by Terry Grosz
Hearing none, one voice in the dark said, “Congratulations, Bill, you did it.”
There was a pause and then another voice said, “I have never hunted hogs at night, and you were right, Bob, it’s a thrill beyond compare, especially if you remember we’re hunting on a national wildlife refuge.”
Bill’s voice continued, “This was worth every bit of the $1,000 fee I paid for this experience. I can’t wait to tell my brother so he can go with you.”
So that was the game. A commercial venture with the national wildlife refuge as their little proving ground. Well, that crap was coming to an end here and now if I could get the large lad with the field howitzer on his hip under control.
A small light went on, and with one man holding the four dogs, the other two started to gut a very large boar. Their backs were to me, so I waited for the explosion that would come once my presence was known. When the gutting of the hog was finished, Bill and the cigarette man started to drag the hog toward their distant vehicle. The dogs were released, and one came right over to me and started to smell this new addition to the group. I was amazed he didn’t bark, but since he was there, I felt it was now or never! On went my flashlight with the beam going right into the face of the large man wearing size 12’s.
He froze for an instant as the words, “Evening, gentlemen, state Fish and Game warden. You are under arrest,” rang through the cool night air. Then he exploded!
“Run,” he bellowed. He took off at a right angle to me as the other two men remained frozen in time. The angle size 12 took was perfect for a flying tackle. It was the kind of tackle you seldom get in football because the ones carrying the ball are so fast and elusive, but here it was, and I took advantage of it in a heartbeat. I hit the lad so hard I about broke my right shoulder, which hit the pistol on his hip. The impact knocked the wind out of him, and he was further incapacitated when we went into the marsh and he landed face down. I don’t even remember handcuffing him, but I did in record time as he lay there almost knocked out.
Grabbing the pistol from his holster, I stuck it under my gunbelt, then jumped up, grabbed my still shining flashlight out of the mud, and, hitting the two lads with the beam, thundered, “Make a move and you die.”
I knew I couldn’t shoot them for running, but they didn’t know that. The trick worked. Both remained frozen in their mind’s worst moment as I approached. Asking for and receiving their driver’s licenses and sidearms, I then asked them to go pull their buddy out of the mire. They did it meekly, and it was plain to see that size 12 wasn’t going anywhere—at least not until he got the kink out of his ass from being tackled by a three-hundred-pounder flying at the speed of light (well, almost the speed of light). When he finally got his faculties back, I asked for and received his driver’s license as well. As he dug the license out, I could see a police badge and ID card attached to the opposite side of his driver’s license in his wallet. Ignoring that for the moment, I gathered up their loose gear, and then we headed for the refuge fence and their vehicle.
Making all three drag the hog, which went about five hundred pounds, took a lot out of them, and by the time we got back to their truck they were an exhausted lot. I took the car keys from size 12, who turned out to be a Sergeant Thomas from a San Francisco Bay area police department, and the distributor cap from the Ford to preclude thoughts of escape by the two left behind. I advised both men to remain with the pickup, and then the good sergeant and I walked back to where my patrol truck was hidden. Loading and seatbelting him into the patrol truck, I petted my much-excited horse of a Lab, Shadow, and told her (in a gruff voice, of course) to watch him.
I don’t think the sergeant moved during the entire trip back except for the labored breathing caused by the kink from my flying tackle, which I rated a “ten.” Once in my truck, I radioed the sheriff’s office and had them send a unit out to transport the prisoners and a wrecker to tow away the Ford once I seized it. In short order, everybody was in jail, the Ford was impounded, and the dogs were detained in the animal welfare shelter in Yuba City. The hog was photographed and donated to a needy family with seven kids to avoid spoilage. Boy, were they glad to see that slab of bacon arrive.
As it turned out, the good sergeant, in order to fatten his income, had been guiding illegal hunts on the national wildlife refuge for years. He would quietly advertise among friends and associates, sneak them in one at a time, and charge them $1,000 for the experience. Bill, an attorney and the one who had fired that first shot that mortally wounded the big tusker that fateful night, broke like an egg and told all. Aware that I was armed with this information, the good sergeant came clean with the rest of the story in short order. Included in his explanation was the story of the dogs. He had trained them to stay very close to him throughout the hunt. Additionally, he had had a veterinarian in the Bay area fix them so they couldn’t bark, only croak or growl. Those poor damn dogs. Humankind can really be the lowest form of animal there is with just half a thought and a little time.
Several weeks after this “hoorah” my three lads appeared in front of the federal judge in Sacramento and without a whimper pleaded guilty. Jack Downs, my future boss in the federal service, saw to it that they were charged with trespassing, possession of a firearm on a national wildlife refuge, removal of wildlife from a national wildlife refuge, and possession of dogs on a refuge without a permit. All three were found guilty and fined $2,000 each for the error of their ways. After that I never saw muddy tracks leading from that area onto Lone Star Road again.
As it turned out, the good sergeant and his trusty sidekick, the cigarette man, were both police officers from the San Francisco Bay area. In addition, the Ford turned out to be a police undercover vehicle that the sergeant would commandeer for these hunts, even charging the police department for the gas and oil. It was later discovered that he claimed on his vouchers that he was on a moving drug surveillance. Well, I don’t know about a moving surveillance, but he certainly had a moving experience before this episode in his life was finished. He and the other man were both removed from the police force, and both dropped from view.
All the way through the episode my senses had kept telling me that the situation was something unusual, that the person being pursued was out of the ordinary. He was. He was very good at what he did and took a lot of life. Unfortunately for him, at that moment in time someone else was better than he at the hunt. That is usually the case in this world of wildlife. Someone always has the upper hand. I can only hope that for those of us enlisted in wildlife law enforcement, our moments are better than those of the people on the other side of the fence and in the business of extinction. If not, we’d better grab our asses because we and the passenger pigeon will eventually have a lot in common.
Chapter Seventeen
A Game Warden’s Ears
One evening, after having worked most of the day checking waterfowl hunters in Colusa County, I grabbed a sackload of decoys and my dog, Shadow, and took off to do a little duck hunting myself. My little duck hunt turned into a typical enjoyable afternoon, with the opportunity to listen to the sounds of the marsh and the whistle of the ducks’ wings as they sailed into my set and to smell the gunpowder from the freshly fired shells of my 10-gauge double-barreled shotgun. Taking my time, I made sure all my shots were well within the thirty-five-yard range and only took a shot if the ducks coming into the set were pintail drakes. The weather was cool but clear, which necessitated the liberal use of my mallard call and pintail whistle. For the most part, the air carried only single ducks and a few pairs at this time of the day, but before long, with the limit at eight, I had seven plump rice-fed drakes resting beside me in the blind. Shadow was having the time of her life bringing back the birds I killed, and the day was good. As the shooting slowed, I sat back in the blind to enjoy one of God’s beautiful purple sunsets coupled with a cool but not cold breeze and topped off with a dying afternoon sky now filling with tens of thousands of pintail, mallards, wigeon, and everything else
that quacks, seeking a safe place to feed. It was one of many beautiful marsh memories that are burned forever into the recesses of my mind. Today those hordes of ducks leaving the Butte Sink are nothing but a memory, a moment in time in which I was privileged to be a participant.
Forgoing the last duck of my limit because the onrushing sweep of the second hand of my watch announced the end of legal shooting hours was near, I left the blind, took one more look around to complete my memory of the afternoon, and started trudging toward my vehicle. Walking along a rice check with my ducks swinging from my duck strap, acutely aware of the two swollen fingers on my right hand from the recoil of the 10-gauge double-barrel and the soft ploosh of the footsteps of my tired but happy dog walking in the water at the edge of the dike, I awoke from my dream world to the sound of shooting farther to the west. Glancing at my watch, I saw that the end of legal shooting hours was rapidly approaching. When I reached my vehicle, I took the time to pick and clean all my ducks, all the while keeping an ear cocked to the distant sound of shots. Legal shooting hours had long since ended, but the shots didn’t.
Damn, I was hoping the lads in the field would end their illegal activities and allow me to go home early for once with my great marsh memories. But it was not to be. It didn’t take long to realize that the shots, rather than ceasing, were increasing in tempo to match the increase of the now hungry targets whirling through the skies. The air was absolutely full of skeins of waterfowl traveling every which way and looking for a place to eat in the thousands of acres of recently harvested rice fields. I could look in any direction and see literally thousands of birds moving in every direction of the compass. This was a special sight for those of us who took the time to look. Trying hard to relax during my time off and enjoy Mother Nature’s sights of a lifetime, I continued to pick and clean my ducks, hoping these shooters would soon realize legal hunting hours were over and leave. They didn’t and kept shooting while I fussed with my seven now not-so-interesting ducks.
Loading my gear, ducks, and dog into my pickup, I worked my way across the farmland on farm access roads, running without my lights until I was within one hundred yards of the place where the offending shots were coming from. Stopping my vehicle, I just sat there and listened so I could echo-locate my offending late shooting party. Off to my west sat four duck blinds, all within about four hundred yards of each other. From one blind in the middle, I saw two lads stand up and fire six shots into the air, killing two mallard ducks. The shooting was coming from one of many sections of leased waterfowl hunting lands known as the American Sportsman’s Club, an organization with a history of violation problems in my district. Gazing out over the evening shine of water on the flooded rice field, I said to myself, “Well, there sits your offending duck blind; now what are you going to do?”
Looking the lay of the land over one more time, I left my vehicle and dog and closed in on my duck shooters, who all the while continued to blaze away at the ducks crossing over their decoys. By now I was close enough not only to count the number of ducks they killed but to identify the species as well. The sun had set behind the mountains, the wind was picking up briskly, the birds were flying low and slow, and the shooting continued, increasing in intensity. I believed there were only two shooters in the blind, but they had dozens of dead ducks around them. Taking out my flashlight and binoculars, I moved in a crouch even closer to the gunmen, trying to figure out how best to approach and apprehend them as night rapidly descended on the marsh.
By the time I had worked in close enough to the blind to be effective as a “catch dog,” darkness had really set in. I could see flame spurting from the barrels of the hunters’ shotguns as they shot into the night sky at the thousands of pintail that were leaving the haven of their refuge in the Butte Sink in unbelievable numbers for the harvested rice fields surrounding them. I wasn’t able to distinguish physically between the two men through my binoculars because they were so close in size (I later discovered they were brothers), so I had to rely on my ears to show me the difference between them. Most of their shot groups were in threes, which ruled out the possibility of a double-barreled shotgun. I couldn’t hear the familiar clackety-clack of a pump shotgun, so I ruled out a pump as well. After listening for a while, I decided both were using semiautomatic shotguns, one a 12-gauge and the other a 16- or 20-gauge three-inch shotgun. This belief was reinforced by the knowledge that rarely did folks hunting on these wealthy duck clubs use junk for shotguns after paying many thousands of dollars for the privilege of hunting waterfowl on their “own” private shooting areas. There was no mistaking the signature hard thump of the 12-gauge shotgun. The other shotgun had a lighter thump that was clearly audible and definitely lighter in sound, and that gunman didn’t shoot as often as his partner.
The shooting continued for one hour past the end of legal shooting hours until the sky was literally black and then stopped. Since I didn’t have a notebook with me, I used a pen to record the number of shots, shooters, and birds killed on my fingers and hands. Don’t laugh! You have enough space for ten entries on your fingers and many more on your hands. I couldn’t use a light to illuminate what I was writing on or I would have given away my position, but I was aware, in the dark, of what I was writing on the soft flesh of my hands. Plus, it wouldn’t wash off very easily, so if in crawling on the ground I got my hands wet, my notes would still be there. I have used this method many times in my thirty-two years in law enforcement, and it has always worked like a charm. The only time it doesn’t is when the defense attorneys want to see your notes in a court of law. However, the lack of notes under these circumstances doesn’t hurt your case and usually elicits a chuckle from the judge.
For the next twenty or so minutes, the lads remained in the blind, not moving and out of sight. I almost had the feeling they were sitting quietly to throw off any game wardens in the area. The pause was good because it gave me the opportunity to listen for other shooting that I might work after finishing up with these lads—or save for the next night because many times, if violators get away with something and are rewarded with game, they will return to the same battle ground to continue their successful poaching shortly thereafter. Keeping that fact in mind, many times I have gone to such a spot the night after hearing something suspicious and been able to apprehend some lads breaking the law. Whether they were the ones there the night before, who knows? All I would know was that the lads breaking the law that particular evening were now being attended to in a way they needed.
Hearing no other late shooting, I returned my attention to the chaps still motionless in the blind. Now I realized why these lads weren’t moving, I thought. It was getting inky black out because of some cloud cover moving in from the northwest. These men were waiting until it got so dark that they would be hard to find. However, these folks had walked out on a rice-check walkway, the easiest way to the blind versus walking across a flooded, sticky, adobe-bottomed rice field. Besides, walking through a flooded rice field would make a lot of sloshing noises. That idea convinced me they would come out the same way they had gone into their blind, along the easy-to-walk rice check. In those days, the fine was $2 per minute for every minute past legal shooting time, $25 for the base violation of late shooting, and loss of all your critters. It didn’t take long, with that formula, to run up one hell of a bill. Little did these lads know they had just paid for my gas and oil for a week’s hard work with their little sashay into the illegal world of late-night waterfowl shooting immediately adjacent to where the local game warden had chosen to kill a few ducks to give to a needy family.
Running the lay of the land through my memory bank, I realized that these lads had three ways to leave the marsh, and there was no easy way for me to approach them quietly in the field. If I approached in a direct line-of-sight pattern through a flooded rice field, they were only forty yards away but my passage would be very noisy, and hard going in the water and mud. Once they heard me sloshing across that flooded rice paddy, they could be
off and gone out the back door, so to speak, on another rice check and outdistance me in short order. So that avenue was ruled out. If I walked down one rice check toward them, they would probably see or hear me coming and leave via the rear of the blind on another rice check radiating from the blind out into the inky darkness that now surrounded us. Splitting the difference, I stayed in between the two rice checks leading to their shooting area. That way I could move quickly to either side and intercept them as they came out no matter what rice check they chose to follow. Besides, I thought, the dirt roads behind me were as numerous as the clubhouses servicing this area. That meant that more than likely their vehicle was hidden behind me somewhere. That made my position even better because the lads would have to walk through me to get to their vehicle. After the many years I had played high school and college football, no one walked through me. Maybe my three-hundred-pound frame had something to do with that.
I noticed the lads were now standing up in the blind and quietly looking all around. They continued watching the skies as thousands of ducks whistled overhead en route to the rice fields to feed. After what seemed hours to me as I knelt in the icy water, they finally began to walk out on one of the rice checks toward where I was concealed. I crawled closer to their rice check, and as they approached a point where it would be pure folly for them to flee, I stood up, turned my flashlight on them, and identified myself. The men froze for a second in surprise, then continued walking toward me as if nothing were the matter. They were almost identical, and as luck would have it were both attorneys from Redding, California. I asked them if they knew when the legal shooting time had ended that evening. Neither had the foggiest idea, was their response. They continued to walk toward me and then passed me as if I had no business with them. I made sure they understood I wanted a few more words with them, and they halted in annoyance. They denied that they had been involved in any late shooting activity; it must have been someone else, they said. I asked them what time they had on their watches. Their times were only a few minutes different than my watch, which I set daily to avoid problems such as these in the field. One attorney told me that both of them had Rolex watches, and since my watch wasn’t a Rolex, it could hardly be trusted to tell the correct time. Ignoring his obvious intent to belittle my Seiko, I told the two gentlemen that I had observed them late-shooting waterfowl from a very short distance away through my binoculars and had seen them kill six ducks (four mallards and two pintail) in the process. I informed them that taking migratory waterfowl after legal shooting hours was a state and federal wildlife violation and that they were each going to receive a citation for the offense.