9 



Commercial Aspects of 

 Sport Fishing 



Man\' outdoorsmen look with distaste upon the commercialization of 

 outdoor recreation. These people search for solitude in the out of doors— 

 an opportunity to get awav from machines and man-made irritations. In 

 the 1930's, during the time when Aldo Leopold was Professor of Game 

 Management at the University of Wisconsin, he acquired a piece of land 

 near Baraboo, Wisconsin, where he and his family could go to escape 

 from the frustrations and noise of a mechanized environment. Tliere, in 

 a rustic cabin, they slept in straw-filled bunks and cooked in kettles hung 

 above an open hearth. The situation was primitive, but Professor Leopold 

 found that it provided a wholesome counterbalance to everyday living. 



However, few people are willing to dispense with the comforts of their 

 mechanized niches to follow a homesteader's routine. Also, it is difficult 

 to escape from a human-dominated environment unless one searches out 

 the poorest and roughest land areas of the East, or travels west of the 

 Mississippi. Many people have lived a lifetime without getting away 

 from clipped lawns and paved highways. Their children deface the wood- 

 lands when they visit state parks or forest preserves, because they have 

 never learned to appreciate a natural environment and to them an un- 

 trimmed and uncultivated landscape "doesn't belong to anybody." 



Recently more urban people are fulfilling "basic" urges by camping out. 

 Living in a tent and cooking over a camp stove is so much less expensive 

 than patronizing motels and restaurants, that campers can afford to go to 

 places previously considered unattainable. Others, who have more money 

 to spend, camp out because they want to break from the stereotyped 

 pattern of living or because their children would rather travel that way. 

 Moreover, campers have more money for boats, trailers, outboard motors, 

 and fishing tackle. 



Supervisors of state and national forests are well aware of this rather 



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