I like the fact the majority seem to do business properly, they are after all necessary due to the number of miscreants around. But I've had a couple of experiences I'm not happy about.
Deer hunting in WA with friends. Get stopped while coming out of an area at our vehicles. Usual routine, we pull out licenses/tags etc. Friend's wife has a tiny smudge of red on part of a tag. Uh OH!. Mr Warden immediately starts with the "That's blood, where's the deer" " You shot one and decided not to tag it" Blah Blah Blah. For all we knew it might have been from her fingers after putting on her lipstick/lip balm. I know for a fact she never fired a round as I was hunting right with them since the opener a day or two previous.
Another WA story. Move up there for a new job, not familiar with the area. Get motel room in town 29 miles or so from where I'd be working on the Sunday before I started. Drive down to project, right at the Snake River, so I could find my way at 0530 the next morning across the wheat fields. Check some stuff out. Saw a grayish/silver truck go by as I was heading out. I had AZ or Cali plates on the truck at the time. Get back to motel, hear a vehicle pull up while I unload stuff for the night. Open door to get more stuff, there's a Warden standing there. Another pulls in.
"How was the fishing" he says.
"Huh" says I?
" We saw your truck down by the river"
"Oh" says I, and tell him about the trip to check out the roads. I didn't tell him "No, you saw me leaving the river with out of state plates and thought you'd catch a good ticket/fine"
Had one years ago in Cali when I worked for the timber company. Would come to check the cooler to see how folks were doing. Busted a dumb scheidt guy on a gypo logging crew. Dude saw one in a ditch heading in one morning. Had the dude driving stop the crummy, he hops out blazing away with his .380 which was likely OK as it's a centerfire pistol. Long story short, because of the logging operation, that section of the timberlands was closed to hunting that day, and he wrote the day, time, and location on his tag. Easy bust for the warden.
Have had really good experiences with the Game Managers in AZ. One, unfortunately deceased at a young age, helped me drag my old pickup out of the gravel that was burying it up past the wheel wells when a flash flood hit the facility I worked at. Others have provided decent info on where to look for game.
Mixed bag, but I think those WA ones have orders to try to bust anyone and everyone for anything and everything they can.
