Hunting | South Carolina Public Radio

"H" is for Hunting. Hunting has long been an important component of the Palmetto State’s culture. Indians hunted a wide assortment of game for food from as early as 13,000 B.C.E. Colonists also depended upon game for food. By the time of the Revolution, Carolinians recognized the detrimental effects of unrestricted hunting and enacted laws to restrict night hunting and to establish seasons for different game animals. In the 1920s, wealthy northerners purchased lowcountry plantations as game preserves. Locals—white and black—created formal and informal hunting clubs. Since 1994, wildlife research, policy development, and law enforcement have been under the auspices of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Hunting remains one of the state’s most important forms of outdoor recreation. Hunting traditions established in the eighteenth century have persisted virtually unchanged into the twenty-first.