November, 1921 
FOREST AND STREAM 
505 
EDUCATION AND 
CONSERVATION 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream : 
W E are hearing a great deal these 
days about the value of education. 
The children in the schools are taught 
that the birds are their friends and that 
it is quite wrong to think of them sim- 
ply as targets. This teaching is already 
bearing fruit and we find the children 
much less inclined to kill anything that 
may come in their way. 
There is other teaching being done 
just now which seems just a bit danger- 
ous. I refer to some of the agitation of 
the trespass notice question. Some of 
the sporting magazines are urging co- 
operation with the landowners and, at 
the same time, declaring that the farm- 
er who puts up a trespass notice be- 
cause he has had his crops destroyed 
season after season is taking away 
something which belongs to the people 
of the city, not because they have done 
anything to earn it or to protect it but 
simply because they have elected not 
to live in the country. 
Certainly co-operation of the hunters 
and fishermen with the owners of the 
land is the only thing which can save 
our quail, ruffed grouse and brook 
trout. Just as certainly the way not 
to get co-operation is to tell the city 
man that the farmer is a robber because 
he avails himself of the little protection 
that the law gives him against van- 
dals. 
I contend that the right to cross my 
land in Wayne County, New York, is 
mine, and that every one who does so 
should feel that he is accepting a privi- 
lege rather than asserting a right, and 
act accordingly. 
Before going farther it may be well 
to show clearly that I consider that 
there are two classes of landowners. 
Both live in the country or are there 
part of the time. The difference is in 
their point of view. The one very large 
group is made up of the farmers and 
the business men of the small towns. 
Their interests are in the country. The 
other, fortunately a very small group, 
is made up of wealthy persons who have 
bought “country places” and feel deep- 
ly hurt to think that any one should 
dare to cross their land without their 
permission. Their city land is thus 
sacred and they want their country land 
kept the same. They lose sight of the 
fact that they pay no attention to 
boundary lines when they are hunting 
or fishing. Their trespass notices are 
not put up for protection but for ex- 
clusion. 
The real country landowners consid- 
er trespass notices a nuisance even 
when they are driven to put them up. 
They use them only as a last resort to 
protect their property and not, as some 
very recent writers would have us be- 
lieve, simply to hog. the fishing or hunt- 
ing. The damage they see done would 
often be called malicious mischief in 
the cities. 
I do not believe that one half of one 
per cent of the farmers of this country 
are anything but ardent conservation- 
ists. They want to increase the game 
on their land and the fish in their 
streams. But, at the same time, they 
want the hunters and fishermen who 
are their guests to come up to the front 
door and be recognized. 
If the sporting magazines would 
spend as much energy telling the boys 
and girls who are just starting to go 
out into the woods that when they go 
on a farmer’s land they are his guests 
and that he is entitled to as consider- 
ate treatment as they would expect 
from a guest in their own homes, they 
would do much more good than can pos- 
sibly come from shedding oceans of ink 
in howling over verhoten notices. 
A person who goes to a farmer’s 
house and asks permission to cross his 
land will rarely be refused unless the 
fellows who have gone there before 
have been simply vandals. 
It is my personal belief that the one 
thing which the sportsmen of the coun- 
try can do to increase the game and 
fish and hasten the return of really good 
free hunting is to preach and PRAC- 
TICE the idea of ALWAYS asking per- 
mission before crossing any man’s land. 
Conditions in New York have become 
so bad that last Winter the farmers 
caused to be introduced in the New 
York Legislature a bill requiring writ- 
ten permission to hunt or fish on any 
farmer’s land, whether posted or not. 
The sporting papers at once called this 
“vicious” or worse and set out to fight 
it. It seems to me that it would have 
been much more to the point for them 
to have admitted freely that conditions 
are bad and to have urged the sports- 
men to start cleaning house of the ten 
percent or so of their number that is 
the cause of the trouble. The sports- 
men can do it but they can not do it 
by saying they are all lily white and 
that the vandalism is the work of the 
foreign born element of a few of our 
larger cities. The truth of the mat- 
ter is that the worst offenders often 
come in the most expensive automo- 
biles. 
A few years ago the people who 
wanted to ride in automobiles were in 
a similar position. A small percentage 
of their number was violating every 
rule of courtesy or even common sense. 
The whole country took up the matter 
and we were assailed by good advice 
on every side. The results are plainly 
to be seen on any road. Last Summer 
I drove several thousand miles on 
crowded roads and do not believe I saw 
ten cases of lack of consideration for 
the other fellow. Perhaps there were 
twice as many cases of carelessness, 
many of them due to lack of experience. 
Is it too much to hope that a similar 
result might be attained in the case of 
the farmer and the hunter? 
Alfred C. Weed, New York. 
BAIT-CASTING and “POLE- 
FISHING” 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream : 
T O LOOK over the sportsman’s maga- 
A zines one would think it superfluous 
to discuss this subject, but I know from 
experience that there are many local- 
ities wherein the rod and reel have not 
been introduced. There are still many 
of that type of fisherman who go out with 
a sixteen ft. bamboo pole, 2 oz. lead 
sinker and a can of worms to catch fish. 
Some of my earliest recollections are 
of taking such an outfit and going fish- 
ing for rock-bass and mullets. To catch 
pickerel we had to have a boat and go 
trolling, but n was a rare thing for me 
to catch a pickerel or black bass, and it 
is only a few years that I have used a 
bait-casting rod. 
While waiting in a depot one day I 
bought a copy of Forest and Stream 
and decided to buy a bait-casting outfit 
the next time I went fishing. It was a 
most welcome discovery to find a maga- 
zine which contained articles and pic- 
tures on fishing. I had no idea that there 
was such a magazine published, nor did 
any of my acquaintances know about it. 
The local magazine dealer must have 
thought that Izaak Walton was in town 
by the number of copies of this maga- 
