Outdoor Life 
OUTDOOR 19 RECREATION              U. 
1524 CURTIS STREET 
JOHN A. McGUIRE                  DENVER. COLO.                    HARRY McGUIRE

PUBLISHER                                                         EDITOR

September 8, 1930. 
Dear Mr. Leopold: 
I have your letter of September 4, and appreciate very much your 
interest in our attitude toward the poisoning question. I would presume 
offhand, from the fact that you are sending a copy of your letter to Dr.

Pettit, that Dr. Pettit has been corresponding with you on the question 
somewhat as he has been corresponding with me. I am publishing Dr. 
Pettits letter defending poisoning in our November issue. 
In that same issue I am announcing that we will publish the other 
side of the question, as represented by a paper by W. C. Henderson of 
the Biological Survey. This will be run in our December issue, in all 
likelihood. 
I am attaching copy of letter I wrote to Mr. Henderson about a 
week ago, when I decided to solicit material on the Survey's side of 
the question.   As I point out in that letter, nothing complete on the 
other side had up to that time come to my attention.  The Survey had 
made no endeavor to answer the arguments of its opponents through our 
columns. 
It happened that some Biological Survey men were in Denver at the 
time the letter was written, and one of them was in my office the day 
it was dictated. I did not know Henderson was in town. The member of 
the Survey who was in may office carried information regarding my 
letter to Mr. Henderson, and the next morning he showed up. We spent 
the whole morning in conversations that were instructive to me, even 
if not always convincing. 
My personal opinion is that there is enough justified opposition 
to the Biological Survey's ten year program in poisoning to warrant the 
more thorough stomach analysis that the American Society of Mammalogists

demands, and meanwhile the cessation of propaganda in favor of the ten 
year program. The greatest hindrance to a matured judgment regarding 
the question seems to be a lack of cooperation between the Survey and 
its critics. If the Survey officials would unbend a bit and in cases 
of controversy sit down across the table with their critics as well as 
with their back-patters, such questions could be saved from bitterness 
and something close to a solution arrived at. One of the serious 
hindrances to such cooperation seems to be the bureaucratic mind of normal

government officials, who are always glad to listen to those who agree 
with them, but not always to those who disagree. 
You suggest that we "leave out personalities". Would it surprise

you to hear that the two Biological Survey men I have talked to recently

upon the question, insisted on dismissing utterly all the beliefs of 
mim     Dr. Howell, and of Dr. Hall of California, solely on the grounds
that 
aWT 
(BUEAU)