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rabbits, foxes, and gazelles in the mountain valleys and empty steppe.”
Their pursuit would“suffice for battue training”that would enable the
troopers to “move through the wilderness.” Fusengga, the military
governor of Heilongjiang, made similar observations about inexperi-
enced Solon-Ewenki and Dagur troops in 1764.^98
Such“predator-prey”networks delineate what the Qianlong emperor
meant in a 1754 poem by“close relations”(qin) that“construct a suitable
similitude”(jian kan tongli) with Mongol vassals to create an“intimacy”
(jinqing) that cannot come from“loose reigns on the borderlands.”^99
While expressed in hierarchical, and even Manchu nativist, terms, these
relations are rooted in multiethnic Inner Asian hunting practices. Conse-
quently“close relations”reflect and reinforce a common venery subcul-
ture of “Mongols and Manchus who mainly hunt with bows from
horseback.”This Manchu-Mongol practice is thus distinguished from
the“Oirads and East Turkestanis”who mainly“practice falconry.”^100
In this sense, Manchu-Mongol venery was an exclusive bond even within
the wider Inner Asian hunting context.
This bond also included concern for sustainability. The Kangxi
emperor, for example, decreed in 1682 that“spring being the time that
wild animals are pregnant,”shooting female deer within encirclements
would be prohibited then. This was a more practical manifestation of the
poetic sentiment expressed in the Qianlong emperor’s 1757 poem“Let-
ting Deer Go.”The poem’sfirst lines indicate that Muran had a role in
managing wild animal populations:“If female deer number beyond the
norm, / Lift the battue, / Let them cut out for the underbrush, / Having
learned thus from King Xuan’s example of herding.”This point is elab-
orated on in the commentary that follows, which states that“the beasts of
Mu-lan are basically like those herded in a game park. They are inten-
tionally reserved to breed and also, when taken, are intentionally not
entirely hunted out.”^101 By maintaining conditions neither completely
domesticated nor entirely feral, preserve managers were constructing a
particular type of animal“identity”that would in turn produce a corres-
ponding human identity, both in service of the venery vital to the Qing’s
exercise of empire. Some complications in the formation of this human
identity are revealed in a 1717 decree by the Kangxi emperor that
Mongols, rather than“New Manchus”(Xin Manzhou; Ma:Ice Manju),
were to be used on Muran patrols. The emperor was concerned that these
newly recruited northeastern indigenous peoples would not only neglect
enforcement of hunting prohibitions on trespassers, but would pursue
game on behalf of their own officers.^102
Qing Fields in Theory and Practice 53
