of articles showcases the ample contributions of sportsmanship to American life, while also exploring the sometimes destructive role it can play. As attitudes change, amid a reassessment of big game hunting overseas and gun violence at home, an understanding of hunting's unique social role becomes especially important. Media literacy terms and questions invite readers to carefully consider how reporting of the topic has developed over time.

Presented here is the final and most coherent section of a sweeping classic work in environmental history, The Unending Frontier. The World Hunt focuses on the commercial hunting of wildlife and its profound global impact on the environment and the early modern world economy. Tracing the massive expansion of the European quest for animal products, The World Hunt explores the fur trade in North America and Russia, cod fishing in the North Atlantic, and whaling and sealing on the world's oceans and coastlands.