A professional hunter (less frequently referred to as market or commercial hunter and regionally, especially in Britain and Ireland, as professional stalker or gamekeeper) is a person who
hunts and/or manages
game by profession. Some professional hunters work in the private sector or for government agencies and manage species that are considered overabundant,[1][2] others are self-employed and make a living by selling hides and meat,[3] while still others guide clients on
big-game hunts.[4]
In Australia several million
kangaroos are shot each year by licensed professional hunters in
population control programmes, with both their meat and hides sold.[5][6][7][8][9]
Germany
German professional hunters (Berufsjäger or Berufsjägerinnendepending on gender) mostly work for large private forest estates and for state-owned forest enterprises, where they control
browsing by reducing the numbers of
ungulates like
roe deer or
chamois, manage populations of sought-after trophy species like
red deer and act as hunting guides for paying clients.[10][11][12]
Southern and Eastern Africa
The countries of Southern and Eastern Africa, especially Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, are major destinations for
big-game hunting tourism in Africa.[13][14] Local professional hunters, often simply referred to as PH, act as hunting guides for paying guest hunters and manage safari hunting businesses.[15][16][17]
Historically, professional big-game hunters of European descent who plied their trade in Africa, especially during the first half of the 20th century, are often referred to as "
white hunters" or "great white hunters".[18]
British professional stalkers and gamekeepers primarily work on large estates, especially in the
Scottish Highlands, where they most commonly manage red deer,
common pheasant,
red grouse and
French partridge.[19][20] Early in the 20th century there were an estimated 25,000 professional stalkers and gamekeepers employed in the UK,[21] while today there are some 3000.[22]
United States
Unregulated hunting in the 19th and early 20th century
In a North American context the terms market hunter and commercial hunter are predominantly used to refer to hunters of the 19th and early 20th century who sold or traded the flesh, bones, skins and feathers of slain animals as a source of income. These hunters focused on species which gathered in large numbers for breeding, feeding, or migration and were organized into
factory-like groups that would systematically depopulate an area of any valuable
wildlife over a short period of time. The animals which were hunted included
bison,
deer,
ducks and other
waterfowl,
geese,
pigeons and many other
birds,
seals and
walruses,
fish, river
mussels, and
clams.[24]
Populations of large birds were severely depleted through the 19th and early 20th century. The extermination of several species and the threatened loss of others caused popular legislation effectively prohibiting this form of commercial hunting in the United States.
Hunting seasons were eventually established to conserve surviving wildlife and allow a certain amount of recovery and re-population to occur. The
Migratory Bird Treaty Act signed in 1918 regulated hunting and prohibited all hunting of
wood ducks until 1941 and
swans until 1962.[25]
^"2. – Hunting". Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand. New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Te Manatu. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
^Ford, James D.; Macdonald, Joanna Petrasek; Huet, Catherine; Statham, Sara; MacRury, Allison (2016-03-01). "Food policy in the Canadian North: Is there a role for country food markets?". Social Science & Medicine. 152: 35–40.
doi:
10.1016/j.socscimed.2016.01.034.
ISSN0277-9536.
PMID26829007.
^Glass, Jayne (2013). Lairds, Land and Sustainability: Scottish Perspectives on Upland Management. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
ISBN9780748685882.
OCLC859160940.
^Edward, Bujak (2018-10-18). English Landed Society in the Great War: Defending the Realm. Bloomsbury Studies in Military History. London. p. 71.
ISBN9781472592163.
OCLC1049577685.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link)
^DeMello, Margo (2012). Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 76.
ISBN9780231526760.
OCLC811411867.
^Conover, Michael R. (2002). Resolving Human-Wildlife Conflicts: The Science of Wildlife Damage Management. Boca Raton, Fla.: Lewis Publishers. pp. 31, 171.
ISBN9781420032581.
OCLC122907019.
^
abcMiniter, Frank (2007). The Politically Incorrect Guide to Hunting. Regnery Publishing. pp. 141 ff.
ISBN9781596985407.
OCLC647916418.
Sources
Dickson, Barney., Hutton, Jonathan., Adams, W. M. (2009). Recreational Hunting, Conservation and Rural Livelihoods. (= Conservation Science and Practice). Wiley-Blackwell,
ISBN9781444303179.
Gissibl, B. (2016). The conservation of luxury: Safari hunting and the consumption of wildlife in twentieth-century East Africa. In K. Hofmeester & B. Grewe (Eds.), Luxury in Global Perspective: Objects and Practices, 1600–2000 (Studies in Comparative World History, pp. 263–300). Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781316257913.011.
Jacoby, Karl (2001). Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation. Berkeley: University of California Press,
ISBN9780520282292.
Lovelock, Brent (2007). Tourism and the consumption of wildlife: hunting, shooting and sport fishing. London: Routledge.
ISBN978-0-203-93432-6.
van der Merwe, Peet; du Plessis, Lindie (2014). Game farming and hunting tourism. African Sun Media.
ISBN978-0-9922359-1-8.