Dogcaster No. 1

Effervescent little Bob Becker, middle-aged outdoor editor of the Chicago Tribune, whose patter is peppered with gee whizzes and holy smokes, is No. 1 U.S. dogcaster. Dog-lovers for a decade have faithfully tuned in on his expert Chats About Dogs; his best-selling How to Raise & Train Your Puppy (Sundial; $1) is a standard reference work. Among his own dogs are several blue-ribbon winners. Becker's sideline claim to fame is that he discovered a new subspecies of bat in Bolivia which Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History named after him: Eumops Bonariensis Beckeri.

Last week Dogcaster Bob, who looks like a barfly but loves the Big Open Spaces, became Gamecaster Bob. On his new program, Sportsmen's Spotlight (Mutual's WGN, Tuesday, 7:15-7:30 C.W.T.), he championed a cause he himself had cooked up: a new way to tackle the meat shortage. Said he: Too many camp cooks yell: "Come and get it--or I'll throw it away." Every year, he declared, 435,000,000 lb. of fish and wild game are hooked and bagged in the U.S.--enough to feed an army of 5,000,000 men for 77 days. Then, tipping off listeners that northern lakes would soon be crowded with canvasbacks, and muskies would soon launch their fall hitting spree, he proposed a pledge to his audience: "I promise to recover all game and bring it home for table use." Already submitted to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture

Claude R. Wickard, this new food-conservation program has been named the Becker Plan by enthusiastic fish and wildlife directors.

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