Definition
Latin: "the right of hunting and fishing." A term from Roman and common law property doctrine denoting the privilege of taking wild game and fish from land or water. In historical English and American property law, jus venandi et piscandi described either a recognized right held by a landowner as incident to ownership, or a distinct grant of hunting and fishing privileges over another's land — functioning as a species of profit à prendre.
As a landowner's incident right, the doctrine held that ownership of land carried with it the right to take ferae naturae (wild animals) present on that land. As a granted right, it could be conveyed expressly, allowing the holder to enter another's land to hunt or fish — a right enforceable against the grantor and running with the land under appropriate circumstances.
Common Confusion
Jus venandi et piscandi is sometimes loosely equated with a mere license to hunt or fish, but the distinction matters legally. A license is a personal, revocable permission; jus venandi et piscandi, when granted formally, operates as a profit à prendre — a real property interest, not a personal privilege, and not revocable at will. Researchers encountering the term in older conveyancing documents should resist reading it as a simple permission and consider whether a full property interest was intended.
The term should also not be confused with riparian rights or fishery rights in the narrower sense. Riparian doctrine governs access to and use of watercourses by adjacent landowners; jus venandi et piscandi addresses the taking of animals and fish as property, and may arise independently of riparian ownership.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Two functional modes appear in historical sources:
1. Incident to ownership. The right to hunt and fish as a natural consequence of dominion over land. No separate grant is required; it flows from fee ownership.
2. Grant over another's land. A profit à prendre conveying the right to enter another's land and take game or fish. This is the more legally complex form and generates questions of scope, exclusivity, duration, and transferability.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in older legal materials — pre-20th century treatises, colonial-era grants, land patents, and English common law sources imported into American doctrine. Researchers working with early American land records, especially in states with substantial hunting and fishing traditions codified in property grants (the South, the Great Lakes region, the Pacific Northwest), may encounter the phrase in deeds, charters, or litigation records.
The critical research trap is temporal displacement: the modern law of hunting and fishing rights is largely statutory and regulatory, governed by state wildlife codes and conservation law, and the old property-based framework has been substantially displaced. A researcher finding jus venandi et piscandi in a contemporary dispute should look to how the relevant state has treated historical profits à prendre — some states have preserved them as valid encumbrances on title; others have effectively extinguished unenforced historical grants.
The phrase also appears in historical English sources concerning royal forests and the Crown's reservation of hunting rights — a context entirely separate from private landowner rights. Care is required when following the term across English and American authorities, since the doctrinal setting differs substantially.
Corpus researchers should note that secondary discussion of this term often appears under profit à prendre, ferae naturae, and game law headings rather than under the Latin phrase itself. Index searches limited to the Latin will undercount the relevant material.
Historical Dictionary Support
All four historical dictionary sources — Black's (1st and 2nd editions), Bouvier's, and Rapalje & Lawrence — define the term identically and minimally: "the right of hunting and fishing." None of the sources elaborate on the distinction between ownership-incident rights and granted profits, nor do they address the relationship to ferae naturae doctrine or riparian law. This uniformity reflects the term's role as a definitional entry rather than a doctrinal one in these dictionaries — the sources assume the reader will locate substantive treatment in treatises on property and game law.
Black's 1st and 2nd editions append the maxim "Jus vendit quod usus approbavit" ("The law dispenses what use has approved"), attributed to Ellesmere's Postnati. This maxim is a separate entry that appears to have been typeset immediately following the jus venandi et piscandi entry and is not substantively connected to the hunting and fishing right; researchers should not read it as a gloss on the term's meaning.
Bouvier's is the most concise of the four, offering no additional context. Rapalje & Lawrence reproduces the same text as Black's with no independent elaboration. None of these historical sources address jurisdictional variation or the displacement of the common law right by statutory game regulation — a gap that reflects the period of publication, not the full legal picture.
Jurisdictional Note
The underlying property right survives in American jurisdictions primarily as a matter of deed construction and state property law. Most states have layered statutory wildlife regulations over the common law framework, but private hunting and fishing rights conveyed by grant remain enforceable as property interests in many jurisdictions. English law developed a more elaborate doctrinal structure around several types of fishery rights (free fishery, common of fishery, several fishery) that American courts did not uniformly adopt.