I am asking for my Uncle who is a fair chase hunter and an amateur historian who likes to read about American History and the history of hunting and land development in what is now the United States from pre-colonial days through the present. He knows, in loose terms, that fair chase was a concept invented by European nobility and some of the details around how it was brought to the United States largely through the efforts of Teddy Roosevelt, but he's interested in learning about it's early development and modern popularization in more detail.
Sources for further reading would be greatly appreciated as well. Thank you!
I think what your uncle is referring to is the idea "sportsmanship", and that certain methods for taking game are seen as more "sporting" than others. The idea of "fair chase" is a concept that didn't arrive until the late 20th century for very specific reason, but I'll touch on that later.
The idea of sportsmanship infact does go back to the European nobility. Nobility of the era did not need game to survive, rather they were interested in the shooting challenge of that game provided. Taking a deer on the run or a bird on the wing is a rather difficult task, and the number of game in the bag was supposed to represent a hunters ability with a gun or rifle. This lead to the development of driven game shooting, whether it be deer & boar in continental Europe or driven birds in the British Isles, and the purpose was the challenge and an appreciation for nature, not the simply the slaughter of wild life.
However, unscrupulous individuals would do things to reduce the challenge and artificially increase their bag, such as shooting birds on the ground rather than waiting for them to take flight, or shooting in late summer when young birds were still in their fledgling state. In 1890, Amory R. Starr said:
"The choice you make here will depend very largely on the type of man you are. I write this [article] for sportsman, not for the game butcher, whose idea of a successful day's sport is the number of birds bagged, whose gun is prized simply in proportion to it's capacity for exterminating game, and who esteems his dog merely for the number of birds he can find, point, and retrieve, regardless of the manner in which it is done. To this miscalled sportsman I have nothing to say, but I address the true sportsman, the one who enjoys a day's sport not so much for the destruction of life as for the pleasure he derives from each and every incident connected with it. This is the kind of man one should select as a companion for a days shooting on Bob Whites [quail]."
W. B. Leffingwell writes on the ideal of the sportsman when he says:
"For, acting on the solicitations of many of the sporting fraternity, who love the freshness of the field and the purity of the prairie winds, I bring into the world another book, ... [that will teach] there is nobility of character in the true sportsman, that will ever show itself, whether at home or in the field, and that our love of field sports does not arise from the desire to slaughter needlessly the feathered game, or mercilessly extinguish animal kind, but leads to the protection of game; and that, when the law is open to us, our pleasures are equally divided between bagging the birds, and seeing the dogs, filled with animation, bounding over hill and Dale, or standing entranced and petrified as they point the hidden game. To see the whirring birds, that cause our hearts to throb in fluttering excitement, to wonder over the fields in the warm, bidding springtime, when the earth is clothed in bridal raiments, or when the golden summer, rich in her harvest, has dotted the earth with sheaves of ripened grain - this is our enjoyment"
(Both of these articles can be read in the book "Shooting on Upland, Marsh, and Stream", compiled by W. B. Leffingwell)
As game became more and more scarce throughout the world, these ideals became the epitomized in Teddy Roosevelt's North American model of Conservation. These laws, among other things, prohibited the sale of game meats, established seasons to protect young game, established bag limits to prevent over pressure on stocks, and established taxes on hunting products like firearms & ammunition to fund government owned public lands and other public works projects.
Late in the 20th century, agriculture caught up with the animals of North America & Africa, allowing them to be breed and raised in captivity. This lead to the development of "high fence hunting" or "canned hunting", which is still a contentions issue amongst modern sportsman. High fence hunting is usually where a farmer raises game animals like whitetail deer to unnatural size, and then sells the rights to hunt them to the highest bidder. The idea of fair chase comes in contrast to these types of hunting operations, where hunters will only ever hunt wild, non-penned animals, and accepting the limitations associated with that.
Hope this is what you're looking for!