Agricultural History Review, Volume 48 Part 1 (2000), pp. 27–41

Historians have generally explained the pronounced seasonal pattern of nineteenth-century poaching in economic terms, emphasising the apparent correlation between annual peaks in offending and cyclical periods of unemployment and poverty. There has been little acknowledgement of the role nature played in determining that most poaching activity occurred in the autumn and winter months. This paper will use evidence from case studies of salmon and game poaching in Victorian Cumberland, Westmorland and Suffolk to suggest that ecological and environmental factors played a fundamental part in shaping the annual pattern of offending. Poaching was a crime often linked to poverty, but its seasonal timing usually owed more to practical considerations concerning both the suitability of the natural environment for hunting and the availability, maturity and marketability of the quarry. 

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