Definition
GAME carries two distinct legal meanings:
1. Wild animals subject to hunting or taking. In this primary legal sense, game means birds and beasts of a wild nature that are objects of the chase — creatures ferae naturae pursued for sport, food, or profit. The precise scope of the term depends on applicable statute; absent statutory definition, courts have applied the ordinary meaning. At common law, no person could own wild game in the absolute sense; game belonged to the sovereign or the public until lawfully reduced to possession by capture. Game laws regulate who may take game, when, by what means, and in what quantities.
2. A sport or pastime played with cards, dice, or other contrivance. In this secondary sense, game refers to an activity organized around rules and typically involving chance, skill, or both. This meaning connects directly to gaming law and the regulation of gambling. See GAMING.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A playful or competitive activity; an activity described by a set of rules, especially for the purpose of entertainment, often competitive or having an explicit goal.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Crooked; lame; as, a game leg. [Colloquial] — Webster's 1913 also recognized game as wild animals hunted for sport or food, tracking closely with the legal sense.
The colloquial meaning ("a game leg") has no legal significance and can be ignored entirely in legal research. The broader modern sense — competitive activity, entertainment, sport — partially overlaps with the gaming-law meaning but diverges importantly: in law, game in the gaming context carries regulatory weight, implicating licensing, prohibition, and criminal liability that the ordinary word "game" does not.
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Common Confusion
GAME (wild animals) vs. GAME (gaming/gambling activity): These two legal meanings share a word but belong to entirely separate bodies of law. Researchers in game law are working in the domain of natural resources, property in wild animals, and public trust doctrine. Researchers in gaming law are working in the domain of gambling regulation, licensing, and criminal law. The same term appearing in a statute or case requires context to identify which body of law applies.
GAME vs. GAMING: The noun game in its pastime sense is the underlying activity; gaming is the act of playing a game of chance for stakes. Historically, all gaming involved a game, but not all games were gaming. Modern gaming law (particularly in the casino and lottery context) has largely absorbed game into gaming as a statutory term of art.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
As applied to wild animals, game has been organized across jurisdictions into several recognized categories:
Beasts of the forest: Deer, boar, and related large animals traditionally subject to royal forest law in England.
Beasts of chase: Animals (including deer, hares, and foxes) subject to the right of chase held by lords of manors.
Beasts and fowl of warren: Smaller animals and birds — hare, rabbit, pheasant, partridge — subject to the right of free warren.
Statutory game: Modern and historical statutes have specified enumerated species qualifying as game. English law under 1 & 2 Wm. IV. c. 32 listed hares, pheasants, partridges, grouse, heath or moor game, black game, and bustards. American statutes vary widely by state and era.
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Why It Matters in Research
The dual meaning creates real research hazards. A nineteenth-century case or statute using the word game may be addressing hunting rights, property in wild animals, or the public trust doctrine — or it may be addressing gambling. Context and surrounding vocabulary are essential.
For wildlife and natural resources research: The common law rule that game belongs to no one until reduced to possession (ferae naturae doctrine) was foundational to American game law but has been substantially modified by the public trust doctrine, under which states hold game in trust for the people. Cases and statutes from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reflect this transition. Researchers relying on older sources — including the historical dictionaries synthesized here — will encounter the older property-based framing, which modern law has largely displaced.
Statutory definitions govern: Because the specific animals qualifying as "game" vary by jurisdiction and period, historical cases from one state are unreliable guides to the coverage of another state's game laws. Always locate the applicable statutory definition. Bouvier notes this expressly: the term is understood in its ordinary sense absent statutory definition, and courts applied that ordinary sense narrowly or broadly depending on context.
For gaming law research: The connection between game and gaming is not merely etymological — early gaming statutes were often titled "game laws" or "laws against unlawful games," creating potential confusion with wildlife statutes in historical legal databases. Full-text searches on game in historical corpora will return mixed results from both bodies of law.
Jurisdictional development in the U.S.: Early American game law borrowed heavily from English common law and the English game statutes, but American states did not replicate the class-based structure of English game law (which tied hunting rights to land ownership qualifications). American game law developed instead through public ownership doctrines and increasingly detailed regulatory statutes. Rapalje & Lawrence reflects the English framework; American researchers should use it as background, not as direct authority.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on the wild-animals definition as the primary legal meaning, all citing Bacon's Abridgement and the ferae naturae principle from Blackstone (2 Bl. Com. 410). Burrill, Black's (both editions), and Bouvier are substantially identical on this core. The English statutory definition from 1 & 2 Wm. IV. c. 32 is cited across multiple sources as the clearest formal enumeration.
Anderson's Dictionary of Law is the most practically oriented of the group, noting that game in its most comprehensive sense includes beasts, birds, fowl, and fishes — a broader formulation than the other dictionaries adopt. Anderson also notes that game laws are designed to preserve insectivorous birds as well as species valuable for food and sport, reflecting the conservation rationale that was becoming more prominent in late nineteenth-century American law.
The gaming-activity meaning receives only a brief cross-reference in Black's first edition ("A sport or pastime played with cards, dice, or other contrivance. See GAMING"), which is the appropriate treatment: the full development belongs under GAMING.
What the historical sources collectively miss: They do not address the public trust doctrine's effect on state ownership of game, which was articulated most prominently in U.S. Supreme Court cases from the 1890s onward. Researchers using these dictionaries for modern game law questions should treat them as incomplete on the ownership question.
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Jurisdictional Note
English game law rested on a class-based structure tying hunting rights to land ownership and statutory qualifications; this framework does not translate to American law. American jurisdictions hold game in trust for the public through the state, and game codes are entirely statutory. Specific animals qualifying as protected or regulated game vary substantially across states and have changed significantly over time with endangered species legislation and conservation statutes.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Game Laws; Gaming and Gambling; Ferae Naturae; Public Trust Doctrine.
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