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CLAFLIN----        ON BLAZED TRAILS ------         :Release
:1ov. 26
I am receipt of a letter which I believe calls for comment
in my columns. In case, as this letter indicates, there is a
false impression among other friends of mine as to how I stand
in the matter of attempting to at all times make my columns
helpful to my readers, and at the same time remain impartial to
all, I desire to correct that impression at once. I have thous-
ands of followers, and I receive very few adverse criticisms,
though I make claim of being right and the world vrong. I have
tried hard from the start to make my columns a get-together-
medium by which we all may profit. My correspondence indicates
that I have succeeded in doing that. Now and then, however, some
brother sportsman "gets me wrong." Here is the letter in full:
"You urge farmers to sell hunting rights to the
hunters, but do you realize that we are not all
so fortunate as you in the way of money? Another
thing, if the hunters should pay the farmers for pro-
tecting game why should the hunter pay the state
for a license to employ game wardens to protect
wild life? While hunting you hunt on more than one
farmer's land and with this hunting rights system
you would have to pay each farmer which would make
hunting a rich man's game only. As far as shooting
the farmer's livestock, in many cases it is one
farmer shooting the others because of some grudge.
This is also the opinion of many Wisconsin hunters.
Yours truly,
R. F.,%
3155 h. Humboldt Ave.,
Milwaukee, Wis."
Here is where OR. F." is wrong: He says, "you urge the
farmers to sell hunting rights to the hunters." The article
to which he refers read as follows: "There is a movement on
foot to bring the sport of upland bird hunting back to some-
where near normal. I refer to the proposition of getting the
formers to raise and feed game, and then accord them the
privilege of selling the game they raise to the hunter at so
much per bird or in any way decided upon as best."
The proposition was not mine. Credit for it must go to the
University of Wisconsin College of Agriculture, where the first
Chair of Game Management in America has been established, with
Aldo Leopold to fill it. The objectives, as outlined by Dean
Chris L. Christensen of the College of Agriculture, are to
develop game as a crop for recreation and income on Wisconsin
farms.

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