As every sportsman in Pennsylvania knows — and as I only recently discovered — hunting is highly regulated.

There are training requirements; bureaucracies to navigate; an encyclopedia of ever-changing rules; and serious penalties for breaking those rules.

In fact, hunting’s a lot like driving a car, another activity that the state takes an aggressive role in regulating.

It’s important that everyone understands and follows the rules of the road. Those rules may feel cumbersome at times, but they’re there for our collective safety. So, too, the inspection regimes for our cars, and the licensing requirements for drivers. We submit ourselves to these controls — grumbling, from time to time, about the nuisance and expense — because we know that everyone else on the road is submitting to them, and that we’re all better off for it.

The rules of hunting are there to ensure personal safety; to create a more or less level playing field for hunters; and to manage the state’s wildlife in such a way that it not only survives, but thrives.

Once known as “Game Wardens,” today’s Wildlife Conservation Officers (WCOs) are charged with upholding the laws that protect natural resources and regulate outdoor recreation. Theirs, according to the recruitment page on the PA Game Commission’s website, is a “paramilitary lifestyle.”

I’m all for the professionalization of the ranks of WCOs, but when I saw that phrase, I couldn’t help but think of another kind of wildlife regulator, now practically extinct, who used to be a regular fixture on hunting estates.

I’m talking about the gamekeepers of old, whose job it was to ensure the success of the master’s hunt, whatever the cost.

I don’t claim to be an expert on gamekeepers. In the course of some recent research on my next novel, I just happened to stumble across an amazing little book titled, A Gamekeeper’s Note-book, by Owen Jones and Marcus Woodward, published in London in 1910.

Gamekeeping in the Edwardian era was a private affair. Each estate hired its own gamekeeper, whose salary wasn’t much more than an average ploughman’s, but whose pay was often supplemented, if the hunting parties were successful, by generous tips.

It was in the gamekeeper’s interest to make sure there were plenty of pheasant to bag. To that end, not only did he manage a breeding program of hens and cocks, but he also endeavored to eliminate as many of the game birds’ natural predators as possible.

Some gamekeepers took this mandate very seriously. Here’s a list, compiled over three years, in scrupulous detail, of the “vermin bag” of one unnamed 19th century gamekeeper from Glengarry, Inverness-shire:

11 foxes, 198 wild cats, 246 martens, 106 polecats, 301 stoats and weasels, 67 badgers, 48 otters, 78 house cats going wild, 27 white-tailed sea eagles, 15 golden eagles, 18 ospreys, 98 blue hawks or peregrine falcons, 7 orange-legged falcons, 211 hobby hawks, 75 kites, 5 marsh harriers, 63 goshawks, 285 common buzzards, 462 kestrels, 78 merlin hawks, 83 hen harriers, 6 gerfalcons, 9 ash-colored or long blue-tailed hawks, 1431 carrion crows, 475 ravens, 35 horned owls, 71 common fern owls (nightjars), 3 golden owls, 8 magpies.

Imagine if today’s WCOs feverishly stalked Pennsylvania’s wild places, shooting eagles, cats, and owls, all in the interest of improving the hunt!

When The Gamekeeper’s Note-Book was written, the sportsman’s ideal was a day of relatively easy shooting, in comfort and style, with a support staff of guides, bearers, and beaters. A plentiful supply of pheasant, the king of game birds, was considered essential. Estate owners thought nothing of distorting an entire ecosystem to deliver a gentleman’s entertainment.

In fact, at the time, the word “ecosystem” didn’t even exist.

Today’s approach to wildlife management is much more holistic — and much more democratic. I’m glad of the rules; glad that there are brave enforcement officers willing to confront armed poachers; glad that one of the goals is the preservation of all wildlife, as opposed to the single-minded destruction of one highly prized species.

Things are a lot more complicated these days. Hunting is as much a public endeavor as a private one. There are licensing revenues to consider, all kinds of forms to process, statistics to compile at the end of the season. I get all that.

But it sure would be nice if you didn’t need a PhD to fill out an antlerless deer license application!