Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2025

Publication Title

H-Environment, H-Net Reviews

Pages

4 pp.

Abstract

[Introduction] The hunt has long occupied a central place in southern lore and literature. For generations, fathers and grandfathers initiated their sons into its rituals, teaching them to steady a rifle, bait a hook, and cast a line. In the twentieth century, William Faulkner and other writers elevated this long-held tradition into mythology, evoking both the exhilaration of the chase and the gothic romance of Mississippi’s pine forests. And, today, around 5.3 million southerners (of all races and genders) hold hunting licenses and organize their calendars around the season’s rhythms and associated social gatherings. Focusing on the Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, historian Julia Brock traces the dynamic evolution of southern hunting and its evolving relationship to the law, the land, and the early conservation movement. She demonstrates that hunting was never merely a matter of “tradition” but rather a contested practice increasingly shaped by Progressive and New Deal Era regulation. Between the 1890s and 1930s, state and federal fish and game laws, she argues, “determined which southerners could access land and prey, and why” (p. 2). As the author notes, “although not strictly a legal history, Closed Seasons foregrounds law and the social impact of a penal conservation practice on ordinary southerners. Drawing on multiple voices, the work bridges social, cultural, and environmental history with that of policy” (p. 3). Uniquely attuned to matters of race, class, and gender, Brock deftly shows how, when, and why the states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi adopted closed lands and closed seasons.

Original Publication Citation

Barnett, T. L. (2025). [Review of the book Closed seasons: The transformation of hunting in the modern south, by J. Brock]. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=62245

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