{"id":67639,"date":"2015-12-29T02:00:05","date_gmt":"2015-12-29T07:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=67639"},"modified":"2015-12-22T00:54:25","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T05:54:25","slug":"a-short-history-of-trophy-hunting-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/12\/29\/a-short-history-of-trophy-hunting-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"A short history of trophy hunting in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2<\/a>Prior to the 1850s, writes<\/a> cultural studies scholar Matthew Brower, men in America didn’t hunt. More specifically, they didn’t hunt for leisure. There was a hunting industry that employed professionals who hunted as a full time occupation, and there was a large market for wild animal products, but hunting for fun wasn’t a common pastime.<\/p>\n

This changed in the second half of the\u00a01800s. Americans were increasingly living in cities and being “citified.” Commenters worried that urban life was making men effeminate, effete, overly civilized, domesticated if you will. Cities were a threat to manliness and nature\u00a0the salve.<\/p>\n

Hunting trophies, taxidermied remains of wild animals, served as symbolic proof of one’s “hardiness.”\u00a0Unlike the animal parts bought at market — whether for food\u00a0or\u00a0furs, as feathers on hats<\/a>, or the then-popular elk tooth watch chain<\/a> — animals a man\u00a0killed himself reflected on his\u00a0skill and character.<\/p>\n

\"16\"<\/p>\n

As Theodore Roosevelt once put it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Nothing adds more to a hall or a room than fine antlers when their owner has been shot by the hunter-displayer, but always there is an element of the absurd in a room furnished with trophies of the chase that the displayer has acquired by purchase.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

New, elite recreational hunters castigated both lesser men, who purchased animal parts for display, and women who bought them purely for fashion.<\/p>\n

This was the origin of the idea\u00a0that hunting\u00a0is a contest, as opposed to an occupation or necessity. To paraphrase Brower, a\u00a0trophy can’t be bought,<\/em> it must be earned.\u00a0<\/em>Thus, the notion\u00a0of “sportsmanship” as applied to the hunt. If a kill is going to indicate skill, then the hunted must have a “sporting chance.” Thus, recreational hunters developed an etiquette for sportsmanlike hunting, spread through new hunting magazines and periodicals.<\/p>\n

Not only did this allow men to claim manly<\/em> cred, it allowed wealthy men to claim class<\/em> cred. Brower writes:<\/p>\n

Both subsistence and market hunters, the majority of hunters, were placed outside the purview of the sportsman\u2019s code. Those who hunted out of necessity or for profit never could obtain the aesthetic detachment necessary to be considered sportsmen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, wealthy recreational hunters claimed that only they were “real hunters” and even organized against people who hunted for food and money. For example,<\/p>\n

[Roosevelt\u00a0himself]\u00a0blamed the decline of game on market hunters, who he argued, had \u201cno excuse of any kind” for the wanton slaughter of animals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trophy hunters successfully enacted statutes limiting other types of hunting, so as to preserve game for themselves.<\/p>\n

The rarer\u00a0and\u00a0larger\u00a0the animal, the more exquisite the specimen, and the more a man has killed, the better the animals speak to a his\u00a0manliness and\u00a0his elite\u00a0economic and social class. This is perhaps the attraction of international trophy hunting today: the seeking of more exotic and elusive game to bring home and display. And it is perhaps\u00a0why some people pay $50,000 to travel across the world, kill a lion, cut off its head, then\u00a0post it on Facebook.<\/p>\n

Photo from Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prior to the 1850s, writes cultural studies scholar Matthew Brower, men in America didn’t hunt. More specifically, they didn’t hunt for leisure. There was a hunting industry that employed professionals who hunted as a full time occupation, and there was a large market for wild animal products, but hunting for fun wasn’t a common pastime. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":68483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,29,23635,2123,2102,2087,253,778,23694,341],"class_list":["post-67639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-class","tag-economics-history","tag-environmentnature","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-history","tag-intersectionality","tag-intersectionality-gender-x-class","tag-ruralurban"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/01\/212.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67639"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68504,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67639\/revisions\/68504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}