Ed Zern

Edward Geary Zern (December 13, 1910 – March 25, 1994) was a writer, humorist, fisherman, environmentalist and conservationist. Zern was a popular columnist at Field & Stream Magazine.

Early life

Zern was born in Farmington, West Virginia. His father was a professor at the School of Mines at West Virginia University and a mine inspector. Zern's father taught him flyfishing, and brought him along on mine inspections. On these visits, Zern saw the environmental damage of water pollution from mine tailings. A Boy Scout, Zern learned about hunting squirrels with a .22 rifle.

Zern attended Pennsylvania State University, graduating with a degree in English literature in 1932. Zern then took the $400 he had earned writing for the college newspaper and went to Paris, with the aim of writing a novel. After four months, Zern returned to the United States, having failed to write the novel. He then worked as a merchant seaman for 18 months.

Conservation activities

Zern was a member of many conservation groups, including the Theodore Gordon Flyfishers (he was a past president), the Atlantic Salmon Federation, and the Boone and Crockett Club, an organization started by Theodore Roosevelt and others for the preservation of big game animals.

Zern was deeply involved in environmental issues and conservation, but excused his less-than-strident advocacy of these causes in print, saying, "I have problems being serious." He detested "game hogs" (hunters and fishers who take more than the limit), those who pollute the air and water, and he thought that a strong conservation ethic is about the finest trait any sportsman can possess. At the time of his death, it was known as the Chevron/Times Mirror Magazines Conservation Award.

in his articles for Field and Stream, Zern would casually mention Wagner (comparing his operas to big game hunting), Bach (trout fishing with a dry fly), Proust and Joyce. He once included an offhand "book review" of "Lady Chatterley's Lover":

Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by Grove Press, and this fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoorminded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways of controlling vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savor these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion this book can not take the place of J. R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeping.

In his regular "Exit Laughing" column, Zern dealt with such absurdities as using hemp seeds for bait in England. Noting that marijuana impairs the faculties, he asked, "Is he fearful lest the local perch should fail their bar exams, or the pike flunk their courses in nuclear physics? If the I.Q. of an wandle barbel or roach or tench should slip from 1.6, which it normally is, to 0.7, for instance, I doubt the tight little island would get appreciably looser."

In the same column, Zern mentioned a fellow who dreamed he was a pileated woodpecker and awoke with a hangover (leaving the reader to imagine the effect of having a hangover and knocking one's head against a tree to find food. He told another "tall tale" of a fisherman who pulled on his line so hard that "the fish was turned completely inside out."

Family and death

Zern died on March 25, 1994, of Parkinson's disease. Typically for him, he made jokes about his ailment, saying, "I shake a lot. But it keeps my wristwatch wound." He also claimed that his shaking hand caused a tied fly to more closely resemble a real insect when in the water.

Zern was survived by his companion, Sandra Weiner; his daughter, Erica; son, Brook; brother, Gordon; and two granddaughters. His wife, Evelyn Mencken (1912–1978), whom he married in 1937, predeceased him.

Legacy

When Zern retired from Field and Stream in 1993, the magazine's managing editor, Maggie Nichols, said, "No one could possibly take Ed's place." "Exit Laughing" disappeared from the back page of the magazine. However, "out of respect for sales", his old columns began to be reprinted.

Books

To Hell With Fishing (1945) To Hell With Hunting (1946) How to Tell Fish From Fishermen; or, A Plague on Both Your Houses (1947) How To Catch Fishermen (1951) Zane Grey's Adventures in Fishing [Editor] (1952) Are Fishermen People? (1955) A Fine Kettle of Fish Stories (1972) Hunting and Fishing from A to Zern (1985) The Best of Ed Zern: Fifty Years of Fishing and Hunting from One of America's Best-Loved Outdoor Humorists (2001)