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

by Terry Grosz

  Half a mile down the road, I was about a quarter-mile from the culprits, and the binoculars brought the drama unfolding in the meadow below into focus. The driver of the pickup, because of the area’s remoteness and his belief that no one was left in the back- country, was spotlighting deer with his truck headlights. He had discovered something, probably deer, in the meadow and had lit the animals so the shooters in the back of the pickup could get a clean shot. Sweeping my binoculars over the inert pickup with both doors flung wide open, I spotted four lads hurriedly dragging what appeared to be two deer across the meadow. They threw the two carcasses into the back of the pickup, then two lads got into the back and the other two into the cab and the vehicle headed down the dirt road away from the meadow. Down the road I went in pursuit, still not using my lights. I slid around a few corners and almost went off the road a couple of times when I went from a moonlit stretch of the road into a part that lay in the shadow of trees, but God takes care of game wardens, fools, and little children, and tonight was no exception.

  The lads who had just shot the two illegal deer were not in any hurry, and I found myself gaining on their vehicle. I could now smell their road dust and occasionally the exhaust from their vehicle as I drew closer. Finally I was able to see their headlights and brake lights ahead of me, and I slowed down accordingly, trying to figure out my plan of attack, four against one and all. My plan wasn’t long in coming when the lads stopped at another meadow and headlighted a deer. Both gunmen shot again from the back of the pickup, killing the animal in an instant.

  Rolling to a stop not thirty-five yards from their vehicle, I quickly turned off my motor and waited out of sight behind a slight turn in the road. All four lads again bailed out of their rig and headed out across the field, chattering as if they were on a picnic. I guess in a weird sort of way they were, but the ants were about to arrive. I sprang from my patrol vehicle, grabbing my five-cell flashlight as I went. I was armed with my .44 magnum pistol and shot expertly with it, so I was not really concerned about my ability to control the situation. It is amazing how immortal we feel when we are young.

  I eased up to their pickup and, reaching across the front seat, removed the keys from the ignition. They had left the truck with the lights on and the engine off, so no one noticed my little act. Then, positioning myself behind the truck, I waited. Pretty soon here they came, heads down to avoid the glare of the headlights they were walking into, and then lo and behold, it dawned on me! These were the same chaps I had written up on the mountain earlier in the day for loaded guns in their vehicle! The California guys I had felt were dirty but at that time couldn’t do anything but write them up for the loaded-gun violations.

  Well, well, well, it was now time to pay the piper, and this piper was the largest they would ever hear play the “jailhouse rock”! I waited until they were about ten yards from their vehicle and then said, “Game warden, lay those rifles down in front of you, now!” The lads just froze, and for a moment I suspected a firefight might be on the way, or at least a flight to avoid the long arm of the law. To avoid either, I quickly shouted, “Bob, Dan, Allen, and Joseph (I remembered their names from the morning’s tickets), do as I say and avoid going to jail!” The sound of their names being called out went through them like a knife. It was a physical thing; I could actually see them change gears from what they were thinking before they did what they were told.

  “Now,” I commanded again, and the two lads with the rifles laid them down on the ground. I ordered them to step away from the rifles and told them I had the vehicle keys, so they shouldn’t think about trying to drive off. With that information, they gave up the ship, moved away from the rifles, and sat down in the area illuminated by the headlights. I removed the bolts from the two rifles that remained in the cab of the truck, sticking them into my vest pocket. I then moved into the field, carefully watching them all the while, removed the bolts from the two rifles on the ground, and stuck them into another pocket of my vest. Walking backward out of the light beam of their truck so I could keep an eye on my lads, I instructed them to remain where they were and told them if they fled the scene a warrant would be waiting for them by the time they arrived home. Continuing to walk backward, I reached my patrol rig, grabbed the mike, turned on my ignition, and called the Sierraville county sheriff’s office.

  When the dispatcher responded, I described what I had, the location to the best of my ability, and the names of the lads still sitting in the meadow. I said I was going to issue the men citations for their illegal deer and that if I didn’t call the sheriff’s office back within the hour, they should expect the worst and remember the names I gave them. They dispatcher told me a deputy would head toward my location but I shouldn’t expect him for a least an hour and a half. I acknowledged the message and returned to the task at hand.

  First I collected all the rifles and bolts and locked them in my truck. Then, returning to their truck, I told the men of my radio call to the sheriff’s office with their names, violation, and all and informed them that if I didn’t show up at the trailhead shortly, the sheriff’s office would be looking for them. I also mentioned that a deputy was now on the way and that if anything did happen, they would still have to get by him. As I delivered these words of wisdom, I could see any fight they might have had in them run out on the ground like a spilled Coke. I then called them over to the pickup one at a time and wrote them up for spotlighting, shooting from a motor vehicle, possession of a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle, illegal taking of a game animal with the use and aid of a light, and illegal possession of a game animal. Whatever fit the particular lad was what he was cited for.

  Once I finished writing up each lad, I had him return to his spot in the field and then called another one over for his opportunity to meet me again. When I had finished, I dragged the two deer from the back of their truck and stacked them on the road. I then called the lads over to the truck one at a time and had them get in the vehicle. I gave the keys back to the driver and instructed him to hit the trail and expect to be stopped by the deputy somewhere along the road down near the trailhead. With that, four tight-lipped lads departed, trading their evening of merrymaking for an evening of self-examination.

  Once I was sure they had left my part of the country, I loaded their three illegal deer into the bed of my pickup, including the one in the field that had just been killed, and headed down the mountain behind them. True to the dispatcher’s word, the Sierraville County sheriff’s office had a man at the bottom of the run who had stopped and was holding the four lads. Once I arrived, he let the lads go, and the two of us then gutted the three deer to avoid wasting them through spoilage. Thanking the deputy for his help, I finally hit a paved road and truly enjoyed its flatness without having to roll over bumps every two feet.

  My ass was really dragging as I pulled up into Gil Berg’s driveway and turned off the patrol truck’s engine. Stepping out of the truck, I found that my day’s adventure was far from over. Gil came bounding out of the house and said, “Terry, move your truck to the back of my house, fast!”

  I said, “What?”

  Gil repeated his statement, and the urgency in his voice told me to move it. After I moved the truck and stepped out of it one more time, Gil told that the local justice of the peace was going to issue an arrest warrant for me for contempt of court, or whatever charge he could dream up. It seemed that I had cited the judge’s cousin during my day’s sojourn in the backcountry. I was tired and not in the mood for this kind of bullshit. I had worked hard all day, and done a rather fine job, I might add, and to be met with this kind of petty politics made me see red.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

  Gil said, “Did you write a deputy sheriff from Nevada today?”

  “Damn right I did,” I answered. “The bastard shot a deer in California with a Nevada hunting license and then shot a doe in California and hid her behind his truck seat in a sleeping bag.”

  Gil said, “
Well, that was the judge’s cousin, and he is pissed you didn’t extend some professional courtesy to him.”

  I just laughed. “Gil,” I said, “let that bastard go? What would you have done?”

  “Probably booked the bastard, especially after he shot the doe,” was Gil’s reply. I had known it would be—Gill didn’t let any knothead get away.

  “Well, now what?” I asked.

  Gil said he would talk to the judge, especially in light of the illegal doe, and see what he could work out. But he also cautioned me that because the judge was pissed, I could expect small or no fines for all the lads I had caught during the day. With that bit of information and without blowing my stack, I unloaded all my evidence and tickets for Gil to process in front of his mad judge and left for a night’s rest in Downeyville, a small gold-mining town down the road and out of the way of a possible illegal arrest warrant issued by a judge who should have stayed home!

  As I drove toward Downeyville, I got madder and madder at the turn of events. I had done my job and done it well. If that dingbat judge wanted a “hoorah,” I knew just the son of a gun who would give it to him. I checked with Gil the next day, and he told me the judge was still mad and would probably throw all my cases out of court just to get even. That did it! A few minutes later I was on the phone to Dan, a newspaper reporter friend in one of the gold-mining towns in an adjacent county. He eagerly took down the facts and the next day called the judge for his side of the story before he printed it. He told the judge he was going to look into this “professional courtesy” thing, and if there was any truth to that part of my tale, it might not look too good for the judge, especially in print. Dan also told him that it wouldn’t take long before other mountain-area newspapers followed up on the story, and soon the judge and Sierra County wouldn’t look so good in the eyes of the public, especially the voters in his county. Well, surprise, surprise, my cases cleared the court docket with excellent fines and the court upheld the seizures of all the evidence, including the rifles. It seems that even the deputy paid a fine commensurate with his violation and shortly thereafter found himself looking for work.

  That day so long ago on State Line Road will stay with me probably until the day I die. It seemed that everything I touched turned to gold for the state of California and mush for the violators.

  I hate to see that kind of ethic practiced in the sport of hunting, but it happens, and that is part of reality. The problem is that with the drastic changes I have seen over the years, more and more of this kind of anti-conservation attitude is manifesting itself throughout our society. If you don’t believe that, then just work a major wildlife roadblock on an interstate out west and you will see for yourself that what I say is true.

  Speaking of reality, that judge lost the next election by a landslide. Some say the pen is mightier than the sword. I would say that probably was the case in Sierra County that time so long ago.

  Chapter Eleven

  Taking a Load of 4’s

  That November of Novembers in 1967, I was working on the Garvin Boggs Ranch, just southwest of Terhel Farms, checking waterfowl hunters. This area comprised harvested rice fields bordered by private duck clubs and was within a few minutes’ flying distance of the Butte Sink, ancestral loafing grounds for hundreds of thousands of migratory waterfowl. In short, it was a mecca for waterfowl and the activities they attracted. This particular area had a reputation for the illegal taking of over-limits of ducks, late shooting of night-feeding waterfowl, and commercial-market-hunting activities.

  Moving slowly through the area on foot during daylight hours on a non-shoot day, as I was wont to do, I chanced to locate a tarp-covered seven-place duck picker carefully concealed in a deserted ranch outbuilding. A duck picker is a work of art in the duck-hunting community. At the time, such a picker consisted of a small round drum with numerous rubber fingerlike attachments at intervals along the outside of the drum. The drum was attached to a spindle, and a power source whirled the drum and fingers at high speed. All the duck picker had to do was slowly insert the duck into the whirling drum, and with a simple rotation of the bird’s body, the rubber fingers attached to the outside of the drum would do the rest. In the hands of an experienced picker, the duck would be picked clean in a matter of minutes, the skin would remain unbroken, and the duck would be ready for the oven. A seven-place duck picker, or one that seven pickers could operate at the same time, could process a tremendous number of ducks for the commercial market in short order. Hence, my more than unusual interest in my newfound picker and my resolve to work the immediate area harder to preclude its ugly use.

  Inside the deserted shed were seven six-foot-long cotton sacks full of feathers from those members of the world of waterfowl that had been unlucky. I imagined that the reason for bagging up all these feathers was to keep them from flying around outside and acting to alert the waterfowl-hunting law enforcement community. A one- or two-place duck picker was the norm, and such pickers were used by many of the duck clubs located in the area. But a seven-place duck picker to me indicated a device to further the ugly business of the commercial-market hunter. Leaving the shed as I had found it so as to avoid the possible movement of the picker to another spot, I went on with the rest of my patrol, keeping the image of that seven-place duck picker dancing in my head. People wouldn’t have a picker like that unless they planned to use it. Unfortunately, in Colusa County such use usually meant the illegal processing of hundreds of ducks for the commercial market or a bunch of buyers’ freezers. With that in mind, I decided to give that side of the valley a little more of my attention until my curiosity was satisfied and I was assured that the killing of ducks and geese was within the law. That simple curiosity got me as close to being killed as I want to be. But in the process I learned, and lived to fight another day.

  Several nights later while on patrol at dusk watching the ducks boil out of the Butte Sink like bees, I noticed they had changed their feeding patterns and were now pouring into the harvested rice fields on the east side of the county, just south of the Terhel Farms area. Realizing that the market hunters were probably also watching the ducks and waiting for their destructive opportunities, I decided to switch from daytime to night work in that area.

  One night soon after that, about ten p.m., I moved quietly and without lights into the area where I had earlier located the seven-place duck picker. I parked the patrol truck off the levee road and down in a dry ditch where it would be out of sight and covered it with my camouflage parachute. Crawling up out of the ditch and just sitting there beside the ditch road in the tall water grass, I listened to the night sounds while I examined the harvested rice fields in front of me through the “eyes” of my night-vision equipment. The night-vision equipment was of Vietnam vintage, but it was better than most people had, and with it I could easily see and identify objects up to four hundred yards away, so I was satisfied. Putting my equipment down, I cupped my hands around my ears to intensify the sounds of night and was able to pick out the location of a large mass of feeding ducks by the flowing-water sound they made with their bills as they fed about three-eighths of a mile from my place of concealment. Indexing a full-metal-jacket, 110-grain cartridge into my 30 M-l carbine and checking to see that an extra fifteen-round magazine was strapped onto the rifle stock, I started moving toward the feeding mallards and pintail. Minutes into my travels, after again cupping my hands to my ears for echo-location of my feeding ducks, I estimated that there were probably between ten thousand and twenty thousand of them happily feeding in the rice left for them by the resident farmer’s Hardy Harvesters (a popular brand of rice-harvesting machine in the Sacramento Valley at that time).

  Moving across the harvested rice field, bathed in the soft glow of a quarter moon, I became acutely aware of the crunch of the rice stalks underfoot and the whir of whistling wings overhead heading for their feeding compatriots. The birds were sweeping back and forth across the skies, drawn to the sound of thousands of feeding waterfowl and t
he ancestral knowledge that high-energy food in the form of rice kernels needed to sustain their migration lay just beneath them for the taking.

  Catching the wind’s direction, I altered my line of travel in order to move upwind of the feeding mass of waterfowl and looked for a rice check (rice checks were systems of dikes with inserted rice boxes that allowed the farmer to adjust the water level across an entire rice field) in which to conceal my rather large carcass. Finding that check about thirty-five yards from a small access road and a semidry ditch, I offloaded all my equipment and burrowed into the water grasses and rice left unharvested along the rice check. The smell of damp earth and the pungent odor of dead crawdads along the dike hit me as I nestled in, and I began to let my mind ramble as to why I was here. I had found that serious bunches of greedily feeding ducks always stayed turned into the wind, especially mallards and pintail. That way any foreign sound would quickly be borne to their ears, but more importantly, it meant survival. In the case of danger, the feeding waterfowl could much more easily rise into the wind than try to get airborne flying with it. Hence, I always tried to get upwind and stay upwind of masses of feeding waterfowl. That way I was at the business end of a stalk of commercial-market hunters if they decided to give it a try, and sixteen times during my career I had illegal night gunners crawl right by me on their way to large masses of ducks, leaving me behind their backs for easy pursuit when they shot the birds.