The IIRC have done something about it. You should have seen it in the Mesolithic, before we had a significant impact on the Ilk numbers. Their heads were so vast they blocked out the sun, but but the hunters soon tired of the lush paradise that was Scotland of the time, and slaughtered enough of the marauding beasts to create piles of the dead thousands of feet high, which in these sadly rational times, we refer to as the Highlands.

Of course, these were the much larger wild Ilk. The ones we currently see have been crossbreeding with escaped domestic ilk, which are much smaller, and smell less. The rules were introduced to preserve the remaining few wild ilk, and because Morlington crescent had not yet been invented, as the London underground had not been constructed yet.

If a peasant was found hunting Ilk in contravention of the rules, then he had to make up a rule allowing his actions on the spot that was deemed to be sufficiently convincing, or would be condemned to some horrible fate, such as exile to England, being forced to marry the Lairds really ugly daughter, or something else, depending on the mood of the laird.