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

by Terry Grosz

  The clock ticked, scuffling noises came from outside the front door, and still no one moved. It was the goddamnedest thing I ever saw. The bar was quiet as a tomb, and since everyone else just sat still, so did I. In a few moments Dan came casually walking back through the door and in a voice not to be argued with said, “Let’s go.”

  Everyone, and I do mean everyone other than the bartender, got up and followed him out the back door of the bar to where most of the vehicles were parked. Since my Jeep was parked in front, I went out the front door and stumbled over the moaning carcass of the one-armed fellow. He had been slashed to ribbons and was bleeding like a stuck hog! His eyes were open and looked like hell, but it was clear that he was not on his way to his eternal reward because most of the wounds didn’t look that deep, so I kept moving to my Jeep. Damn, what the hell was I to do? I was an officer of the law and sworn to uphold the laws of the state of California. I hadn’t seen Dan strike any of those blows, but I was sure as shootin’ that they were the work of his knife. As I stood next to my Jeep trying to figure out what to do, my thoughts were cut short as the members of the construction crew sped around from the rear of the bar and LeeRoy hollered, “Get out of there, Terry.” Since the one-armed fellow seemed likely to live, I turned, got into my Jeep, and got the hell out of there with a mental picture of how I would testify against Dan sometime down the road. There was no law in town, and medical help was about twenty-five miles away, so I knew the one-armed lad would have to make it with the help of the townspeople who were already starting to gather. As I sped toward Fish Lake, I figured I would just have to get Dan later and would do so when I wrapped up my sturgeon-snagging case.

  After a somewhat sleepless night, I drove down to the place LeeRoy had shown me on a map the previous evening to hook up with my newfound snagging friends from the construction crew. Finding their cars parked above a large, slow-running deep hole on the river, I walked down to see what I had to do. I met LeeRoy about halfway down the forested mountainside as he stepped out from behind a large Douglas fir. It was apparent that he was acting as lookout for any game wardens who might be in the country. As he beckoned me over to his hiding place, I could tell he was nervous and wanted to talk.

  He said, “Damn, Terry, sorry about last night. Just remember, you didn’t see anything or hear anything, and don’t mention it today in front of nobody.”

  “No problem, LeeRoy. That’s a dead issue—uh, sorry.”

  He just laughed and said, “Go on down and see how we’re set up, and get ready to work.”

  I worked my way down the last forty or so yards to the river, and there before me was a rocky ledge that overlooked about a fifty-yard-long sandbar jutting obliquely out into the Klamath River. The river was at least three-eighths of a mile wide here, with a current that would get anyone’s attention. Lying directly below me next to the bank was a hundred-yard-long pool of quiet water directly off the river’s main flow. It was a perfect area for tired sturgeon to pull out from the main current and rest before renewing their migration upstream. Standing on the sandbar were eight construction workers, each with a four-foot ocean rod with a Penn nine-aught reel loaded with 180-pound monofilament test line. Attached to each of these homemade snagging outfits, as near as I could tell from where I stood, were three sets of illegal-size treble hooks with half-pound weights attached to the lines just above the hooks to get them down on the bottom where the sturgeon were lying as they rested. As the hook sets were dragged along the sandy river bottom with vigorous jerks, any that moved over the backs of sturgeon were instantly lodged in the flesh of the fish, and the fight was on. Damn, what a commercial production! To get to the sandbar one had to inch along a narrow, rocky ledge that ran along the rock face edging the quiet pool. Once far enough along the trail, one had to jump down about four feet to the sandbar and there commence fishing.

  A shout brought me back from my analysis of the area to a scene seldom seen by anyone but commercial poachers. One of the lads had snagged a huge sturgeon, and the strength of the fighting fish was dragging him off the sandbar even though the man must have weighed over two hundred pounds and had his shoulders thrown back at an angle and his heels dug into the sand. Two of his buddies quickly reeled in their lines and ran to his aid. As each man approached, he wrapped his arms around the waist of the lad being dragged off the sandbar and into the Klamath River by the sturgeon’s massive weight and length. This move would be repeated by more men as the fight dictated. Basically these fish, which averaged three hundred to six hundred pounds, would move sideways into the current once hooked and let the fast-flowing river help them in their battle for life. All three men were now getting dragged off the sandbar. Realizing they had hooked a fish that was too large, probably over eight hundred pounds, and that their chances of landing it were zero, one of them took his cigar and touched it to the line, which separated like a rifle shot. The sturgeon was free—carrying a set of snag hooks and lead weights in its back, but free. Back on the sandbar there was laughter, and the fellow who had just lost his fish rebuilt his snagging outfit and commenced to fish once again.

  Trying to memorize who was doing what for my testimony later, I was cut short by a quiet voice behind me. Turning, I looked into Dan’s cold blue eyes. He extended his hand and said, “I’m Dan. What’s your name again?”

  I told him, “Terry.”

  He quietly looked me over and then asked, “What did you see last night?”

  Without even a pause I said, “At least fourteen pitchers of beer.”

  Dan looked at me for a moment, then threw his head back and roared with laughter. Then he reached for my shoulder, turned me around, and said, “There are six sturgeon down there.” He pointed to some sturgeon tied together in the water alongside the sandbar. “Have the guys give you a hand hauling them up to your Jeep, and here is a map showing where I want you to take them. All you have to do is just drop them off and come back for more. If you get caught, you are on your own. At the end of the week you get a split in the take the same as the other men, plus a little more for the use of your Jeep and the gas.” Handing me the map in question, he strode off to where his men, who had observed our discussion and suspected its gist, were beginning to haul the snagged sturgeon up the riverbank toward my Jeep.

  For the next two hours we hauled sturgeon up the mountainside to my waiting truck. Once loaded with at least three-quarters of a ton of fish, off I went to the location on the map. On my way through town to the Indian fish smokers, I passed the Ishi-Pishi Bar. It was about eleven in the morning, and the one-armed guy was long gone. Blood had spread around where he had lain, and I could see the big bluebottle flies covering the blood pool. Not daring to slow down, I proceeded to the Indian smokers’ setup a few short miles out of town and dropped off my load of fish. The smokers didn’t say anything, just took the fish, and I left. This ritual was repeated three times that day. No wonder the sturgeon were struggling to maintain their numbers in the Klamath River against the siltation from adverse logging practices, illegal commercial snagging, and all, I thought. My first day’s actions made me all the more determined to apprehend every one of these men, regardless of the odds I would face trying to arrest all concerned. It is nice to be young and foolish at the same time because the foolishness doesn’t usually compute.

  This routine went on for the next two weeks during the construction crew’s days off. In between I would go home and report on the poachers’ activities. My first report created quite a stir with the captain, and needless to say, several meetings with other officers in the squad were held until a battle plan was devised. They decided I would continue working undercover until I had all the evidence we needed to convict all the snaggers. Then a large crew of wardens would go in and round up the men, including Dan, and we would prosecute the lot. The plan was simple, or so it seemed, and I was pleased with it. But as a result of the knife fight the Humboldt County sheriff decided, even though the one-armed guy had skipped town, to send a tem
porary deputy to Orleans to get things under control. That’s when the whole affair started to go to hell in a handbasket.

  When I returned for the third time, the poachers were pretty tense. It seemed that the new town deputy had been talking about how the Fish and Game might come to town and clean out the operation unless the snagging stopped. With that information rattling around, the Yurok Indians were nervous, as was the snagging crew. I continued to play Joe Dumbhead and hauled the big fish as before, but now I had other men riding shotgun to ensure that everything went smoothly when I delivered the illegal fish to the Indians.

  Several days later the whole covert operation got backed into a corner, and I was forced to play out my hand without the help of the rest of my squad. As I hauled a load of fish one afternoon, LeeRoy met me halfway up the mountain at his usual stakeout location and said, “Have you heard the news? Dan is leaving.”

  “No,” I said, stunned. “Why is that?”

  “Oh, he’s afraid someone will turn him in for stabbing that guy the other night, and since he has two prior felonies and doesn’t want

  to go back to the big house he’s getting out of the area to work on another construction project where they don’t know him.”

  “When is he leaving?” I asked.

  “Today about nine o’clock, just as soon as he can find the boss and get what pay he has coming,” LeeRoy muttered sadly as he helped me carry a particularly heavy sturgeon the rest of the way up the hill to my pickup. Arranging this last sturgeon under the tarps in the back of the Jeep so no one could see what I was transporting, I thought, Damn, I’m going to have to apprehend all these guys by myself without help from anyone. There were thirteen people involved in this fishing ring, counting the two Indians smoking and selling the fish and the storekeeper. I had the goods on all of them except the storekeeper who had sold me the illegal fishing gear, which was not itself a violation. A violation did not occur until the illegal fishing gear was used contrary to California state law by the person who had purchased it. Because the storekeeper was on the outside of the ring, acting more as a facilitator than anything else, I vowed to let him ride this time and to net him sometime later down the road when things weren’t so hectic. I knew that once I nabbed the men who had been doing the snagging, the Indians would disappear into the reservation. That prospect didn’t really bother me, though, because I knew I could work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs and eventually round up those men for illegally selling the sturgeon. Proving the sale would be easy, for I had purchased over thirty pounds of smoked sturgeon from these lads off and on during the days when the operation was in full swing.

  Snapping back to the immediate problem, visions of ten tough construction workers against just yours truly, I realized that even though I was a strapping lad weighing in at over three hundred pounds, once they figured out who I was and what I represented to their immediate futures, I would be in all kinds of trouble. Wait, I told myself, I can get the new deputy who recently moved into Orleans to help. Man, that thought was like a heavy weight being lifted from my shoulders. Waving to LeeRoy as he headed back to his lookout, I drove into town, thankful that my shotgun rider for the day had a bad hangover and had chosen to lie on the cool, wet sand of the sandbar by the snagging hole.

  Arriving in Orleans, I parked my Jeep carefully behind the deputy’s house trailer to prevent anyone seeing me with him. I had heard that the new deputy was a little guy but well built. He was a sergeant and had been an amateur boxer, so I knew I had the help I would need to corral this bunch of outlaws. Well, not all the help I would need—but this was a damn good start and would have to do. Besides, at my size I could hit pretty hard if I had to. A couple of well-placed punches and the odds would be better than ten to two, I thought as I walked to the front door of the trailer and, after looking over my shoulder to see if anyone had noticed my presence, knocked on the door.

  I heard a scratching around inside the trailer as if someone were getting up and a voice saying, “Just a minute.” After more moving around, the door opened to reveal a rather small man, hardly a drop over five-foot-six but with a muscular, wiry frame. “Yeah, what do you want?” was his salutation. Not wanting to waste any time standing around in the open, I identified myself as an undercover game warden, giving him my name and displaying my badge, and told him quickly about my covert detail. He looked at me in disbelief. Continuing, I told him about Dan’s planned departure and that like it or not, I had to bring the detail down at this very moment and needed his help.

  I was stunned by his response. Without mincing a single word, he told me he would lend me his shotgun but would not help. He said he was in this town by himself, and if he wanted to survive he had to be careful whom he helped. Fish and Game was not an agency he wanted to help because of the rampant wildlife violations in town and local attitudes about those kinds of violations. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, but I wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. I tried to convince the deputy that the fellow who had recently stabbed the one-armed lad, the situation that had brought him to town, was leaving Orleans and that little activity on Dan’s part sure as hell wasn’t a Fish and Game violation but a penal-code violation, which was certainly in the deputy’s ballpark. The deputy said, “Did you actually see this fellow Dan stab the one-armed guy?”

  I answered, “No, but who else could have?”

  Without budging an inch, he said, “You didn’t see it actually happen, so how can you say that?”

  I could see that I was getting nowhere with this lad, and looking him straight in the eye I said, “I can’t stand here in broad daylight all day and argue with you. I am making a request from one law enforcement officer to another for assistance; will you help?”

  “It’s not in my area of responsibility. Since you got into it, call your own people for assistance.” With that he closed the trailer door, and I angrily returned to my Jeep. Not caring whether anyone saw me now, I took my .44 Smith and Wesson magnum, which was my service weapon, from behind the seat and strapped it on my right hip. Reaching under the seat into my kit bag, I took out the .45 ACP Colt Commander I had purchased from the gunsmith in Eureka and strapped it on my left side. Jamming extra cartridges into my right pocket for the .44 and sliding an extra full magazine for the .45 into my left pocket, I fired up the Jeep and headed for the fishing hole. I was furious. I’ll be damned, I thought, if I let an attempted murderer get away, not to mention not making a try for those men who had been illegally killing and selling all those sturgeon. Ah, youth ... one against ten. Those appear to be fair odds to a man in his early twenties and pissed, I guess—at least they did that day.

  Parking the Jeep where I usually parked, I checked my weapons and extra ammunition and started down the mountain toward the snagging hole. Meeting LeeRoy, the lookout, in his usual hiding place, I walked right up to him and said,“LeeRoy, I’m a California state Fish and Game warden, and you are under arrest.” His face showed utter shock. Continuing, I said, “Furthermore, if you make one sound I will kill you here and run so no one will ever know who did it. Do you understand me? If so, nod your head, but remember, no sound or a bullet, your choice.”

  That poor little bastard wet his pants right then and there. He couldn’t even speak, only nod, which he did. I guess I may have come on a little too strong, but this was my first case of any magnitude, and I had an urge to piss as well! Handcuffing a terrified LeeRoy to a small pine tree, I gagged him with a piece of his shirt, put his driver’s license in my pocket, and headed down the mountain for the other nine lads. Arriving on the overlook at the head of the trail that wound along the rock face to the sandbar, I observed that they were all busy trying to snag sturgeon. Good, I thought, I still have the element of surprise. Dan was the closest to me, just sitting

  and watching the others; the rest were scattered along the sandbar, engrossed in their snagging activities.

  Unsnapping the catch on my .44 in case I had to take fast action on the lethal si
de of things, I held up my badge and told everyone in a loud, clear voice, “State Fish and Game warden. Everyone is under arrest for illegal snagging activities. Reel in your lines, bring your poles and snag gear, and come on up.”

  No one moved! They just looked at me in disbelief. Goddamn, that was a lonely feeling. Having nothing better to do, I repeated my order, and the whole sandbar erupted this time. Every snagger threw his fishing gear into the river, thereby, in their minds, destroying the evidence. The gear was later retrieved, and a charge of littering was added to their lists of what not to do in front of a large game warden. Then, as if on cue, they all ran for the ledge that led to my position, either to fight or to flee. This was not good: nine against one, and all at the same time! The first to reach the ledge was Dan. All I could think of was his handiwork several nights earlier with the one-armed fellow. With that in mind, when Dan’s head came up over the edge of the ledge as he tried to pull himself up, I kicked him right between the eyes. He groaned and instantly fell back onto the others, who were also scrambling to get up on the ledge, and they all crashed to the ground in a heap. Dan’s inert form falling to the earth took all the fight out of the rest of the men, and they stood quietly on the sandbar below me, still looking at me in disbelief. I ordered all of them to hand me their driver’s licenses, which they did. Securing those bits of identification in my shirt pocket in case some of them tried to escape later, I resnapped the strap over my pistol so they could clearly see that I was armed. I told them that since the odds were somewhat in their favor, I would kill the first man who so much as tried to do anything other than what I told him to do. The looks in their eyes told me they had no problem understanding what I had just said.

  “Good,” I said. “We now clearly understand each other. One of you crawl up on the ledge, and then one of you can hand Dan up, since he doesn’t appear to be too chipper.” One of the stronger men hoisted himself up onto the ledge and looked long and hard at me and the open forest beyond. “Remember what I said,” I uttered quietly. The look faded, and he turned and lifted Dan up onto the