Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden

by Terry Grosz

  Tom and his information were not of this world, and I damn sure liked hearing from that old man. With the facts I learned from him, I caused a lot of lads immense pain, not to mention financial loss, for their foolish deeds. Then, when I met Tom again later, I would relate the story of the latest apprehension, and he would just grin. I think my efforts to slow down the bad guys brought Tom a lot of joy. Over the years we grew to love each other like father and son: we were two men from two different cultures but very close in our life’s mission when it came to America’s heritage.

  Tom’s back kept bothering him, and I noticed that it became harder and harder for him to get in and out of his vehicle or lift items of any weight. Finally it got to the point that the years were accomplishing what the German machine guns hadn’t been able to do. One day, after watching hopelessly as my friend fought his back pain, I suggested he see a doctor. Tom said, “Terry, I would like to, but I just don’t have the money right now.”

  The very next day my friend Tom and I went to Yuba City and visited a back specialist to see if modern medicine could undo what the machine guns and time had done and were doing. The doctor examined Tom and advised him that an operation was in order if he were to continue any kind of ambulatory life. His back was going to have to be fused if he wished to continue doing the things he loved. Tom was really concerned about this turn of events and scared to death to go under the knife on the operating table.

  I paid the doctor and said to Tom, “Let’s get a second opinion.” A little later I took some time off and went with Tom to San Francisco to get a second opinion. It paralleled the first opinion: either undergo surgery and be able to live some semblance of his former life or continue at his present rate until crippled. Even as a close friend, I couldn’t help Tom make that decision. He had to weigh the odds and then challenge them if he wanted to continue his lifestyle. He knew that his age and weight were against him. Stacked on the other side of the balance were his gardening, his work in the fields as an equipment operator, and his love of fishing.

  Tom thought about the operation over the next two weeks and finally came out to my home to talk with me about it. I noticed he could barely get out of his car. I greeted him warmly, trying not to show my concern over his rapidly deteriorating condition.

  Tom said, “Terry, what should I do? I could barely get out of bed this morning.”

  “Tom, that has to be your decision. You know yourself better than I do.”

  Tom looked me in the eye and said, “Terry, if I ever want to fish again, I have to be operated on, and that is what I’m going to do.”

  I thought for a second that I saw something in his eyes, a flash of times past, perhaps, but maybe not. “Tom, if you don’t have enough money, count on me for what you need,” I told him.

  He answered, “No, my brother from Los Angeles loaned me the money. I’ll be all right.” There was that look again. I don’t know how to describe it, but it wasn’t of this world. I remember wishing at the time that I knew what it meant. Tom left for San Francisco the next day to undergo several days of tests followed by the surgery.

  During that time I had been assigned to work trout fishermen in Sierra County in the high Sierras of California. When I came back a week later, I was stunned and grieved to learn that Tom had died on the operating table. An artery had ruptured, and before the doctors could get it under control Tom had had a stroke and perished moments later. Now I understood the look I had seen before he left my home that last day we were together.

  It almost goes without saying that this man enters my thoughts several times a year, God rest his soul. God, what a hell of a man.

  I remember going to Tom’s funeral in Colusa County, the historical home of his parents, that snowy spring day. I walked into the small church where funeral services were to be held, and there sat just two other people to see Tom off: his wife and friend of many years, whom Tom had purchased in the old country as a photograph bride, according to common practice, for $93, and his old Anglo fishing partner. It was kind of a sad close to a life that had been so vigorous and fair, but I guess God has his ways. This was one of those ways you just don’t question.

  Tom’s memory is forever burned into my soul. I will never forget that man. I will continue to remember him many times a year until that look crosses my own eyes. Someday I know God will need a good game warden, and maybe He will take me the same way He took Tom. Maybe Tom will be up in whatever that place is, growing vegetables for me and telling me when and where the bad guys will be killing pheasants or ducks. Maybe I will be just as good a game warden up there as I was down here—who knows? I don’t know, but one thing I hope for is that I’m as good a man down here as Tom was.

  Come to think of it, there were four people in that little church on that cold, snowy day so long ago if one counted “the Fisherman.”

  Chapter Ten

  State Line Road

  Standing outside in the morning’s coolness, I stretched my tired legs and shoulders, stiff from sitting all night in the front seat of my patrol vehicle watching for poachers illegally night-hunting deer. Turning, I looked eastward at the coming dawn. The sky was still black but starting to show a streak of reds and pinks splashed along the horizon. The air was heavy with the perfume of big sage and the latent smell of dust from the random but determined travels of deer hunters along the surrounding dusty roads the day before.

  It was September, and I was still in the process of stretching my wings in my chosen profession of state conservation officer as it led me down its many paths toward what were to be the ultimate travels and traditions of my life. I was young, a bit of a dreamer, with an intense interest in the history of the land and its peoples as well as the wild things it nurtured. I had been married only a few years to one of the world’s finest women, and thirty-five years later still am. She is such a sweetheart: realizing what emotions ran deep within her man, she always let me run like the wind. I had my health then and the world as my stage, a combination that allowed me to be on deck this promising morning, stiff but in fine fettle. I thanked the good Lord above for another day and, after letting my eyes roam the darkness in front of me one more time for anything out of place, reached through an open window into the front seat of my patrol vehicle and took a piece of cold fried deer meat (game-warden fare) from a plastic sack.

  Letting the spicy taste and texture of the meat slide over my tongue, I quietly chewed as I let my ears and eyes work the land silently lying under God’s cloak of night. I had parked the evening before on a long, sloping knoll covered with big sage, interspersed with sparse patches of western juniper and ponderosa pine. The soil was dry after many months without rain, its powdery texture typical of the dry transition conifer forests of northern California. Before me lay the great state of Nevada, extending as far as I would be able to see once the dark of night changed to day. Lying before me, though unseen at that moment, was a primitive rocky dirt road that acted as an informal boundary marker between the states of California and Nevada in Sierra County. It had been a wagon road in the early glory days of the past, a conduit for freight from the markets and supply houses in Reno to the hungry California gold fields along the eastern spine of the Sierras in Sierra, Alpine, and Plumas Counties during the 1850s. Now it was utilized only during deer-hunting season to gain access to some of the finest remote deer- hunting areas remaining in those two states. I thought how sad it was that the hunters gave the old wagon road no thought, viewing it only as an access road with no understanding of its roots in early Nevada and California history. Shaking the clouds of history along with my lack of sleep from my head, I again turned my eyes to the empty black void to the southeast soon to be represented by hundreds of thousands of acres of sagebrush and the American hunter.

  That season’s deer hunters were why I was there, and had been all night. Every group of people, from priests to police, has representatives of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Those human predators from the bad and ugly sides repres
ented what I called the “dark side” and if not checked would continue along their selfish paths of resource destruction until there was nothing left for those yet to come. This area I now had under surveillance along the California-Nevada boundary had a bad reputation for hunters killing too many deer, and the wrong sex at that, because of its geographic isolation and the absence of officers in this neck of the woods. Well, not if I had anything to say about it, I mused. Today would be different, I thought, feeling good about my timing and current location. Yeah, before the day’s end it would really be different!

  I did not mind the loneliness, the cold, the lack of sleep, or the odd food and weather. In fact, I enjoyed the kinds of challenges the profession offered. That was what it was all about: I against the world of people out there illegally taking what was not theirs. I now know that for the most part only God, my fellow officers, and I cared whether I was out there or not. For the most part the American people, including the politicians elected to look out for their interests, are a greedy, self-centered, shortsighted lot who don’t give a damn whether our natural resources last. As long as an action doesn’t interfere directly with their lives, they historically couldn’t care less. Look at what has happened to our great coniferous forests, the vast herds of bison, the clouds of passenger pigeons, the hordes of salmon, the pods of whales, and the clean air and water. I rest my case.

  The wildlife I see out there today is nothing less than a tribute to those who came before me, carrying the same heavy shield of responsibility I wore so proudly that fine day so long ago. I’m glad in many ways that I was one of the fraternity blessed by God to carry such a responsibility. I now know I will leave this world with two thoughts crossing my dimming mind and eyes as the light and life flow from my body: first and foremost, I will know that I was blessed with the world’s best wife and friend (whom I will love forever); and second, I will wish the best of luck to those who also serve, for they will certainly need it.

  * * *

  The cold that comes just before the dawn brought me again back to the moment at hand, which included the sensation of a cold piece of greasy deer meat still uneaten and resting in my hand. Taking another bite, I again surveyed my arena for the day, now being quickly illuminated by God’s “Walt Disney-like paintbrush” in the skies to the east. Far below me to the northeast on the Nevada side of the border, I could see several sets of headlights moving slowly up the mountain on the old wagon road, now called State Line Road. It was that all right—a road that ambled along the boundary between Nevada and California in that remote part of the world— and not much more except to a single game warden on his patient stakeout. Little did I know that before the sun was to set, it would be a road and a day of many adventures.

  I was a California Department of Fish and Game conservation officer assigned to the town and area surrounding Colusa, California. That station was located in the Sacramento Valley, many miles west of my current location in Sierra County, the district of Gil Berg, a friend and fellow game warden from my squad in Region 2. In those days we used to “flood the zone,” that is, take wardens from their home districts if things weren’t too busy and run them into another warden’s area to help when that fellow was swamped with hunting or fishing traffic. When the warden receiving the help had some slack time, he would return the favor and come into another officer’s district to assist during that lad’s period of heavy work. That way we could really cover the ground and keep things hot for those breaking the law. Since those breaking the laws of humankind and nature were heading for a place reported to be hotter than all get-out, this provided us with an opportunity to give them a warm-up, so to speak, of things to come.

  Daylight rapidly began to replace the night, and I could now see the land before me as the sun’s rays peeked over the horizon and quickly picked their way along the ridgetops and trees laid out below my lonely place of vigilance. This was always my favorite time of the day. The air was its cleanest, the smells their most piquant, and the songs of the birds that had made it through the night let those fortunate enough to be in their neighborhood really know when life was the greatest. The human soul is always glad to make it through another night, and mine was no different. Stretching to remove the last vestiges of stiffness earned by quietly sitting in a pickup seat all night, I let my eyes and senses roam my chosen domain for the day. Below me, stretching for miles, lay a land that was truly unique: sage interspersed with juniper and pine and the many varied heartbeats of the world of wildlife.

  Snowbrush and buckbrush thickets dotted the landscape, all blanketed with rocky isolation. Truly an animal’s, especially a deer’s, paradise. Cover, water, and feed in abundance—what more could a critter ask for? The absence of humankind would probably be high on their lists, I suppose, if I were to receive an answer to that question. An azure sky replaced the blackness of the night, peppered with a few brilliant white clouds, and a light breeze from the northwest carrying the pungent smell of sage completed my morning awakening. It looked like it was going to be another hot day, but that was all right. My dad, Otis Barnes, had shown me numerous springs in this area in the days of my youth, and I would make use of them when thirst beckoned, as discoverers of the land and wildlife had done through the years before my time.

  I was there that fine day because deer season was open on the Nevada side of the border and closed on the California side. Because of the remoteness of the area I now watched and its historical deer-hunting excellence, a major problem prevailed. The Nevada hunters would hunt along their side of the border, but if a deer were spotted on the California side, zip went the bullet across state lines into the critter, and the resultant carcass would then be hustled over the border and tagged as a Nevada deer.

  State Line Road, the old wagon trail of days gone by, was indirectly the culprit. Since it allowed hunting access into outstanding deer habitat, the human flood was on, and because of the remoteness of the area the prevailing thought was the laws of the land be damned, just like the Old West. If you were the meanest son of a bitch in the valley, you took the law into your own hands, and that was that. However, in my day and age, that attitude didn’t cut it. The law was there, and if those lads had taken the time to look over to the California side, they might have noticed the long arm of the law cleverly concealed on a hillside overlooking one hundred square miles of God’s country. I certainly wasn’t a John Wayne type, but a look into my eyes would have told them not to go where they shouldn’t. I would bet that same look had been there since the start of the time when conservation officers dedicated themselves to the animals and to those humans yet to come.

  Below me and to the northwest, a small doe stepped from her sagebrush hiding place and hesitantly stepped across State Line Road from Nevada into California. I watched her through my binoculars as she continued nervously across the open area surrounding the road and then slipped out of sight into a large buck-brush thicket. I continued to watch the area whence she came, and sure enough, my binoculars spotted a nice four-point buck (western count, meaning the deer had four points per antler) partially concealed by a juniper, watching where the doe had gone. Soon the buck also moved from his place of cover and trotted across the road of life onto California soil. Without stopping, he hustled his tail end into the same bushy thicket the doe had entered earlier. Soon the two of them fed into the view of my binoculars on the opposite side of the thicket. I watched them play, check their surroundings, test the air several times, and then go back to feeding.

  A magpie landed on a juniper limb not three feet from where I stood leaning my elbows on the hood of the patrol rig and intently watched this bearlike thing, with special interest focused on my hand. I watched him from the corner of my eye without moving as he looked me over for any sign of danger. Seeing none, he flipped down to the hood of my truck and looked at me eye to eye. I could feel a smile start as we looked each other over. He couldn’t have picked a safer spot to light and survey his world, right next to the world’s larges
t game warden and all. Satisfied that I was no threat, he hopped onto my right arm, took the remaining piece of deer steak from between my fingers, and then glided off to another juniper tree for his breakfast. I could only grin. Hell, I weighed over three hundred pounds, and I didn’t need that piece of meat anyway. This profession really had its moments, and those of you reading these lines who have been there know exactly what I mean. This was one of them, what I would call a “magpie moment”!

  My two deer had moved during the magpie encounter, and it took me a few moments to relocate them. The buck had his head up and was looking back toward the Nevada border. Without giving it much thought, I continued to examine his movements and feeding habits with the keen interest of a biologist educated in wildlife management and with the advantage of an unseen intruder. Suddenly, in the surreal view of the binoculars, the upper part of the deer’s neck spurted blood, meat, and sinew, and for a second he trembled, started to lower his head as if it had become a great weight, and then quickly disappeared from my sight. Boom came the sound of a rifle as I spun on my elbows, trying to locate the shooter who had just shattered the peace of my morning. A second boom helped me echo-locate a lad I hadn’t even suspected was in my vicinity. He was standing on the Nevada side of the border, shooting across the hood of his Jeep, which had silently arrived and parked on State Line Road several hundred yards away.