The Law of Field Sports: A Summary of the Rules of Law Affecting American Sportsmen (1886)

Nothing can be learned of George Putnam Smith personally from major biographic and bibliographical sources. However, he was a lawyer for he identifies himself as being a member of the New York Bar. Probably he was also a sportsman.The full title of Smith’s small work is The Law of Field Sports, A Summary of the Rules of Law Affecting American Sportsmen. In his Preface, Smith advises: The object of this little book is to provide the American sportsman with a succinct statement of the rules of law affecting him in the acquisition of his outfit and in the pursuit of game. As the country becomes thickly settled and the land is more generally cultivated or inclosed, the liberty which the sportsman has hitherto enjoyed of hunting or fishing where he chose is being restricted, and a knowledge of the legal limits of private land, of the rights of the owner and of the law of trespass, becomes more and more important. –Henry M. Reeves