Badges, Bears, and Eagles

by Steven T. Callan

  “Outrun this,” said Albert, gasping for breath and still soaked to the gills. “Humboldt Dispatch, Fish and Game 1313.”

  “Go ahead Fish and Game 1313.”

  “I would like to request a BOLO” (be on the lookout).

  “Go ahead with your information.”

  “The adult male subject was last seen at 0845 hours, on the north bank of the Madd River, approximately one half mile downstream from Highway 101. He is running in the direction of Highway 101.” Albert paused to catch his breath. “The subject is described as a white male, approximately thirty-five years old, five feet eight inches tall, with brown hair and a mustache. He was last seen wearing brown overalls and a blue jacket.”

  “Ten-four,” said the dispatcher.

  Water dripped from Warden Albert’s clothing as he reached the top of the riverbank. He could see Tucker running across a pasture, in the direction of Highway 101.

  “Humboldt Dispatch, Fish and Game 1313.”

  “Go ahead Fish and Game 1313.”

  “Be advised that the subject has removed his brown overalls and jacket. He is now wearing dark colored blue jeans, a white long-sleeved shirt and no shoes.”

  “Ten-four,” said the dispatcher. “CHP has been advised of your BOLO and is responding.”

  Not to be deterred, Warden Albert continued his foot pursuit of Tucker. The desperate fish poacher had a hundred yard lead, but was slowed considerably by his lack of footwear and sore feet. He had climbed the rise leading to Highway 101 and was no doubt expecting to flag someone down and be halfway home before the exhausted warden reached the highway. What Tucker found, instead, was a black and white California Highway Patrol unit and two officers waiting to take him into custody.

  When Warden Albert appeared on the scene a few minutes later, Tucker was already cuffed and sitting in the back of the CHP unit. Nick identified the suspect and established that Tucker and Vinuchi were from the nearby town of McKinleyville. He radioed Captain Replogle and advised him that the female accomplice was on foot and might be headed for McKinleyville. Vinuchi was described as thirty years old, five feet four inches tall, with dishwater blond hair. She was last seen wearing a red coat.

  Replogle had just taken the Guintoli exit off Highway 101 and was headed toward the Hammond Trail Bridge. As he raced down Madd River Beach Road, a woman stepped out of the brush and flagged him down; she fit the description given by Albert and was wearing a red coat. When the woman realized that the green sedan was a Fish and Game patrol car, she did an about-face and began to walk away. Replogle managed to detain her long enough for Warden Albert to arrive in the CHP unit, along with Tucker. Albert identified Vinuchi as Tucker’s accomplice and arrested her.

  Captain Replogle transported Tucker and Vinuchi to the Humboldt County Jail, where they were booked for taking salmon and steelhead with a gill net and for resisting arrest. Tucker had been arrested before and knew enough to keep his mouth shut. Vinuchi, on the other hand, jabbered all the way to jail. “Ronnie just got fired and we needed money,” she whined. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Shut up Marla,” said Tucker.

  Warden Albert went back to the scene of the crime and began gathering evidence. He found the overalls that Tucker had stashed on the north side of the river; inside were keys to the green Ford pickup parked under the bridge. Also in the overalls were Tucker’s California Driver’s License, a California Fishing License, Tucker’s Social Security Card and two hundred and fifty-five dollars in cash. The cash had probably come from selling unlawfully taken salmon and steelhead. Albert seized and photographed a one-hundred-foot gill net, three large gill-netted salmon and one large gill-netted steelhead, all lying on the south beach. The orange boat that Albert had left on the north side of the river was also eventually recovered and seized into evidence.

  Later that morning, Warden Albert met Captain Replogle and a California Highway Patrol officer at the green Ford pickup that was parked under the bridge; the wheelbarrow was still lying upside-down in the bed. Fresh fish blood covered the wheelbarrow, which had obviously been used to transport the gill net and fish to and from fishing sites. Surprisingly, the doors to the pickup were unlocked. A fully loaded .22 caliber pistol was lying on the floorboard in front of the driver’s seat.

  Hindsight is always 20/20. Nick Albert says if he had to do it all over again, he would have ordered Tucker to leave his waders on and waited for Captain Replogle to arrive—a man isn’t going to run or swim very far wearing chest waders. As it turned out, Tucker and Vinuchi both bailed out of jail before their trial date and fled to Louisiana. Warden Albert did some additional investigation and found out that just prior to the gill-netting incident, Tucker had been fired from a McKinleyville lumber mill for bringing a loaded pistol to work.

  Warden Nick Albert went on to enjoy a long and productive career. He retired as a patrol captain in December of 2005. Federal statistics indicate that the two most dangerous law enforcement jobs in America are drug enforcement agent (DEA) and game warden. These criteria are based on the chance of being killed on duty. A very high percentage of the people that wildlife officers deal with are carrying firearms. More often than not, Fish and Game officers are working alone, miles from the closest backup.

  Fortunately for Warden Albert, Ronald Tucker had left his loaded pistol on the floorboard of his pickup and did not have it hidden in his chest waders when Albert confronted him. Tucker’s desperate actions, before, during and after this incident, clearly indicate that he was highly irrational and extremely dangerous. This case could have ended quite differently, but turned out to be just another adventure in the life of a California Fish and Game warden.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Outnumbered

  I

  Most of the time large deer camps are occupied by friendly, law-abiding hunters, happy to have their deer validated and get a chance to ask the game warden a few questions. Every deer opener, however, we seemed to find at least one camp occupied by hunters with very little respect for game laws.

  An experienced warden could detect a “dirty” camp within minutes of entering. The laughing and talking would end abruptly and people would drop out of sight. We would then discover all kinds of deer tag shenanigans. Untagged, slick-tagged (tag not filled out), tagged with the wrong tag for that particular deer zone or tagged by people who hadn’t killed the deer—many of whom had never fired a rifle in their lives. The law required a hunter to fill out his lawfully issued deer tag and place it on the buck’s antlers immediately after the deer was killed. Once the tag was filled out and placed on the deer’s antlers, it had to remain there until fifteen days after the close of deer season. The tag could not be used again and—unless this was a two-deer zone—the hunter had reached his season limit. He was done deer hunting in California until the following season.

  Some “game hogs” would surreptitiously transport their deer home without filling their tag out and placing it on the deer’s antlers; this meant they could illegally reuse their tag later and thereby exceed the season limit. Others would acquire the tags of friends or relatives, not using their own tag until the season was about to end—another unlawful means of exceeding the season limit. It was our job to expose these scams and take the appropriate enforcement action. Maintaining control of the situation was absolutely essential—a difficult task if the warden was significantly outnumbered.

  II

  On September 18, 1988, Warden Nick Albert and his reserve warden, Mel Thoreson, were patrolling the Pilot Hill area of Humboldt County. It was the second day of deer season and hunters were everywhere.

  “Wow!” said Thoreson. “Did you see all the people in that camp? There must be ten pickups parked there.”

  “That bunch is camped in there every deer season,” replied Albert. “We almost caught a couple of ’em spotlighting last year.”

  “They sure gave us the look when we went by,” continued Thoreson.

  That’s funny,” said Albert.
“Why would all those hunters be standing around the fire at 10:30 in the morning of the second day of deer season?”

  “I was wondering the same thing,” said Thoreson.

  “We’re going to turn around and drive by again,” said Albert. “See what they do and try not to be too conspicuous.”

  Warden Albert drove his patrol truck past the suspicious camp and continued a half mile down the road. When they were clearly out of sight, he pulled over and turned off the motor. Albert told his reserve warden they were going to sneak back to the camp on foot and find out what those hunters were up to. There had to be a reason they were all in camp at this hour of the morning and not out in the woods deer hunting.

  With careful, deliberate footsteps, Albert and Thoreson worked their way through the woods. They had reached a clearing about a hundred yards from the camp, when something caught their attention. A man at the far end of the clearing was bending over what appeared to be a small buck. With the aid of binoculars, Albert could see that the man was attaching a tag to the deer’s antlers. Warden Albert recognized the man as Russ McCabe, a well-known violator who lived in Eureka.

  McCabe was a husky, six-foot-two-inch borderline moron who gauged his success in life by the number of mounted deer heads hanging from the walls of his single-wide mobile home. He spent most of the money he earned at the tire shop paying taxidermists, drinking beer with his now thirty-year-old high school buddies and buying hunting equipment. Still unaware of the officers, McCabe had begun dragging the deer toward camp. Every ten yards or so, he would stop and look around.

  Before McCabe could reach his destination, Warden Albert walked up behind him and said, “What are you up to, Russ?”

  McCabe’s face turned bright red and his eyes grew wide with fright. Without a word, he let go of the deer’s antlers and started heading toward the camp.

  “I want you to stay right here until I take a look at your deer tag,” ordered Albert.

  McCabe reluctantly stood by while Warden Albert checked out the tag attached to his little forked horn buck’s antlers. McCabe’s deer was barely legal, having a tiny fork on one side and a spike on the other—spike bucks being protected in California.

  This guy couldn’t have known it was legal when he pulled the trigger, Albert thought.

  McCabe’s tag was not filled out, as required by law. His deer was cold and had obviously been dead for some time. Warden Albert suspected that McCabe had gotten spooked when he saw the Fish and Game truck drive by and rushed out to put a tag on his buck. After obtaining McCabe’s identification, Albert instructed him to bring his deer and follow them into camp.

  You could have heard a pine needle drop when Warden Albert and Reserve Warden Thoreson walked into the suspicious deer camp—Russ McCabe close behind, dragging his deer. Everyone stopped what he was doing and stared at the two uniformed officers. Albert spotted three bucks hanging near the edge of camp. Examining their tags, he found two in order, while one was not filled out. This “slick tag” was also the wrong one for that particular deer zone (B-1). The buck in question had been killed by a man named Kelly Dale Brooks.

  When Warden Albert asked for Brooks’s identification, all hell broke loose. It was as if the wardens had walked up to a hornet’s nest and bashed it with a baseball bat—the entire camp started buzzing. Some of the hunters actually jumped into their pickups and attempted to leave. Based on the two illegally taken deer that Albert and Thoreson had already discovered, Warden Albert ordered everyone to remain in camp until his inspection was completed. The two officers were outnumbered fifteen-to-two, so maintaining control of the situation was not going to be easy.

  Warden Albert knew that something was seriously wrong. Leaving Thoreson to keep an eye on the camp, he returned to the area where he had first seen McCabe with his illegal deer. Walking across the clearing, he noticed a pile of tree branches that had been intentionally stacked in place. Removing the branches, Albert found two forked horn bucks, both skinned, gutted and placed in white deer bags. Both were untagged. Things were getting more complicated all the time.

  Warden Albert realized that he and his reserve warden needed help to keep track of fifteen hunters, all seemingly going in different directions. Thoreson provided a set of eyes and ears, but he was only a reserve and had limited authority.

  Patrol Lieutenant Steve Conger and Warden Jon Dunn were patrolling about ten miles away, so Albert radioed them and requested their immediate assistance.

  “Let me have your attention,” shouted Albert. We have some untagged deer here and I am ordering everyone to stay in camp until we get to the bottom of this.”

  Jake and Jarret Sugg, close friends of McCabe’s, took Warden Albert’s order as an invitation to scram. They turned and bolted into the woods.

  All manner of chaos threatened to break loose when Kelly Brooks’s sixty-two-year-old father—the owner of Brooks’s Tire Shop—stepped forward and asked, “What’s the problem, officer?”

  “There are two untagged bucks unaccounted for,” Warden Albert explained. “If no one claims them, I’ll have to charge everyone in camp with joint possession of two unlawfully taken deer.”

  Brooks employed seven of the thirteen men still in camp. He called a meeting and within a few minutes, a man named Ronald Chaney stepped forward and said, in a quavery voice, “Those deer are mine.”

  Warden Albert wasn’t buying it. Chaney only stood about five-six and weighed 130 pounds, soaking wet. Albert figured the smallest man in the group had been bullied into claiming the deer. He read Chaney his Miranda rights and after a series of questions was convinced that Chaney had killed at least one of the deer hidden under the branches. Chaney had apparently intended to kill even more deer, as evidenced by the two unused B-1 deer tags that Warden Albert found in his pocket. The tags were seized into evidence, along with the two untagged deer.

  About that time, Lieutenant Conger and Warden Dunn arrived. When McCabe, Brooks and Cheney had been properly identified and issued citations, Warden Albert asked if there were any more deer in camp or hidden outside. After a long pause, one of the hunters spoke up—a more senior member of the crowd with a weather-beaten face and bloodshot eyes. “No more dead deer, here!” the man said, gesturing broadly in every direction.

  Based on his experience with this group, Albert seriously doubted the truthfulness of this man’s answer. He advised everyone within hearing range that should they find any additional deer, the responsible parties would be charged with “failure to show on demand,” in addition to any other violation.

  Lieutenant Conger and Reserve Warden Thoreson walked outside the camp and began looking for additional deer. They found the two Sugg brothers—looking like two of your scarier extras in the cast of Deliverance—hiding in some nearby brush. Jake and Jarred had fresh blood on their hands and wore defiant expressions.

  With the likelihood of still more purloined deer stashed outside the camp, all four officers went to investigate. A few minutes into their search, Warden Albert asked who was keeping an eye on the hunters still in camp. Warden Dunn was closest to the camp so he sprinted in that direction. Dunn arrived just in time to catch Jake Sugg and a younger man, Scott Ryerson, dragging two more untagged forked horned bucks toward a waiting Jeep. These deer had been hidden under some boards and a tarp at the edge of camp. Sugg and Ryerson were charged with possession of two unlawfully taken deer and failure to show on demand.

  With four officers now present, they had enough authority to force everyone in camp to sit down in one location. Thoreson and Dunn were put in charge of supervising the hunters while Albert and Conger conducted a thorough search of the rest of the camp and the surrounding area. No other deer were found.

  Six unlawfully taken deer were seized into evidence, all forked horned bucks. Charges were filed against Jake Sugg, Scott Ryerson, Ronald Chaney, Russell McCabe and Kelly Brooks.

  Although they had no way to prove it, the officers involved in the case suspected that all eight deer
found in or near this camp had been shot illegally—after dark, with the aid of a spotlight. That would explain the group’s better than average success rate and the fact that they were hanging around camp all morning.

  No one had slept the night before.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Patrol to Fenders Ferry

  One of the most enjoyable aspects of my job as a wildlife protection officer was patrolling. There was always the possibility of adventure as I drove through the countryside or skimmed across the water, looking for signs of illegal activity while enjoying nature in all its glory. I never knew what I was going to see or what type of violations I might encounter.

  One of my favorite patrols was Fenders Ferry Road, north of Shasta Lake. Patrolling this long and winding dirt road over the mountains, through the woods and past four breathtakingly beautiful streams—the McCloud River, Squaw Creek, Potem Creek and the Pit River—could take anywhere between four hours and an entire day, depending on what you ran into along the way.

  Late one December afternoon, Warden Dave Szody and I were patrolling Gilman Road, north of Shasta Lake. We reached the McCloud River Bridge and stopped to admire this magnificent stretch of crystal clear, cerulean blue water. “That has to be the prettiest river in California,” I said. “Too bad most people never get to see it.”

  Upstream from the bridge, much of the river was gated private property. An exclusive hunting club had closed the first few miles, a rich coffee heiress owned the property above that, and the Hearst Estate encompassed much of the rest. As Szody and I climbed out of the truck and scanned the river upstream from the bridge, I regaled him with a memory from my youth.

  While working at the Mount Shasta State Fish Hatchery during the summer of 1966, I had learned an interesting story about the McCloud River and Dolly Varden trout. At that time, the McCloud River and its tributaries were the only streams in California where this rare species of trout still existed. As an enthusiastic seasonal hatchery employee about to enter college, I was fascinated by the three-foot-long Dolly Varden trout that swam around in the hatchery’s display pond. “Where did that beautiful fish come from?” I asked.