Game Administration 253 



mere exclusion of the public. This attitude of course merely reflects the attitude 

 of the average hunter, from whom their financial support is derived. 



Most State game departments and many hunters impute a sort of moral 

 obligation for the farmer to allow public hunting in exchange for the restocking 

 of his land at public expense. This attitude disregards the fact that restocking 

 alone will not produce a game supply, and that under the license system no State 

 can possibly restock even pheasants at a rate sufficient to produce an adequate 

 supply. One license will only buy one pheasant, or one-third of a quail, whereas 

 it permits the owner to kill from a dozen to a hundred of each. 



The average State game department has no program for relieving the farmer 

 from vandalism or over-shooting except the "education" of the shooting public. 

 It is probably something more than a mere personal opinion to here observe that 

 even if such "education" constitutes a sufficient cure for vandalism (which is 

 doubtful) it can hardly constitute a means for limiting the total kill on each unit 

 of land to its productive capacity. Only management can do that. 



The attitude of farm organizations is of course favorable to posting. The 

 individual farmer, however, seems to feel some personal reluctance to post, and an 

 even greater personal reluctance to charge, else both these practices would be 

 more prevalent than they actually are at the present time. The evidence already 

 presented on the prevalence of posting and charging seems to indicate that the 

 individual farmer posts only after he is driven to it, that is, only after the number 

 and behavior of unpermitted hunters become intolerable. 



The individual and group attitude of farmers toward management can not 

 as yet be stated, except by pure conjecture. As a rule they do not know what 

 management is. Here is one of the most astonishing incidents observed during 

 the survey: I was introduced to a highly educated dirt-farmer, who was so keen 

 for game conservation that he drove 20 miles to town each week to attend a meet- 

 ing of his local chapter of the Izaak Walton League. I asked him how the game 

 fared on his farm. He replied that he had hardly any, in spite of the fact that 

 he allowed no shooting. I asked him about the cover, and learned he had re- 

 cently cleared off the only remaining cover on his place a strip of brushy timber 

 along a creek bank. It was apparently a revelation to him that this had anything 

 to do with his game crop. He apparently regarded his prohibition of shooting as 

 the only thing he could do for his game. 



The attitude of the non-shooting conservationist is clearly in favor of posting, 

 but probably opposed to charging. Very few protectionists realize that game is 

 determined by anything but shooting and artificial feeding. 



Trespass Laws. Nothing more forcibly illustrates the opportunism of the 

 average hunter than his attitude toward trespass laws. 



If we want the farmer to raise a game crop, it is A B C logic to encourage 

 him to prevent overshooting of his seed stock. This is true quite regardless of 

 one's views on the moot question of whether and how the farmer should be com- 

 pensated for the shooting privilege. 



