In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

38 The traditional sportsman thesis boldly asserts that certain virtues will arise from the practice of field sports. However, it leaves unexplained, among other things, the way this might actually happen. The sportsman thesis does posit a brief answer to the question of which good is served, namely, the good of being a gentleman. If we must give up the notion of becoming a gentleman, perhaps we can at least become environmentally virtuous. So, let’s begin with the first question of virtue ethics, namely, what good is targeted that explains the list of virtues we’d like to generate? That is, what do we hope to achieve by encouraging people to develop virtues? ConservingAnimals With Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot at the peak of their influence at the beginning of the twentieth century, the sportsman was still very much a gentleman, presumably desiring all or most of the attendant virtues. But, because it was obvious that game animals were disappearing at an alarming rate, sportsmen soon realized that they had the additional task of “conservation.”1 The meaning of this much-debated term at this early point in time was simply to preserve game species for future hunters and anglers.2 Leopold notes, in his 1933 essay “The Conservation Ethic,” that the perceived goal of conservation was merely “to save species from extermination.”3 He continues: “the means to this end were a series of restrictive enactments” on hunting and angling.4 Sportsmen should voluntarily adhere to limits but those other nonsporting hunters will have to be compelled by law and social pressure. The sportsmen knew that for their activity to continue something had to be done to reestablish animal populations severely depleted by years of overhunting and habitat loss. The sportsmen were well placed to effect a change. They were often politically well connected and wealthy. They were members of exclusive hunting and angling clubs, and they were highly motivated because of the obvious declines in game numbers. Conservation, therefore, meant for these sportsmen the need to save game species from extinction and, if possible, to increase their numbers. This goal began to be accomplished in several ways. First, not only did ChapterFour:FromGentlementoConservationists From Gentlemen to Conservationists 39 these sportsmen lobby for limits on the number of animals taken, and the seasons during which they may be taken, but they also, secondly, attempted to set themselves off from non-sporting hunters.5 These other market and “pot hunters” were denigrated in the sporting press because of their lack of restraint, unsporting methods, and general lack of class. The agenda for making this policy work was fairly obvious if difficult to achieve. It involved instituting a social and political movement against wasteful hunting and fishing. This was accomplished by getting laws passed enacting seasons and limits, banning the interstate sale of wildlife, and vilifying the hunters who violated these and other restrictions. This later vilification was carried out in the sporting press at the time.6 Conservation was thus spliced onto the sportsman thesis in response to unbridled exploitation of animals by hunters and fishermen. To counteract this exploitation, a virtue was added to the list of gentlemanly virtues: restraint. This was already implicit in some versions of the sportsman thesis. For instance, the minister John Mason Peck, in his hagiography of Daniel Boone, says hunting taught Boone self-possession and self-control.7 Clearly self-control implies restraint, and it is this virtue that bears the weight of conservation at this point. LeopoldandtheSportsmanThesis It is evident that Aldo Leopold is introduced to the sportsmanship thesis early in his life, by his father but also by his own reading of Roosevelt and Stuart Edward White.8 But with Leopold we witness a radical change in the content and purpose of the thesis. In response to both intellectual tensions and practical difficulties, Leopold finds it necessary to alter the sportsman thesis in a way that keeps the educational core of virtue generation and yet changes the actual virtues generated. He does so by shifting the good to be served. Whereas the traditional sportsmanship thesis had as its good the development of young gentlemen, and Roosevelt added that goal of conservation, Leopold expands the goal yet again to the “good of the biotic community.” Leopold realizes that the problem of diminishing game can only be successfully solved by expanding the reach of the sportsman thesis in several ways. If the goal of game abundance is added to that of becoming...

Share