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

by Terry Grosz

  “What time tomorrow?” was Bob’s question as he removed his gear from my truck to load into his for the trip to Yuba City and home.

  I said, “How about the same time?”

  “OK,” he answered. “What could top this, eh?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But take your best shot—any case; it will be a piece of cake.”

  God damn it, I did it again.

  Bob said, “See you,” as he sped off into the night. Damn, he had that “trap the German” look in his eyes again, I thought.

  I stood there in the darkness of the morning and said to myself, “Terry, there is no way to top this.”

  God just laughed.

  * * *

  The next evening Bob and I loaded our gear, some cold water, and sandwich-making materials as we prepared for the evening’s patrol. “How about double or nothing?” he said.

  Damn, I was hoping he would have forgotten my bragging remark as he sped off into the night the evening before. No such luck; he was too quick for that. “Whatever,” I said in a somewhat lame voice.

  “OK,” Bob said. “How about a frogger with at least one hundred frogs over the limit?” The limit on bullfrogs in California at that time was twenty-five per person.

  Damn, that meant the offending lad would have to have at least 125 frogs. Not wanting to back down at that point, I growled, “OK, you made the call, now be prepared to buy two of the most expensive hamburgers ever.”

  Bob just laughed, and off we went into the night to work the north end of the 2047 Canal area, my best bullfrog habitat. Starting at the 2047 Canal as it left the Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, Bob and I headed north along the canal levee road with all our lights turned off. Sneaking along the canal like that made it easy to see lights along the fishing areas, which would alert us to the presence of fishermen or froggers. But we drove almost the entire length of the canal without seeing any fishing or frogging activity whatsoever.

  Starting to get worried about my big-mouthed bet, I turned onto a small dirt road leading along the north end of Delevan National Wildlife Refuge, hoping someone was frogging along the 2047 Canal on the east side of the refuge boundary. Bob and I hadn’t gone one hundred feet east when I spotted a dim light on the refuge, a closed zone, obviously someone illegally fishing or frogging. We stopped the patrol truck, quietly closed the doors, and walked the one hundred yards or so to the source of light. Approaching the small canal whence the light was emanating, we were surprised to see a small canoe being paddled by one chap with another man lying in front, leaning over the bow, frogging by hand. (Froggers usually use a long pole with a frog gig on one end to spear the frogs.) There were several gunnysacks full of something alive in the middle of the canoe, and the fellow in the bow held another partially filled sack between his legs. About that time, Bob and I spotted the lad in the bow grabbing a frog that was illuminated by his headlamp and putting it into the gunnysack between his legs. That was enough for us, so on went our flashlights, which almost caused the two chaps illegally frogging on the refuge to jump clear out of their small canoe.

  “Evening,” I said, “how is the frogging?”

  The lad in the stern said, “Fine,” in a somewhat weak voice, probably realizing their hind ends were in worse shape than the frogs they had in the gunnysacks. Bob and I got them out of the canoe and up onto the bank. A check of their driver’s licenses revealed that they were from the San Francisco Bay area, and police officers from the San Francisco Police Department to boot! I informed them that they were frogging within the boundaries of a national wildlife refuge, a violation of federal and state laws. They didn’t say anything, and when I asked for their fishing licenses, neither of them could produce one. I casually informed them that that was another violation. Again, no response.

  I told Bob to see what was in the gunnysacks, and after a moment he said, “Frogs, Terry, hundreds of them.”

  Keeping a careful eye on my two very nervous cops, I told Bob to count them out into the canal (so they would live) and give me the score. About thirty-five minutes later Bob said, “Two hundred forty-seven frogs, Terry,” and a quick glance into the canal confirmed that just about every frog in the neighborhood was out there bobbing in the water.

  “Lads” I said, “you are looking at a $25 fine for no license, a $50 fine for fishing on a refuge, and a $25 fine for every frog in those sacks.”

  The two cops just gasped, and the short one said, “What about some professional courtesy here?”

  Jesus, I was not prepared for what followed and almost jumped into the canal when it happened. Bob came out of that canal as if shot from a cannon!

  “Goddamn you guys, you give all us officers a bad name. What do you mean some professional courtesy? You guys left that at the gate when you illegally entered the refuge, and if I was in my district I would throw your asses into jail so fast your heads would swim like those frogs out there in the canal.”

  Damn, my little buddy, true to form, made it rather plain to the two offenders that to pursue that “professional courtesy” line would not do! They clammed up, and Bob and I wrote them citations for their violations, which came to $575 each for the error of their ways. We escorted the lads off the refuge and watched their vehicle’s tail lights disappear to the south on the 4-Mile Road.

  I said, “Bob, we just did it again. Can you believe it? I hate to say it, but this is getting unreal.”

  Bob just looked at me and said, “That’s the trouble with you Germans. Your race has lost so many wars it is affecting your brains, what little is left.”

  We both laughed, but something was sticking in the back of my mind, and I just couldn’t put my finger on it. We continued to work most of the rest of the evening but were unable to top our earlier case, so I headed for home. As Bob was leaving, he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Want to make it triple or nothing on the hamburger bet?”

  Not wanting to push my luck any more than I had already, I answered, “No, let’s just let it rest and enjoy ourselves tomorrow.” Bob said, “OK.” But the tone in his voice was that of a hunter whose appetite was now whetted and who wanted more—much more. He left for home, and I gladly crawled into bed and quickly fell asleep.

  * * *

  About dusk Bob turned into my driveway and bounded out of his car and up the steps into my house with a hearty, “Hi, Donna. The old man tell you about our luck?”

  Donna nodded, and Bob continued, “Just you wait and see what we are going to do tonight.” Donna just grinned. She knew we were having the time of our lives at the expense of the bad guys, and she wasn’t going to slow down the fun.

  I was afraid of that. That damn little poop had another unreachable limit for the evening’s events, and I sure didn’t want to be let in on the secret. Oh well, I started this mess, I might as well see what he has up his sleeve, I thought. “What’s up for tonight, Bob?” I asked.

  “How about we catch six deer spotlighters?” Damn him, he knew the state average of spotlighters caught by a Fish and Game officer was six per year, not six in one night! He expected to catch that many in one evening? Brother!

  I told Bob, “Be serious.”

  He said, “I am! If we can make the largest set-line and over-limit of frog cases in the state, what is to stop us?”

  “Come on,” I said, “let’s go.” I was half caught up in this race for the roses!

  With that, out the door we went en route to the mountains in the western part of my district. If we were going to make a spotlighting case against deer hunters, that was where we would have to be.

  Turning off the Leesville Road onto the Ladoga Road, I shut off all my lights and sat there for a few minutes to let our eyes adjust to the dark. The evening was hot, and both Bob and I had our windows down to let in any air we could (there was no air conditioning in state patrol vehicles in those days). Boom went the sound of a heavy rifle somewhere down the road we were sitting on!

  “That shot sounded l
ike it was no more than a mile or so down our road,” I yelled to Bob as I started up the truck. Racing down the Ladoga Road without lights, we hadn’t gone a mile when here came another vehicle hell-for-leather right at us. On went my headlights and red light, but the speeding vehicle was by us before I could blink. I always liked a good chase; a quick power turn of my vehicle and the race was on. We overhauled the speeding vehicle in about two miles and finally pulled it over after the occupants had managed to unload their rifles (it was illegal in California to have a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle on a way open to the public).

  Bob sprang out of my still sliding vehicle and was on the lads in the stopped car in a flash. Putting my truck in park, I approached the car on the driver’s side, and Bob and I got the four black male occupants out and made them stand at the rear of their vehicle in the glare of the headlights from my truck. Once we had them safely under control, we checked their vehicle. There were two spotlights on the floor and two 30-06 rifles with live ammunition and spent casings on the floor. Walking back to our four lads, I asked what they had been hunting, and they all looked at each other, but no one said anything.

  I asked my question again, and the driver said, “We weren’t hunting deer, we was only shooting jackrabbits.”

  Bob and I looked at each other and grinned. Who said anything about shooting deer? we both thought. Looking back at the driver, I repeated, “You were only shooting jackrabbits?”

  The driver said, “You bet, that was all we was shooting at.”

  I said, “How many did you guys shoot?”

  The driver said, “Oh, eight or ten, but we was not shooting the deer; we know that’s illegal.”

  I said, “All of you who were shooting at the jackrabbits and not deer, raise your hands.”

  All four of the lads raised their hands. Brother, what dummies. Taking jackrabbits with the use and aid of a light was also illegal in California. With that, I walked back to the trunk of their car. There was a snot-like substance and blood all over the rear bumper.

  I said, “I see you have some blood on the rear bumper. Are your rabbits here in the trunk?” Without waiting for a response, I continued, “That’s a great idea, keeping the rabbits and taking them home for dog food. You guys are to be commended for not wasting the meat. Is that where you’re keeping the rabbits?”

  “Yes,” said several of the lads at the same time.

  I walked back to the driver and said, “Why did you guys run when you saw the red light?”

  “We was scared,” was the reply.

  Looking him right in the eye, I said, “I would like to look in the trunk of your car, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, go ahead, if you can.”

  I said, “May I have the keys to the trunk, please?”

  The driver answered, “That’s what I was talking about. We lost them back there when we picked up those rabbits.”

  I said, “Let me see the keys you have in your hand,” which he did. Sure enough, they didn’t fit. I walked back to my patrol truck, dug into my toolbox, and walked back to the car with a crowbar. I said, “Lads, spotlighting any game animal in the state of California is a violation of the Fish and Game laws.” Letting that sink in, I continued, “Since the ‘rabbits’ are in the trunk of the car, I would like to see them. If you are unable to provide the keys, I will have no option but to break into the trunk with this crowbar.”

  They just looked at me, and taking that as a “no,” I stuck the end of the crowbar into the trunk lid where it joined the trunk frame and said, “Last time.” No response. I started to pry up the trunk lid, and the driver said, “Wait; here are the keys.”

  Digging into his pants pocket, he produced a set of keys that fitted the trunk lock. With a turn of the key, the trunk opened, and upon lifting the lid, four dead-as-a-hammer does appeared as baggage. Looking at the men, I said, “Lads, these are the biggest rabbits I ever saw.”

  The lads had nothing to say as Bob and I placed them under arrest for illegal possession of a protected big-game animal, handcuffed them, and, after sitting them down in the road in front of our patrol truck, called the Colusa County sheriff’s office for transport assistance. Carter Bowman, the Stonyford deputy, arrived about forty minutes later and transported our lads down to the jail in Colusa. Bob drove their vehicle, and I followed in my truck down to the state fire station a few miles away, where we left the car for safekeeping. Taking the deer, we hotfooted it after Carter and our load of deer slayers (two fewer than Bob had said we would catch that night). We booked the lads and gave their deer to two needy families. (I had made an arrangement with the county attorney that instead of throwing a whole game animal, guts, hide, and all, into a walk-in freezer, I could take just a small part of the animal—such as a foot or tail—and photographs to preserve as evidence and then immediately give the rest of the animal to such families for their own use. As a small-town game warden, I knew just about everyone in the area. If I seized a big animal, it went to a big family, and so on. The family signed a receipt for my records and then got some damn fine eating in the way of frogs, deer, elk, salmon, striped bass, and so forth.)

  As we got back into my patrol vehicle, I looked over at Bob and said, “It’s too late to go back into the western part of my county. Let’s go over and work the warm-water fishermen along our mutual eastern border.”

  Bob said, “Damn, we almost made our six apprehensions.” He paused and then said, “You’re right, it’s too late to go back into the mountains. Let’s go over to the Hammond Ranch area and see if we can make any fish cases along Butte Creek in my part of the district.”

  I turned the patrol vehicle to the east, and away we moved from the Colusa County jail to our next adventure, which wasn’t long in coming.

  * * *

  Zip went the pencil-thin blue beam of a spotlight across the lima bean field, followed almost instantaneously by the report of a heavy rifle. Bob and I, having our lunch at four a.m. on the edge of Butte Creek on the Hammond Ranch, damn near dropped our teeth in disbelief. We had been quietly sitting alongside the creek and had just spread out our lunch-making materials on the hood of the truck. We had no sooner started making sandwiches than a farmer’s pickup entered the area and began checking some irrigation pumps on the north end of the lima-bean field where we were sitting. Once we were aware of what the men were doing, we continued with our lunch preparations, not paying any more attention to the pickup as it made its way around the field. That is, until the spotlight zipped out across the field, latched on to the eyes of a deer, and was followed by a Remington 7mm magnum 154-grain bullet! Needless to say, sandwich-making materials flew off the hood of my patrol truck as Bob and I slid around a corner of the bean field and along a dusty road in hot pursuit. Moments later we had in our clutches one old GMC pickup, two Mexican laborers, one still cooling four-point buck (very fat, I might add), a spotlight, a 7mm Remington rifle, and our quota of six spotlighters! Off to jail these lads went as Bob and I performed our ritual booking dance.

  Leaving my house, Bob said, “Same time, different place, quadruple the hamburger bet?”

  “Bob,” I said, “we’re running in the twilight zone; let’s not push our luck.”

  To make these kinds of cases on call night after night is unnatural.

  He said, “I know, but let’s push our luck and see what happens.”

  “OK,” I responded. “What the hell; we are on a roll.” I was also a hunter of humans, and our luck over the last few evenings was not lost on me either.

  “See you,” Bob said as he drove off into the morning.

  “See you,” I returned, wondering what the hell was in store for us next.

  * * *

  Responding to my ringing phone as I came out of a deep sleep, I was surprised to hear my captain’s voice on the other end. “Terry,” the voice said, “what the hell is going on over there?”

  I said, “I don’t know, Jim, but that little Hawks and I are knocking them dead.”


  He said, “You sure are. I just talked to Bob this morning to see how you two were doing, and I can’t believe it. You guys are facing a potential collection of $6,000 in fines for three nights’ work. At that rate I will have to call you two the Gold Dust Twins if you keep it up! Do you guys realize you have collected more in fine money in three evenings than the rest of the squad collected all of last month?”

  “No,” I said. “We have had a run of good luck it would appear.”

  “Luck, hell,” Jim shot back. “What you guys are doing is unnatural.”

  I quietly agreed as the captain advised us to keep it up and then hung up. Unnatural certainly was the word, I thought as I lay back down to get some more sleep.

  * * *

  “Hi, Donna,” Bob said as he came into my house to get me for the night’s patrol. This evening I was excited to see what we could do once turned loose in the rice fields of Colusa County. Not wasting any time, the two of us left with hardly a backward glance. My patient, long-suffering wife just watched us go with those intense blue eyes of hers, knowing she had married a kid at heart and would suffer forever for that mistake. God, how I loved her for letting me run. Climbing into the patrol truck, I turned to Bob and said, “What is our target tonight, chief?”

  He looked at me as if he hadn’t really thought about a specific target and then said, “A big duck case.”