There is a very small natural resource economic literature on natural reserves and hunting that consider potential stress effects of hunting on the game population and its migration in and out of hunting and reserve areas. In this literature private optimal solution with and without stress effects is compared. There is no consideration on the social optimum. In this paper we consider both private and social optimum in the case where two-way migration between the hunting and
reserve areas occur. Thus, migration depends on both hunting pressure and relative population densities. In the social optimum we reach ambiguous results when comparing a situation with and without stress effects. A pure stress effect implies that the population level in a wildlife reserve increase and the population level in the hunting area decrease in optimum. However, this change in optimal population levels increase migration from the wildlife reserve to the hunting area in the social optimum. The total effect is, therefore, ambiguous. For the private
optimum open-access is assumed and exactly the same results arise as in the social optimum when comparing a situation with and without stress effects.