<P> The concept and the popularization of the term "fair chase" is credited to Theodore Roosevelt and perpetuated by the Boone and Crockett Club, a conservation organization of Roosevelt's creation . </P> <P> Ethics, or a code of conduct, in hunting first emerged centuries ago among European hunters who were primarily the wealthy landowners and royalty . While the commoner hunted to stay alive, the aristocrat hunted for sport, and it was this sporting approach that separated the two . These ethics did not transfer to the majority of immigrants that settled in the New World . Basic human survival and commercial enterprises had no room for a hunting ethic . After two hundred years of the unregulated taking of wildlife by subsistence, recreational, and commercial market hunters, the negative effects were inescapable . By the end of this "era of extermination", wildlife and especially big game populations were in dismal condition . Some species had already been lost to extinction and many others were on the brink . </P> <P> In the early part of the 20th century, a sense of pride and accomplishment began to emerge among sportsmen that came with their newly accepted responsibility to conserve . Doing right by the game being hunted meant working with conservation and population recovery efforts, including the creation of the National Wildlife Refuge System . As for the hunt itself, using restraint shifted the emphasis of measuring success from the quantity of game taken to the quality of the chase . The hunting experience became more important than the number killed, and success was now more memorable because the hunting experience became sustainable in the long term . </P> <P> The earliest recorded North American usage of the term "fair chase" is in the fifth article of the Boone and Crockett Club constitution, adopted in February 1888 . At this time in American history, there were no laws governing the talking of game for food or for sport . Water - killing deer (driving deer with hounds or pushers into lakes where hunters waited in boats to either shoot, club, or cut the throats of deer) was also a widespread practice, especially in the Adirondack Mountains . </P>

What is one of the standards of fair chase