small game hunting
- noun
- Many families enjoy small game hunting during the fall season for food.
- small game hunting license
Examples
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Hunting customs also changed; small game hunting and fishing became exclusively male activities.
Academic text (2000) -
One problem I experienced with every Paliyan group, in forest and frontier alike, was ascertaining the frequency and effectiveness of small game hunting.
Academic text (1993) -
The change to Mesolithic and Neolithic small-game hunting and animal husbandry occurred gradually, over a much longer time than in Europe.
Academic text (2000) -
On weekends, John often goes small game hunting to catch rabbits and squirrels.
-
The local community organized a festival to celebrate small game hunting and its traditions.
Synonyms
Chasing and killing wild animals for food, fur, or sport
The activity of chasing and killing wild animals for food or sport
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun phrase is fully compositional: 'small' restricts the size/scale of 'game' (animals pursued) and 'hunting' names the activity, so the phrase means hunting of small animals. This straightforward combination follows normal English modification patterns and is cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words should understand it.
Etymology
The noun small game hunting comes from the older use of game to mean 'wild animals' that people hunted, with small showing size and hunting meaning the chase. So today small game hunting means 'the chasing or shooting of small wild animals or birds for sport or food'.