Game Management
Publication Year: 1986
With this book, published more than a half-century ago, Aldo Leopold created the discipline of wildlife management. Although A Sand Country Almanac is doubtless Leopold’s most popular book, Game Management may well be his most important. In this book he revolutionized the field of conservation.
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Cover
Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
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pp. iii-v
CONTENTS
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pp. vii-x
LIST OF FIGURES
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pp. xi-xii
LIST OF TABLES
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pp. xiii-xv
FOREWORD
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pp. xvii-xxx
Some who now strive to advance conservation programs are prone to forget that there was a time when there was no field of conservation endeavor. Wild things were something to be overcome and forgotten, not something to be cherished, respected, and managed purposefully to ensure their perpetuation and associated values. In the United States until about 1905, the...
PREFACE
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pp. xxxi-xxxiii
We of the industrial age boast of our control over nature. Plant or animal, star or atom, wind or river-there is no force in earth or sky which we will not shortly harness to build "the good life" for ourselves. But what is the good life? Is all this glut of power to be used for only bread-and-butter ends? Man cannot live by bread, or Fords, alone. Are we too poor in purse or spirit to apply some of...
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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pp. xxxiv-
For technical facts or for reading manuscript: Herbert L. Stoddard of Thomasville, Georgia; W. L. McAtee, Wallace B. Grange, Frederick C. Lincoln, and E. A. Goldman of the U. S. Biological Survey; H. M. Wight, S. A. Graham, and R. E. Yeatter of the University of Michigan; Robert R. Green and Ralph T. King of the University of Minnesota; Paul L. Errington and J. G. Halpin of the University of Wisconsin;...
PART I: MANAGEMENT THEORY
I. A HISTORY OF IDEAS IN GAME MANAGEMENT
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pp. 3-21
Game management is the art of making land produce sustained annual crops of wild game for recreational use. Its nature is best understood by comparing it with the other land-cropping arts, and by viewing its present ideas and practices against a background of their own history. This chapter compares game management with other forms of agriculture, and...
II. MECHANISM OF GAME MANAGEMENT
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pp. 22-45
Productivity. In the light of this history, let us now examine the substance of game management itself. The previous chapter has traced the sequence of human controls brought to bear on the various factors which determine productivity. Just what are these factors? What are the characteristics of each? Which ones do we manipulate, and how? What is the effect of manipulation?
III. PROPERTIES OF GAME POPULATIONS: FLUCTUATION AND DENSITY
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pp. 46-72
The mechanism of management discussed in the preceding chapter applies to all species of game. Each species is governed by the same set of factors; each has a fixed wild breeding potential which the factors prevent it from attaining; each may be subjected to management by the same general mechanism of factor-control. In the selection of controls, however, the game manager must...
IV. PROPERTIES OF GAME POPULATIONS: MOVEMENTS, TOLERANCES, AND SEX AND FLOCK HABITS
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pp. 73-123
Radius of Mobility. If a crop of game remains on the farm where it was raised, the incentive to produce it is operative for individual farmers. If, on the other hand, the game wanders over several farms, the owners must organize as neighborhood groups in order to make management fully effective. In other words, the mobility of the species determines the minimum unit of management.
V. GAME RANGE¹
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pp. 124-136
What Is Game Range? When the game manager asks himself whether a given piece of land is suitable for a given species of game, he must realize that he is asking no simple question, but rather he is facing one of the great enigmas of animate nature. An answer good enough for practical purposes is usually easy to get by the simple process of noting whether the species is there and...
PART II: MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUE
VI. MEASUREMENT OF GAME POPULATIONS; GAME CENSUS
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pp. 139-170
Steps in Management. The preceding chapters have attempted to define the history and purpose of management, and to describe the biological mechanism which it seeks to conrtol, the properties of game species as related to that mechanism, and the classes into which game species and game ranges fall by reason of their different properties. These definitions and descriptions...
VII. MEASUREMENT AND DIAGNOSIS OF PRODUCTIVITY
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pp. 171-194
Definitions. Productivity has been defined as the rate at which breeding stock produces a removable crop or additional breeding stock. If the crop is not to be removed its measurement is accomplished, as in forestry, by comparing the annual increment with the original stock. The unit of measurement is the ratio or per cent of increase per year. If the crop is to be removed...
VIII. GAME REFUGES
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pp. 195-207
This, and several subsequent chapters, deal with the manner in which the factors operate and the actual execution of the control measures indicated by the processes of measurement and diagnosis. Usually each control measure has for its objective the control of a single factor. For instance, laws are passed to control hunting, trapping is undertaken to control predators, plantings are...
IX. CONTROL OF HUNTING
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pp. 208-229
Purpose and Premises. As long as game shortage prevails, the purpose of hunting controls is obviously to limit the kill of each species on each parcel of land to its productive capacity. As its capacity is increased by the control of hunting and of the other factors, an increase in the kill may be permitted. After game shortage has been corrected by management, the...
X. PREDATOR CONTROL
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pp. 230-252
Attitudes and Policy. Predator control has received more attention than any other factor except hunting. This accords with the developmental sequence of ideas already explained in Chapter I. Unfortunately, much of this attention, and many predator-control operations, have been based upon assumed or traditional predator-game relationships, or at best on generalizations supported...
XI. CONTROL OF FOOD AND WATER [Includes Image Plates]
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pp. 253-303
Interaction of Factors. The previous chapters have shown that all of the factors of productivity are interwoven, and react upon each other as well as upon the game whenever there is a change in anyone of them. This interaction is especially pronounced as between food, water, coverts, and special factors. In actual management their control is all one problem. I t is also a noteworthy fact...
XII. CONTROL OF COVER [Includes Image Plates]
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pp. 304-323
Definitions. "Cover" and "covert" both mean vegetative or other shelter for game. Strictly speaking, cover is the kind of materials of which the covert is composed. Cover may refer to a single plant or a very small area; covert is a geographic unit of cover. Plant Successions. Control of vegetation for game cover or food must be based on a thorough understanding of the fact...
XIII. CONTROL OF DISEASE
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pp. 324-341
This chapter is not a compendium of available knowledge on game diseases. Larger volumes than this have been written about a single disease of a single species. It aims rather to sketch, in bold outlines, the probable rôle of the disease factor in game productivity, and the possibilities of its control in game management. The principal purpose is to help the game manager or thinking sportsman orient his mental...
XIV. ACCIDENTS
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pp. 342-355
Definition. Accident mortality includes all loss from physical causes alone, as distinguished from losses from other living organisms (such as diseases, parasites, hunting, �or predators), from chemical causes (such as poisoning), from welfare factors (such as food, cover, and water), or from mechanical causes combining with diseases. Weather losses associated with food or water shortage or disease...
XV. MISCELLANEOUS TECHNIQUES
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pp. 356-388
The fundamental difference between artificial and wild management has already been pointed out in Chapter II. General aspects of domestication and transplantation as properties of game have been presented in Chapter IV. There remain to be reviewed the techniques for accomplishing artificial propagation and for making plantings. These techniques are numerous and varied, and are well covered...
PART III: GAME ADMINISTRATION
XVI. GAME ECONOMICS AND ESTHETICS
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pp. 391-405
What Is Sport? For unnumbered centuries physical combat between men was an economic fact. Battle was part and parcel of the daily struggle to get, or to keep, a place in the sun. As the economic need for battle became more and more occasional, it was delegated to specialists. But the instinctive zest for physical combat did not disappear. Hence athletic sports and games. Physical combat...
XVII. GAME POLICY AND ADMINISTRATION
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pp. 406-412
Definition. Game management has already been defined as the art of producing sustained crops of game for recreational use. Game administration is the art of governing the practice of game management. Its function is to encourage management by fact-finding, demonstration, and education, and to regulate abusive practices. Incidentally, governments may themselves practice...
XVIII. GAME AS A PROFESSION
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pp. 413-423
The Transition. In 1910 there were scarcely a hundred trained foresters in the country. They held only a small percentage of the positions then open. The rest were held by untrained men. In 1930 there were over 5000 trained foresters, holding a large percentage of a much larger number of positions, in both public and private organizations.
APPENDIX [Includes Back Cover]
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pp. 425-481
E-ISBN-13: 9780299107734
Print-ISBN-13: 9780299107741
Publication Year: 1986
