CALIFORNIA FISH AND GAME. 121 



fence to keep the pastured stock from wandering. But when the 

 annual floods come, pasturing is at an end and the duck club becomes 

 a thing of the past. 



Now the owner of valuable lowland grazing areas must certainly 

 have the right to utilize those lands for whatever purpose he desires 

 as long as he does not infringe upon the rights of adjoining property 

 owners. If he wishes to prohibit hunting altogether he may post his 

 land according to law, as does the upland owner. The latter certainly 

 does not care to allow indiscriminate hunting by irresponsilile hunters 

 and suffer the possible chance of injury to his grazing stock. This 

 upland owner is very desirous of maintaining the law that enables him 

 to keep hunters off his land, yet he raises his voice in anathemas against 

 the ''duck clubs." Plis execrations are born of thoughtlessness. If 

 a law is good for the upland farmer, why is it not good for the 

 lowlander"? If this lowland farmer wishes to rent the hunting priv- 

 ileges of his land and to so safeguard his interests that he can hold 

 his lessees responsi])]e for all damage done by them, is it possible to 

 prevent him from so doing? 



This lowhind farmer leases to a club the sole and exclusive right 

 for them to enter upon his premises for the purpose of hunting. 

 There is written in that lease an iron-clad clause to the effect that the 

 members of the club, jointly and severally, are responsible for any 

 damage accruing to either his real or personal property contained in 

 the premises. Since this owner has granted to a few responsible 

 people the all and exclusive right to hunt thereon, does it follow that 

 he should extend that privilege to every applicant? If such were 

 the law, how would the owner be remunerated for the loss of stock? 

 Could ten days in the county jail for a stock-killer bring back to this 

 outraged owner one thoroughbred animal? 



Consider the position of the upland farmer without the protection 

 of the trespass hiw. We will take, for example, a hunter who goes 

 out to one of these upUind ranches wherein stock is j^astured. Within 

 an hour he bags the limit of (luail. lie immediately returns to town and 

 spreads the good news. Can you hazard a guess as to the number of 

 nimrods present upon that ranch the next morning and can you esti- 

 mate the probable death rate among the cattle caused by those hunters 

 who "thought the calf was a covey of quail just rising?" If we take 

 away the right of the upland farmer to post "NO HUNTING" signs 

 and the protection of the trespass law, no rancher in any game country 

 could keep even so much as a milch cow or a single horse in his pasture. 

 But he enjoys the protection of the same law that prevents indiscrimi- 

 nate hunting upon the property of the lowland farmer. 



The erroneous idea of w^hat duck clubs really are has made some 

 people conjure up in their minds a veritable ogre. People who have 

 never thought of them save that "they were a curse to the country" 

 believe they are vast stretches of water and tule of unknown depth 

 with here and there a bleak little island for the hunters to stand 

 upon. They can see, in their mind-picture, attendants busily strew- 

 ing wheat. Vice and other grain over the water to attract the water- 

 fowl which fly over in a sun-obscuring cloud and alight upon the 

 water. They also see the hunters shooting from early morn until 



