>>514486914Things were very different. There was no mass breeding of cows, chickens and pigs for food so they were far more dependant on hunting. Forests in Europe were, as opposed to common belief, smaller during Medieval times than in the 21st century as wood was both the main source of energy and the main construction material for houses, vehicles, tools and boats.
So not only were you stealing from the local lords, wasting extremely valuable resources for the community (meat, horns/antlers and hides), you were also taking the God's given gift of hunting to the nobility for yourself.
Resource management was a matter of life and death, that's why stealing and poaching were taken so seriously, and sometimes viewed as worse than beating your neighbor to a pulp.
Fun fact: very soon after the French Revolution, Napoleon created a hunting passport (and then a hunting permit) limiting the right to hunt to only a couple of people, and during specific times of the year. As it turned out, people could not be trusted with hunting and some species came close to extinct in less than a decade.
