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This chapter explores how incidents of rural crime, especially illegal hunting, can be seen as a form of political protest, particularly against environmental regulations. It presents the theoretical and conceptual insights from historical studies of wildlife crime and applies them to current issues, drawing in particular on insights from anthropology, human geography and political science. As conservationists decry such actions as backward, uncivilised, wanton and harmful, those local people often see it as a legitimate act of resistance against oppression. Placing rural and wildlife crime in the context of broader rural politics and conflicts, particularly class-based struggles over rural livelihoods, reveals alternative rationales for these acts, and helps explain what happens and why. Studying wildlife crime as political protest in a rural context poses a number of methodological and ethical challenges. While there is a …