Definition
The unlawful taking or destruction of game — birds, animals, or fish — on land belonging to another person without right or permission. Historically, the offense encompassed both the unauthorized entry onto land for the purpose of taking game and the act of taking or destroying game itself. In English law, the offense was most often associated with nighttime conduct and frequently involved armed trespassers.
In modern usage, poaching has expanded well beyond its common-law roots to describe the illegal taking of wildlife in violation of statutory conservation and wildlife protection laws, including hunting out of season, exceeding bag limits, taking protected species, and commercial wildlife trafficking. Contemporary poaching statutes are regulatory and environmental in character, not rooted in the property rights of landowners the way the historical offense was.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle of "poach" — the act of taking game or fish illegally.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To steal or pocket game; to trespass on another's preserves for the purpose of taking game unlawfully; also, to take game or fish by illegal means.
The common and legal meanings track each other closely in their core sense, but the gap worth noting is one of framing: in ordinary usage, poaching evokes wildlife crime generally, including illegal hunting anywhere. In its strict historical legal sense, the offense was defined by trespass onto another's land and the property interest of the landowner in game, not by environmental harm or wildlife conservation. Modern statutory law has largely replaced the landowner-centered framework with a state-centered one, where the public — not the private landowner — is the aggrieved party.
Common Confusion
Poaching is sometimes conflated with simple trespass or larceny, but it is a distinct offense. Trespass concerns unlawful entry onto land; larceny concerns unlawful taking of property. Poaching historically combined elements of both but was treated as a separate category, partly because game did not have the same legal status as ordinary personal property — it was res nullius (belonging to no one) until lawfully reduced to possession, and the right to take it was controlled by landowner privilege or royal grant. Modern wildlife statutes resolve this by vesting ownership of wild animals in the state, making poaching a regulatory offense against public resources rather than a hybrid trespass-property crime.
Why It Matters in Research
The historical legal dictionaries treat poaching as substantially or entirely an English law matter. Burrill explicitly flags it as "rather a popular than a legal one" — meaning it appeared more in common usage and journalism than in formal legal pleadings, which would have charged trespass, riot, or specific statutory violations instead. Researchers working with English common-law sources should be alert to this: you may not find "poaching" as a charged offense in case records; look instead for indictments under the Game Laws, the Night Poaching Acts, or the Day Trespass statutes.
For American legal research, the common-law offense of poaching has limited direct relevance. U.S. wildlife law is almost entirely statutory and varies substantially by state. Federal involvement comes through statutes such as the Lacey Act (governing interstate trafficking in illegally taken wildlife) and the Endangered Species Act. Researchers should not assume that English common-law definitions of poaching import into American jurisdictions.
The landowner-versus-public-ownership distinction is critical for historical research: English law protected the game rights of landed proprietors; American law, following the public trust doctrine, vests wildlife ownership in the state on behalf of the public. Cases and treatises from the two traditions are not interchangeable on this point.
In international and environmental law contexts, "poaching" now encompasses large-scale commercial wildlife trafficking and is treated as a serious transnational crime, entirely separate from the misdemeanor-level trespass offense described in the historical dictionaries.
Historical Dictionary Support
The major historical dictionaries are in close agreement on the core definition: unlawful entry on another's land to take or destroy game, typically at night. Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Burrill track Stephens's Commentaries closely. Bouvier adds the specific detail that Bouvier's definition requires the offender to be armed and operating at nighttime — a narrower formulation than Black's, which does not make nighttime or arms a definitional requirement but notes that nighttime is the usual circumstance.
Rapalje & Lawrence is the most candid, calling it a "popular name" for the offense, consistent with Burrill's observation that the term is more colloquial than strictly legal. No historical dictionary treats poaching as a term of art with precise legal elements comparable to, say, burglary or larceny — it describes a cluster of statutory offenses under English game law rather than a single common-law crime with settled elements.
What the historical sources miss entirely is the modern regulatory and international dimension. None addresses wildlife conservation statutes, protected species, or the public trust doctrine — the frameworks that now govern the subject in most jurisdictions.
Jurisdictional Note
In England, poaching was heavily regulated by a succession of Game Laws and Night Poaching Acts, with punishments tied to circumstances (daytime vs. nighttime, armed vs. unarmed, number of offenders). In the United States, wildlife law is primarily state law, administered through fish and wildlife agencies; federal law applies to interstate commerce in wildlife, migratory birds, and endangered species. Researchers should identify the relevant jurisdiction and era before applying any historical definition.