by Terry Grosz
Looking me right in the eye, she said, “That’s none of your goddamned business.”
In those days, the law could go a little further than it can today, and I did. Opening the gate, I walked into her yard, gently grabbed her arm, and marched her up the front steps, through the front door, and into the house. Letting go of her arm, I walked into the small kitchen and opened the refrigerator door. Its sole occupants were a half quart of milk and half a cube of margarine. Examination of the cupboards produced a sugar bowl half full of sugar and a half-empty box of cereal. That was it, nothing else. Without another word I left the house, drove to my evidence lockers, and retrieved about twenty packages of processed elk steak, striped bass, and pork steak (from wild hogs illegally killed on Colusa National Wildlife Refuge). I then went to Chung Sun’s Market (the best in a four-county area for quality foods) and purchased several sacks of groceries, enough staples for an adult and three little kids for a week’s meals. There may also have been some gum and candy in those sacks, come to think of it.
Returning to Mary’s, I walked up to the front door with my arms loaded with bags of food and knocked on the door. Mary opened the door and without waiting for an invitation, I walked in and headed for the kitchen. Mary never said a word, just followed me into the kitchen. I took out the meat and laid it on the counter and unloaded the contents of the grocery bags onto the table so she could see what I had brought. Mary just continued to stare holes into me, and the little kids said nothing. With those thanks, I returned to my patrol truck and went back to work.
Thus began a weekly trip to Mary’s with food so she and her children wouldn’t have to go hungry in Harry’s absence. In order to pay for these weekly grocery runs, I would claim what I was allowed for per diem expenses and just not use all I had coming (skip meals, in other words). I used this extra money along with packaged meat from my evidence lockers to care for Harry’s family. This went on for the three months that Harry resided in the Colusa County jail, and not once did Mary thank me, not once. I thought many times that she was an ungrateful female, what with me taking care of her kids and all.
Oh well, if that is the way she wants to be, so be it, I thought.
At the end of his three-month jail term, Harry was released. The word from my informants was that Harry planned to kill me the first minute I screwed up and gave him the opportunity. That didn’t bother me much because I was immortal in those days and after having apprehended Harry was now the meanest bastard in the valley.
About a month later I was passing down the same road on the Art Andreotti Ranch—in fact, I stopped on the same bridge I’d found Harry under. Needing to relieve myself, I checked to make sure no one was coming down the road and started to urinate over the bridge rail. While tending to nature’s call, I let my mind wander back and was again relishing my apprehension of Harry when all of a sudden the stillness of the moment and my gathering of memories were shattered by the telltale report of a rifle.
Quickly zipping up my pants, I whirled around and was trying to echo-locate the shot when a second shot pinpointed the source for me: a small ridge behind the scruffy alfalfa field next to the bridge. I knew that piece of property was totally closed to hunting by the landowner, and anyone shooting out there was trespassing, not to mention probably killing deer during the closed season. I ran across the road and opened a gate into the alfalfa field and a dirt road that eventually led to the ridge whence the shot had come. Getting back into the patrol truck, I hurried across the field, driving down the dirt road toward the ridge where I had located the last rifle shot.
As I drew closer, I shifted into low gear and began to drive slowly in order to keep my dust trail to a minimum while I drove to the top of the oak- and grass-covered ridge. Stopping the truck below the top of the ridge, I got out and quietly shut the door. I checked my .44 magnum pistol and slowly inched my way to the ridgetop so I could look over without being skylighted. Below me lay another of the numerous valleys that ran forever through those weathered hills, heavily covered with scrub oak and cheat grass. Far below me I heard voices, but they were too far away to make out what was being said. Good, they didn’t have a clue I was even in the country. I listened for a while, and it was pretty easy to figure out that there were at least a couple of people down there and that they had an animal down. From the direction of their voices, I was able to pretty well pinpoint their location in a grove of oaks about seventy-five yards southwest.
Getting impatient, I began moving slowly toward their position, one stalking foot at a time through the dry cheat grass. The talking continued as I moved toward them. It’s kind of hard for a six-foot-four, three-hundred-pounder to sneak, but I was doing OK, or so I thought. Getting within thirty-five yards of my culprits, I paused to echo-locate their voices again, all the while cussing the thick stands of oak trees and brush that were making this sneak necessary. The talking had ceased. All I was greeted with was the silence usually found in oak forests under a fall midday sun. After waiting about thirty minutes, I again got impatient and started moving toward the location where I had last heard the suspects talking. Approaching a small clearing, I came across an animal’s blood trail, which quickly led to a dead doe. She had been cleanly shot through the neck, gutted, and left in the shade of a large oak tree. Around her were many footprints in the soft dirt, one set of which led to a bloody hunting knife and two spent cartridges (probably saved for reloading).
The poachers couldn’t have been too far away, and I started looking around the hills for them. I was in the opening of a small clearing with the dead deer, and I started getting a nervous feeling standing there, knowing the poachers were probably out there somewhere watching me. Moving quickly back into the cover of the timber, all the while cussing my stupidity for standing in a clearing like that, I reverted back to my survival training. Slowly circling the dead deer’s location, I quickly came across the track of two individuals. They were walking backward toward a thick pile of brush, which I slowly moved toward. When I reached the brush pile I found that two people had recently stood there and more than likely watched me approach their hard-won gains. Their tracks led from the brush pile, all the while walking backward, into a deep, brush-covered ravine where pursuit would be futile. Making sure they weren’t circling me, I slowly moved back to the dead deer. Picking up the bloody hunting knife, I recognized it as the one the court had returned to Harry after his last conviction. For a moment my body temperature was lower than that of the surrounding air. If Harry had been on the other end of this knife and the rifle that had killed the deer...my thoughts trailed away.
Picking up the dead deer, I carried her to the waiting patrol truck for transport to Colusa and the hands of a needy family. During the whole trip home, I was pissed. I had needlessly exposed myself to the poachers, I hadn’t caught them, and though I was sure Harry had killed the deer, I couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Goddamn it to hell, anyway! Still mad from the screw-up, I decided to work the rice fields on the east side of my district, thinking maybe this stupid game warden could catch some poor soul with an illegal pheasant. It turned out to be pretty quiet in the rice fields, so I headed to an area along the Sacramento River to check fishermen. About halfway into the area I wanted to work, I was interrupted by my state radio. The Colusa County sheriff’s office was calling me, so I responded.
The dispatcher asked if I would return to the sheriff’s office; I had a visitor who wanted to see me. I agreed and turned the nose of my truck toward the office. I arrived about fifteen minutes later and was acutely aware of the warmth of the building as I entered. When you are still alive, you notice things like that. I met Lieutenant Del Nannon on his way out, and he told me my visitor was in his office and to go ahead and use it since he was leaving for the day. Entering Del’s office, I met Mary, Harry’s wife, hurriedly leaving. She uttered in passing, “Now we are even.”
I grabbed her elbow and said, “Whoa, whoa, what do you mean ‘now we are even’?”
She repeated, “Now we are even,” and briskly walked out the door without so much as a look back. I stood there watching her walk away while her words spun around in my head. A strange calmness settled over me, a feeling like none I’d ever known. I became acutely aware that I would die only when it was my time. The feeling that flooded through me at that moment was one of destiny and the realization that those final shots would be called by someone or something other than a rifle held by Harry.
It was the damnedest feeling I had ever had up to that point in my career, but one I’ve had at least a dozen times since. I had the opportunity to cross a unique person who hated me on the one hand but on the other had enough compassion to let me live because I had shown kindness and fed her children. Her husband was an accomplished rifle shot and could have ended it right there on that brush-covered hillside, but it had not happened that way. I learned from that lesson on the hillside that no matter what, you should always treat everyone you deal with the way you would want your own family treated. By following that lesson, I have been allowed to learn many more lessons over a thirty-plus-year career in law enforcement. There truly is a lesson in loving your fellow humans.
Harry died thirteen years later of brain cancer. I don’t know where Mary and the kids are. I have retired from the wildlife law enforcement profession and am still alive and learning while I await that final shot.
Chapter Fifteen
One Drop of Blood
During the summer and fall of 1968 in the Stonyford area of Colusa County, California, I had constant problems with the illegal spotlighting of deer. The killings would come so fast and furious that it seemed there wouldn’t be any deer left if I didn’t get my hind end in gear and catch the culprits.
I would be on patrol in the backcountry, a perfect deer habitat of brush and oak trees dotted with lush alfalfa fields and stock tanks, late at night or early in the morning before daylight, when all of a sudden there would be a warm gut pile looking me in the eye from its place in the middle of the road. It was obvious that these lads were pretty comfortable under cover of darkness doing what they did best. I found a kind of clue in the killing pattern on different days of the week: my rash of killings seemed to always occur on Wednesdays, Thursdays, or Fridays. This frustrating activity went on day after day, and it seemed as if I would never catch the culprit. But I was young in those days and had a wife who realized very well the type of husband she had married. She let me run like a hound after those who needed chasing, and I did. Since my normal sixteen- hour day wasn’t doing the trick, I just doubled my efforts. Ah, youth—you can use up your body like that when you’re young, but look out when you turn forty. Being immortal, like most at that age, I poured the fuel of life into the fire that raged within me. All to no avail, I might add, for I didn’t solve the deer-killing mystery in 1968. I gave it my best shot, but it wasn’t good enough. In fact, I felt that the lads were playing with me because I should have caught them, considering my knowledge of the area and the hours I spent in their pursuit. But sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you. In the middle of the summer in 1969 the familiar killing pattern in my best deer areas emerged again, namely, predawn killings, Wednesday through Friday, with the trademark gut piles in the road. You would think it would take a lot of gall to gut an animal on the road proper, but the country was so deserted, especially during the late-night and early-morning hours, that it was pretty obvious the chances of being caught were zip.
This scenario of gut piles, fences broken down where deer had been dragged over them from the alfalfa fields, and spent cartridges on the road began to drive the demons in me. There just wasn’t a darn clue. Even the spent cartridges in the road were no help, being 30-06 in caliber. Aside from the 30-30, the 30-06 was probably the next most popular caliber and was common to every gun store in the nation. I used every technique I had learned from my training and from other officers. I even used techniques I had learned as a poacher in my youth, but all to no avail. This person, or persons, was better than I, but I wasn’t in the mood to give up. I had good German stock in me, not to mention my mother’s work ethic, and sooner or later these chaps would fall prey to this determination.
One Saturday the editor of the newspaper in Colusa asked if he could ride with me and do an article for his readers on a day in the life of a game warden. Looking over this chap, I thought he left a lot to be desired. He was a short, dumpy lad with glasses as thick as my windshield. His hair was thinning badly all over his head, and in a good blow he would end up in the next county. However, my department always wanted us to be available to the public, and I guessed this counted. Deciding I didn’t have a problem, I told him to be ready to go at three-thirty the next morning. He looked at me in disbelief but, realizing this might be his only chance, said, “OK.” Noting the hesitant response, I told the lad that if he showed up late he would be left behind. I could tell from the look I received in return that he would be there. He could smell a story—and a story he did get.
The next morning at three-thirty sharp, I picked up the newsman (who had been waiting since three) at his office and the two of us headed up into the national forest not far from the Stonyford area of Colusa County near the Glenn County line. Deer season was in full swing, and the backwoods were full of lads trying to match their hunting skills against the elusive deer. Hunters could take only bucks with forked horns or better, and the killing of does was strictly prohibited. Figuring that activity would give my newspaper man the best opportunity for a story, I headed into that human morass. As was typical in California during those days, the early deer season was hotter than the hubs of hell; the temperature usually ran from the mid-90s to 100-plus, and it seemed as if every knothead in the country was there, all falling over each other in their quest to kill a deer. Violations were common, as were hunting accidents, and the deer hunting in Colusa County always seemed to me to be less than what I would call a quality hunt. Maybe that’s why we wardens called it “hunting” instead of “killing.” But the hunting fraternity loved the opportunity to get into the woods, and, by virtue of their presence, there I was as well.
Arriving in the national forest in the Lett’s Lake area, my Clark Kent and I spent an uneventful morning watching and checking deer hunters as they pursued their sport in 100-degree weather in the rugged terrain of western Colusa County. The newsman, whom I had told to stay out of the way when I was tangled up with a violator, performed flawlessly. He managed to get pictures of those I checked, even those I issued citations to, without an ounce of trouble. He would remain on the very edge of any activity, taking notes furiously, even sketching when he couldn’t use the camera without being obtrusive. In between activities, he would interview me or ask questions about my procedures during the last car stop. All in all, he wasn’t the drag I had figured he would be, and I was beginning to like the lad.
As the sun and heat approached their zenith, I turned down an old dirt road that took me and my Mark Twain slowly along Sullivan Ridge. I pulled into a grove of trees along the road, shut off the patrol vehicle’s motor, and just sat there and listened. “Why are we stopping?” were the first words out of his mouth.
“To see what God throws our way,” I replied. I could tell that answer didn’t really hold water in his world, but I was confident that sitting during this period of the day was the best use of my time. A few moments later I heard seventeen shots fired from what appeared to be two rifles in Sullivan Canyon. I continued to listen and was formulating a plan for investigating this interesting turn of events when three shots were fired just down the road from where we were sit
ting. Those three shots sounded as if they had been fired from the road (a violation), and possibly at wildlife that had been scared up out of Sullivan Canyon by the barrage of earlier shots. I started up my patrol vehicle and headed in the direction of the three shots, getting there in time to see two lads dragging an untagged forked-horn buck (two-point western count) across the road to their waiting pickup truck. After a few questions, two Fish and Game violations surfaced, much to the happiness of my newspaper friend.
Finishing with my latest violators, I heard another vehicle coming up the dusty mountain road, then stop just below our position and fire one shot. Bidding the lads just cited a quick good-bye, I jumped into the patrol rig, as did my newspaperman, and away we went toward the latest shooting. Swinging around a sharp turn in the road, I surprised two lads just returning from the brushy area alongside the road. Stopping in front of their vehicle, I noticed that both of the pickup doors were flung open, indicating a hasty exit.
“Morning, gentlemen,” was my greeting. “Having any luck?” The taller one said they had just seen a three-point buck but had not been able to get to him before he disappeared into the forest. Quickly checking their fingers, hands, and pants legs for the telltale signs of blood and finding none, I asked to check their licenses and weapons. Several citations later (no hunting license for the tall one and use of full-metal-jacket ammunition for his partner), my passenger and I were off to look into the earlier episode of the seventeen shots. We started back down the long hogback on Sullivan Ridge, following an undulating road along the rim that moved through small thickets of trees and brush as it trickled its way down to the valley floor below. About a mile down that road, I noticed a cloud of dust, which signaled to me that a car was slowly moving out ahead of us. The instinct of a game warden rose up in me and told me a problem was in the offing. I looked over to the reporter and with a knowing twinkle in my eye told him we would catch these lads doing something wrong. He looked at me with eyes unaccustomed to the instincts of a man who made a living hunting humans and who talked about future events as if lawbreaking were an everyday occurrence. His look betrayed the uneasiness of a man not touched by the feeling that comes when hunting your own kind but riding next to someone who does. I could just see the question on his face: How do you know there will be a violation there?
