The Brotherhood of the Jungle Cock bound together people who loved angling around a shared commitment to conserve and restore American game fishes so the sport could continue for later generations. Its creed pledged that members would keep their creel limits below legal restrictions and within nature’s bounty, recognizing that they held only a life estate in the outdoors and bore a moral responsibility to pass it on unspoiled. Each member undertook every year to take at least one boy fishing and teach him the responsibilities that would soon be his. Holding that moral law rose above legal statutes and that example was the surest teacher, they pledged to conduct themselves on the stream in ways that protected this shared heritage for others.