A frequently forgotten fact:   Aldo Leopold, Wisconsin's first environmental son (though he was actually born in Iowa) was a dedicated hunter.  He especially loved hunting upland birds and waterfowl, and he believed that hunting must done in ways that foster the environment.
 
"The role of the environmentally-conscious sportsman was personified in Aldo Leopold," says Todd Smith, editor-in-chief of Outdoor Life.  "That's why Leopold was on the Outdoor Life masthead for three years in the 1930's, writing articles and essays about conserving our environment."
 
The seeds of Leopold's career as one of America's pioneer environmentalists and wildlife specialist lie with his father, Carl, an avid hunter.  In the late 19th century--and long before it became the norm--Carl was preaching and practicing a set of hunting ethics which included strict bag limits for game and not hunting threatened wildlife species.
 
Young Aldo took in these lessons, and this plus his later education at the Yale School of Forestry (graduating with a Master's degree in 1909) led Leopold to create his "land ethic."   Leopold's land ethic went beyond protecting and improving the environment, though of course both were very important.  As he wrote in A Sand County Almanac, the land ethic rested

upon a single premise:  that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts....The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively:  the land.

Leopold saw no contradiction between hunting and caring for the environment, and in fact believed that hunters had a special and necessary connection to the land and wildlife that "supercivilized" people simply didn't possess.
 
Hunting remained an important part of Leopold's life up to his death in April of 1948, when he perished while fighting a brush fire near his Sauk County cabin.