It includes: Until hand-held guns were invented, sport hunting was largely for the deer or wild boar (by hounds or bow-and-arrow, but Ælfric of Eynsham's Colloquium written in Anglo-Saxon times speaks of the usual way to catch deer being to drive them into a net), or hare (by a fast dog); the Colloquium mentions two stags and a wild boar as a typical day's catch.
What are now called game birds were caught by falconry, or had to be netted or snared or trapped or limed by a fowler employed by the owner of the hunting right.
When the fowler used falconry, he seems to have needed to catch and train his hawks; the Colloquium mentions: Most game preservation and poaching centered on deer.
Mantraps and spring guns were often deployed against poachers, but often caught wrong people: for example, a parson "botanizing", and a naval admiral's three sons who entered a game covert for an innocent reason; if a hunted fox went into a game covert the foxhunt sometimes lost hounds to devices meant to catch poachers' lurchers, and horses by stepping in mantraps.
As the Industrial Revolution advanced, large gangs of coalminers and factory workmen sometimes made poaching forays in numbers that forced the gamekeepers' men to back off and watch, such as: Through this time, selling game was illegal, but there was a widespread undercover system to transport legally shot and poached game (e.g. in the luggage compartments of stagecoaches) to traders in towns, much of it to Leadenhall Street in London.