Hunting has been widely supported as both a pastime and a way of life in the United States. A requirement in some of the frontier regions of the country and tied to the policy of extinguishing the basis for American Indians’ livelihoods, hunting remained a common practice throughout the nineteenth century With the threat to a number of species as a result of uncontrolled hunting, protections were put in place to limit the carnage. Under President Theodore Roosevelt, national parks were established to protect large tracts of government land, particularly in the western sections of the country, and the scientific management of the resources in these areas included the control of hunting. Such approaches were reinforced by the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which provided mechanisms for the conservation of ecosystems on which endangered species depend.

Hunting has remained entrenched in American culture and society even while the population has become increasingly urban, and those seeking wild game to hunt sometimes need to travel great distances. Part of this continued support for hunting lies in the attachment of many to gun culture, promoted by the NRA, making hunting a middleclass pastime as opposed to one of the landed gentry as in many other countries. An upper-class fox hunting tradition was never visible enough to become a lightning rod for a vocal opposition to hunting in general. The movie The Deerhunter (1978) highlighted the pervasiveness of gun and hunting culture in rural areas of the US, contrasting the life of a Pennsylvania resident who hunted deer for sport with his experiences in Vietnam to accentuate the insanity of the latter.

Paradoxically, given the image of the hunter as the rugged individualist, hunting has become central to the scientific management of the environment. Since the 1930s, the Malthusian notion that habitats are able to support only a certain number of a species has been applied to the management of different species. But, instead of assigning professionals to crop the herds, federal and state authorities have assigned this task to private sportsmen and women. In each state, therefore, hunting seasons have been established (sometimes of varied duration for different species), federal and state regulations dictating the methods of killing, the number that can be killed in one day and therefore also the amount of game that may be in the hunter’s possession. While such state control has helped to entrench hunting as part of game management, the system has faced growing opposition recently In the 1990s, animal rights activists, who claimed that animals suffer under the system, carried out protests of various kinds and lobbied Congress to bring about a complete ban on hunting.

Hunters most often use rifles and shotguns to kill their game. Frequently, hunters use semi-automatic weapons, leaving carcasses riddled with lead. Reacting to this situation and claiming that less sophisticated weapons make the hunt more challenging anyway, many hunters are now returning to the use of bows and arrows or muzzleloading rifles.

Such developments towards clearer distinctions between weapons used for hunting and those used for “self-protection” may become more evident as the gun culture itself faces growing scrutiny in the wake of a slew of shootings at schools across the country.