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

by Terry Grosz

  What the hell—why two shots? There was only one buck in view on the California side of the border, and the hunter had dropped him with one shot right through the neck. Sweeping my binoculars back to the spot where the buck and doe had been feeding peacefully,

  I saw that the doe was also down and struggling on the ground as a great patch of red spread over a spot on her side behind her shoulder. She was dying, that was clear, and that son of a gun would pay for it, I thought. Doe season was not open in either state at that time! What I had just observed was illegal as hell. Well, that fellow shooting across the hood of the Jeep had come to the right place if he wanted a real old-fashioned “hoorah.” He would get more than enough one-on-one attention before that day was over; you could bet your sweet ass on that!

  What I got paid for took over, and I continued to watch my shooter, holding my binoculars with my right hand as my left hand hurriedly dug into the pocket of my vest for a notebook. Laying the notebook on the hood of my concealed truck, I recorded the time of the shots, the number of shots, the California location of the deer, and the description of my lone Nevada hunter gathered through the binoculars. The shooter, oblivious to the surprise the day would hold for him, looked nervously around to see whether anyone had seen him shoot the deer on the California side of the border. Satisfied that all was clear, he carefully laid his rifle down in the seat of his pickup and sprinted for the area where he had seen the buck drop at the first shot. I followed him in my binoculars from my position on the high ground, all the while recording his efforts for court should the occasion later arise.

  The lad ran to the buck, quickly checked it out to make sure it was dead, and then, grabbing his prey by the antlers, commenced to drag the carcass as fast as he could go toward the Nevada line and safety—or so he thought. Once across State Line Road, he dragged the buck to the off side of his pickup, where no one driving by would see it. I was really interested in what he planned to do next with the doe, since killing her was illegal in both states. I didn’t have long to wait. He quickly surveyed his surroundings again, then sprinted back across State Line Road to the doe’s body. Checking to make sure she was dead, the lad grabbed her by the back legs and commenced to drag her at a dead run toward the Nevada side of the line. Crossing State Line Road, he continued his run into a thick stand of brush on the far side of his pickup, hiding the doe among the cover of that handy buckbrush thicket. Once she was safely out of sight, he returned to the buck lying not far from his pickup, hauled it a few feet away, and began to gut the animal as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  Once the deer had been gutted, he washed his hands, using a water container hanging from the back of his truck, and then tagged the animal so it would appear to be in compliance with Nevada law. He then loaded the carcass into the back of his pickup, covered it with a tarp, and looked around to see if anyone else were in the area. Again finding the area apparently deserted, to his satisfaction, he returned to the buckbrush thicket holding the carcass of the illegal doe. Now I really crawled into the binoculars, so to speak, to watch and record his every move. Dragging the doe to the opposite side of the thicket so no one who drove by on the road could observe what he was doing, he began to gut and skin the animal.

  Boom, boom, boom, boom, went several rifles farther north along State Line Road, about a mile from the lad I was currently watching with the illegal buck and doe. Quickly swinging my binoculars from my lad to the area of the shots, I spotted two men running from a red-and-white pickup on the Nevada side across State Line Road and onto the California side. They disappeared behind a small grove of pine trees and after a few minutes came back into sight, one carrying two rifles and the other dragging what appeared to be a small forked-horn buck (two-point western count).They ran to the Nevada side of the road, dropped the little buck off by their pickup, and then ran back across the road into California. They ran behind the same small grove of trees, were absent for a few minutes, and then appeared dragging another deer, this one appearing to be a spike buck (a buck with unbranched antlers), an illegal kill in both states!

  Damn! I had gone from a pleasant morning in the backcountry into a swirling mess involving four illegal deer and three hunters, all separated by about one mile as the crow flies. How the hell was I going to handle this mess and catch all of them?

  About that time the two lads with their two illegal bucks began to drag their ill-gotten gains behind a large stand of buckbrush near their vehicle. I supposed they were going to gut the deer and find some way to hide the illegal spike for transport back to their homes. Switching my binoculars back to my first illegal hunter, I observed him stuffing something behind the back seat of his pickup. He looked all around for any sign of danger to him and his illegal operation and, seeing none, began to again wash off his knife, meat saw, and hands.

  Well, it was now or never; it was apparent that he was done and about to leave. I had to make my move if I were going to apprehend this chap before he headed back into Nevada. Realizing I had a good thing in my cover for the patrol rig, I decided to go it on foot. Grabbing my citation book and binoculars, off I went down toward my first violator. Keeping trees and bushy thickets between me and my culprit, I got to within about two hundred feet of his position. Now I had to cross State Line Road, and the area between me and my quarry was pretty open. Luck was with me, though, and he didn’t spot me as I sped (or lumbered) across the road as fast as my size would allow (I was not all that slow: I could still run an eleven-second flat hundred in those days). Once on the other side and again concealed by some bushy areas and a few trees, I again moved toward my unsuspecting quarry. Moments later I had sneaked to within twenty feet of my man before he realized I was upon him.

  When I announced, “Good morning, state Fish and Game warden, how are you doing?” he about jumped through his skin. Whirling around, he focused on me with an intense gaze and answered, “Fine, how are you?”

  I nodded and said, “I don’t have a lot of time, so let’s cut to the chase and get down to business. I observed you illegally kill two deer, both in California.”

  The lad just froze and then, trying to gain the high ground, started to argue.

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t have time to argue with you; I will do that in a court of law if need be. Right now I have to move down the road and apprehend two others for violation of the same laws, and I just don’t have time to mess around with you! Give me your driver’s license, car keys, and hunting rifle, please.”

  He hesitated until I added a very strong “Now!” which made him spring into action. Grabbing the gear I had requested, I told him to wait right there and I would be back after I had dealt with the other two chaps. My man just nodded, numbed by the fact that his day had just turned to something brown and ugly, as evidenced by this humongous game warden who was there one moment and the next was jog-trotting down the dusty road and out of sight with his car keys, driver’s license, and rifle. Passing the rear of this man’s pickup, I memorized his Nevada license plate number without breaking my stride.

  Down State Line Road I lumbered toward the area where I had last seen my two other chaps and their red-and-white pickup. Rounding a turn at the top of a hill, I observed the two lads still in the process of gutting the deer behind their “safe” brush pile. As Winston Churchill once said, “They built a fortress but forgot to put a roof on it.” From my high ground I could clearly see the lads as they hurried through their little chore of cleaning the two illegal deer.

  Moving behind a tree for cover, I surveyed the ground before me and laid out a ground-attack plan that should not fail because of the lie of the land. Moving down the hill with a small ravine as cover, I was able to move to within one hundred yards of the two lads. Climbing out of my ravine, I continued to use cover, half crawling, half running in a stooped-over position until I was within thirty to forty yards of them. Briefly resting for a moment to quiet my pounding heart and regain my breath, I checked out my final run.

>   There were several juniper trees halfway to the lads that I could use for cover, and a blanket of squaw carpet (a low-growing ivy-like plant) would afford some quiet in the final area I would walk over.

  Off I went, with my eyes never leaving my targets for an instant because at this range and with the degree of my element of surprise, I knew it was the kind of situation in which bad things could happen—like my getting shot by surprised people doing bad things. When I was about fifteen feet from the lads, one of them looked up briefly and then returned his eyes to what he and his partner were doing. Then all of a sudden it dawned on him that a large fellow dressed in green and carrying a badge was bearing down on them while they were gutting an illegal deer!

  “Run!” he yelled as he bolted from his kneeling position. With that, he sprinted for the pickup parked thirty yards away. The other fellow jumped up and, not knowing what the hell was going on, turned and ran straight into me. One hand on his shoulder pretty well took the steam out of his run for the roses. The poor lad, between being scared and the confrontation that had just taken place with a giant bear of a man, arranged for his backbone to completely disappear and wilted in my hands. The other fellow continued his run to the pickup only to realize that I had his buddy and the owner of the pickup—the one with the keys, that is. He slowed to a walk and just stood his ground by the truck, waiting for his share of the execution, which soon arrived.

  “Morning, fellows,” I said. “How is the deer hunting?”

  Neither said anything. They just looked at me as if I were a ghost from the next world.

  “Well, let me fill you in on how the hunting has been,” I said. I went on and explained what I had observed and, pointing to the dead spike and forked-horn, asked if any of what I had described was untrue. The lads just looked at each other and gave in.

  “You have us,” one said, and the other asked, “What happens now?”

  I filled them in on the standard procedure: seizure of the two deer, seizure of both rifles since they were Nevada residents (taking the guns would assure their appearance in court in California, since California would not extradite them for a wildlife misdemeanor once they got back into Nevada), and citations issued to both of them for violations of California laws. Both lads settled down from the original scare, and I issued citations for taking deer illegally in California during the closed season and for possession of an illegal deer, to wit, one spike buck. I seized both rifles and deer and marked them with the appropriate evidence tags. Leaving the two deer in the shade of a tree to avoid spoilage, I bade the lads farewell after advising them not to try to take the evidence and to be sure to appear to pay their fines for their morning’s activity or their rifles would be forfeited and a warrant issued for their arrest. Taking the two rifles and the rifle seized from my earlier violator, I started back up the hill to my first illegal shooter. About twenty minutes later I came upon him quietly resting under the shade of a pine tree and smoking a cigar. Laying down the three rifles, I fished out his driver’s license, took out my citation book, and laid it down on the hood of his Jeep pickup.

  The lad got up, sauntered over to the truck, and casually asked, “Do you have any professional courtesy?”

  “What?”

  “You know,” he said, “any professional courtesy for a fellow law enforcement officer?”

  Looking at the lad, I answered, “That may be a little rough, with the two illegal deer and all.”

  My voice was pretty damn hard as I tried to convey my idea that a good officer would not put another officer in such a predicament or have the gall to ask for special consideration in these circumstances. The edge in my voice, punctuated by a night of little or no sleep, was enough warning for the lad to stuff that approach for the duration. I told him what I had observed that morning and asked if he had anything to add.

  He said, “Do what you have to do, but you may get a surprise once you write out these tickets.”

  Looking him dead in the eye, I said, “That’s what I get paid for,” and let it go at that. I knew I was just moments away from ripping the ass off this arrogant, out-of-line officer, so I bit my tongue. It turned out that he was a deputy sheriff in a county in Nevada adjacent to Sierra County in California. Apparently he felt that he had a few connections in Sierraville, where this case would be heard, but I didn’t care. He had committed a flagrant violation of California law, and as far as I was concerned he was going to have to pay the piper.

  Putting an evidence tag on the four-point buck I had observed feeding earlier and another on his rifle, I asked, “Where is the doe?”

  “What doe?” he asked.

  “Look,” I said, “if you want to play that game, I will find it myself and then book you into the nearest bastille I can find, so let’s quit with the cute behavior.”

  He said, “Well, I guess you’ll just have to find it.”

  I looked around the brush pile where he had gutted the animal and around the vehicle and could not find the deer. There were no tracks leading away from the truck, so I knew he hadn’t moved the deer far. Then I remembered that I had seen him put something in the seat area of his truck. Looking inside the cab, I saw just the usual hunting gear at first. I pulled the seat back forward, but all I could see in the storage area was a sleeping bag. Then it dawned on me that a bloody sleeping bag was out of the ordinary! Pulling the sleeping bag from behind the seat and opening it, I discovered the missing deer. This lad was fast with the knife and bone saw, I thought. The deer had been cut up into six chunks, placed in the sleeping bag, and hidden behind the pickup seat.

  When I looked over at the deputy, he just shrugged and would not let his useless eyes meet the fire in mine. I tagged the deer parts as evidence, collected his rifle and the other deer, and, not wanting to ruin the rest of my day by booking this lawman gone bad, bade him farewell. He quietly got into his pickup and as a last word indicated I had not seen the last of him before he drove off down State Line Road in a cloud of dust. The thought that maybe I should have booked the arrogant son of a bitch ran through my mind as I turned away. I had a feeling he was right, but I had a lot of evidence to take care of and had to get cracking, so I pushed the thought out of my mind.

  Carrying the three rifles, I walked back to my truck parked on the hillside, laid them on the passenger seat of my pickup, and took a long pull from my canteen. After drinking my fill, I paused and surveyed my hideout. The deputy would probably tell everyone he passed going down the road that I was up on the mountain, so I probably would not make any more money from the lads coming from that direction. But that still left the other half of this huge area for me to rattle around in, and that was more than enough work for anyone, even someone my size.

  Driving back down to the spots where the lads had parked their vehicles, I loaded the four deer into my truck and covered them with a tarp so they would not be filled with road dust as I drove the back roads in my remote neck of the woods. I planned that every time I stopped to set up a lookout for other wildlife violators, I would park in the shade and unwrap the tarp to allow the carcasses to cool to avoid spoilage. Looking over my area one more time for anything out of the ordinary, I started up my pickup and turned south down State Line Road for whatever adventure it might bring. The road was very rough, and since I was driving a 1964 Dodge 2x4 pickup, I took it easy. Good old Cal Fish and Game—no use giving the officers the equipment they needed, just the cheapest. Oh well, that was life, and I was enjoying my day in the backcountry. In fact, when a game warden is in the backcountry, there is no difference between him and a king. Damn, life was good—and just about to get better.

  Rounding a steep downward curve on the road I was traveling, I almost ran head-on into a blue Ford pickup slowly coming up the road. Slapping on my brakes to avoid a collision, I noticed two lads standing up in the back of the Ford holding hunting rifles and looking earnestly over the terrain for evidence of deer. The driver looked normal except for a bad case of the “big eye” when he saw t
he patrol truck and its “law dog” driver. The Ford’s front-seat passenger, not aware of the presence of the law, kept looking out his window for any sign of deer as well. Throwing my truck into park, I quickly stepped out just as the lads in the back realized a game warden was in easy grabbing distance. Not that they would want to grab one my size, mind you. Almost as if on cue, they both cranked open the bolts to their rifles, and each jacked out a live round of ammunition. One live cartridge flipped my way and, without missing a step, I caught it in my hand. The other lad’s live round flipped forward, clanged off the hood of the Ford right in front of me, rolled off, and dropped at my feet. In California it was illegal to possess a loaded rifle in a motor vehicle on a way open to the public, and they were in California. Those two lads had sure as hell stepped into crap when they jacked those live rounds out in front of me, and, from their expressions, they knew they were now standing in it! The lad on the passenger side of the Ford, now realizing that the person in front of him was a game warden, bent over and tried to unload his rifle before I caught him with a live round in the chamber. Two quick steps brought me over to his side of the vehicle, and I was able to watch him unload a live cartridge as well.

  Three up and three down, as far as I was concerned! A rifle lay on the seat between the driver and his passenger. Announcing who I was (as if it were needed, with me standing there in all my glory, uniform and all), I asked to examine his rifle. The passenger handed it out to me through his open window, and I found that it had a live round in the chamber as well. Four for four in the loaded-rifle-in-the-motor-vehicle category, I thought. No doubt about it, my day was getting better. I had seen seven lads so far on this patrol, and every one of them had violated the law. Damn, so much for the hunter ethic! I got three of the lads off on one side of the road and had the driver move his rig to the side so other vehicles coming along might pass.