616 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Why Farmers’ 
Boys Make The Best Sportsmen 
By Sandy Griswold. 
F ARMER boys, as a rule, make the best and 
truest sportsmen, although many of the 
most learned and distinguished of the craft 
were born and spent their whole lives in the tur¬ 
moil of the city. But environment is an exceed¬ 
ingly potent factor in all the affairs of human ex¬ 
istence, and as nature’s environment furnished 
one all-pervading curriculum for the native natu¬ 
ralist, of course his teaching began earlier and 
lasted longer than that given to the child of town 
and city. 
When I enumerate many of the advantages the 
farmer boy enjoys over his urban cousin. I do 
not mention them all, aye, but fairly begin. While 
the city boy is pondering over abstruse problems 
in algebra, rhetoric or the languages, the country 
boy is absorbing a wider, and I might say, more 
useful Mund of knowledge, from the greatest of 
all teachers, Mother Nature. 
The big farm, with its long and broad pastures, 
through which the Elkhorn, the Rawhide or Papio 
brawl and sing from early morn till dewy eve, 
where the lark pipes his piccolo and the upland 
plover gives vent to his sweet but plaintive whis¬ 
tle, and down in the low swails beyond the big 
cornfield, where the moose bushes, flags, tules, 
rice-weed and cane flourish in profusion, the red¬ 
wing and topaz^capped blackbird, swamp sparrow 
and bittern make their summer home, as do also 
muskrat, mink, gartersnake, mud turtle and 
dragon fly. Here, too, is the spring resting place 
of myriads of wild geese and ducks, and some¬ 
times a bunch of sandhill crane, and in the fall 
the whole stretch is their favored banquet hall; 
the wooded bottoms, with their oaks, elms, cot¬ 
tonwoods, plum and crab, sentinel perches for 
crow, hawk and owl, a colonaded cathedral with 
its entablature of green boughs and branches, and 
stylobate of mosses, ferns and rich loam; where 
the squirrels hold reign throughout all the bright 
days of the year, and where the raccoon, the fox 
and the coyote prowl by night. 
All of these wondrous charming and interesting 
adjuncts of the out-of-doors make one great, 
boundless volume that nature so generously 
spreads out before the farmer boy, when, with 
gun over his shoulder, he sallies forth for a ram¬ 
ble across the fields, along the marsh and through 
the timberlands, and when he stops the flight of 
a tinkling plover, or lays low a duck, a jacksnipe 
or even a squirrel, he experiences all the thrills 
of excitement and exultation that he feels in later 
years when he tumbles over the lordly moose, big 
bear, elk or deer. What he imbibes and stores 
away in his storehouse of knowledge, the city boy 
only acquires crudely when he has reached man’s 
estate. 
He lived with the birds and the animals, and 
what he missed one day he found the next. The 
minutia his keen eye envelopes, the city boy would 
not see in months of laborious toil. Recollect, all 
you, my boy friends—and I know I glory in 
hordes of them—I am not speaking about the 
average city boy and not all of them by any man¬ 
ner of means, but where normal health and men¬ 
tality prevail, my argument includes all of the 
farmer boys, everyone of them. 
He knows where the old fox squirrel has built 
her nest in the big hollow elm on the margin of 
the lower woods; the chickenhawk's battlement of 
sticks in the skeleton sycamore overhanging the 
creek; the crow’s roost; the turtle’s sandy cupful 
of partridge-like eggs; the pond lillies and lacus- 
tral orchids, and all this almost incalculably youth¬ 
ful erudition accompanies him down through the 
long vistas of life, and it avails him much when 
afield with you and me, old comrade, and other 
fortunate bodies who may be thrown in with him 
in adult days. 
His youthful environment, occupation and incli¬ 
nation have been great teachers. They have taught 
him how to place the decoys, so that the birds will 
come in against the wind; just when the geese 
will leave the river and when they will return; 
where to find the prairie chickens in the morning, 
at noonday and eventide; the most likely cover for 
the quail; and on which broad pasture-land the 
uplands are most apt to linger; when the jack- 
snipe first come in and how long they will stay; 
the breeding season of the curlew and the yellow- 
leg; the bunching time of the turtle dove, and the 
marvelous and inexhaustible store of knowledge 
about all the outdoor life. 
By slow accretion comes all this encyclopedia 
of power, by slower process does it ever leave 
him. 
“Nature answers all he asks, 
Hand in hand with her he walks, 
Face to face with her he talks, 
Part and parcel of her joy.” 
Because these things have all been a part of 
the farmer boy, I am convinced that farmers’ 
boys make the best sportsmen. In the noontime 
of life he appreciates the full value of his early 
associates, and if they no longer go hand in hand, 
all the more he realizes their import. With gun 
or fishing rod in hand, he goes forth for his vaca¬ 
tion in spring and fall, not so much to kill and to 
catch, as to once more restore the scenes of his 
youth, to satisfy his insatiable appetite for forest 
and stream, with all their wondrous sights and 
sounds, and which he, I think, of all men, is best 
equipped to appreciate and enjoy. 
So much for Nature’s own sportsman. And 
now let me tell you another little truth, and that 
is that of all the winter birds most familiar in 
Nebraska, is the slate colored junco or snow bird, 
but once—not so many years ago, either—one 
hundred times more plentiful than they are to-day. 
There are many of you who do not know, I 
fear, what this pretty little bird is, and if you 
wish to acquaint yourself with the habits of the 
hardy little fellow, all you have to do is to go out 
on one of your quiet country roads, any time now¬ 
adays, and study him for yourself. You will see 
plenty, even yet, almost anywhere. They are often 
confused with the English sparrow, so thoroughly 
and so rapidly usurping all our quiet places, but 
in habits they are an entirely different bird. In 
March they begin to go north to their winter 
homes, which are said to be still above mid- 
British Columbia. It is, however, the most abun¬ 
dant and universally distributed bird of this region 
all through the winter months, generally haunting 
the barren fields and lonely country roads, and 
