Hunting license
A hunting license is a regulatory or legal mechanism to control recreational and sports hunting.
Hunting may be regulated informally by unwritten law, self-restraint, a moral code, or by governmental laws.
The purposes for requiring hunting licenses include the protection of natural treasures, and raising tax revenue (often, but not always, to dedicated funds).
History
Hunting licenses are millennia old.
Amongst the first hunting laws in the Common law tradition was from the time of William the Conqueror (reign in England starting 1066). In the Peterborough Chronicle entry of 1087, The Rime of King William reported in verse that:
Whoever killed a hart or a hind
Should be blinded.
This was because "William the Conqueror's moral life lives in the landscape. His control of the forest mirrors his control of the people, and his establishment of hunting laws reveals the dissonance between his love for animals and his contempt for the populace: ...
He loved the wild animals
As if he were their father.