Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Your best Game Warden story

I got a couple but will post them when I get home, instead of on this phone.

I haven’t seen a game warden in the field in years. Maybe a decade.

In 45 years, I've seen them twice in MI and once in WI. All 3 instances were without major issue.

Checked us for dead critters/rifle while shining deer
Speeding
Check for steel shot

LOL...

Yeah, I don't see mine often, unless I call him, that is.

A rather legendary one here in NH that worked the Alton Bay of Lake Winni area took it upon himself to train his Lab to sniff out LL Salmon. They are not allowed to be kept if caught through the ice - closed season. Actually, they aren’t supposed to be even brought up out of the hole. Pretty common poach as they are relatively easy to hook up with through the ice and there isn’t much technique to it. Drop a live smelt through a hole 2 feet under the ice pretty much anywhere on the lake at any depth and you have as good a chance at hooking up with one as anything else in the lake. And they get pretty big. It can be a tough line-cut for many when you’ve been putting in hours in tough weather getting skunked, then you see that big silver side under the hole.

Guy I knew got pinched. The Connie Cop shows up at his shanty for a routine license check, has his dog, enters shanty, dog starts doing his thing and sniffing all around the hole and saying ‘salmon’. Dog can smell and differentiate the smell of salmon ‘residue’/slime/scale/etc’ on the ice and around the hole. Asks the guy if he caught a salmon. Guy lies and says he didn’t. It’s in the trunk of his car on the side of the road maybe 150 yards away. Dog gets on the scent, presumably from the fish dripping while it was carried to the car across snow-topped ice, proceeds to the vehicle, and starts tapping at the trunk. Cop ID’s the car as this guy’s car. Makes him pop the trunk, voila - there’s the salmon. Dude got whacked with some stiff fines and extended license loss, but it probably would have been worse for him had he not been a full-time member of the fire department.

We were elk and mule deer hunting outside Leadville Colorado in 1995. I already had my bull and buck down hanging in camp. We were returning to our camp in my partners (Don) Tacoma. I was driving. Just as we are nearing camp a very nice (for the area) buck is spotted maybe 70 yards away. I stop, my partner gets out, loads his rifle and fires, nothing. He cycles the bolt and fires again. Nothing. At this point I am reaching behind the seat for my cased rifle while he aims again. Out of the brush comes a game warden, Tom who we got to know pretty well over the years, shouting, "Don't shoot, don't shoot". A mechanical decoy tail wagging and all. He walked up to Don thanking him for exiting the vehicle, loading an unchambered rifle and wearing the necessary blaze orange. "As long as you have a license and tag you're good to go". All was good and he was thankful Don was not a head shooter where the electronics apparently reside.

Dave Preist was a warden up in Maine when I was growing up.
Upheld the law and didnt turn a blind eye to schit.
Mike Georgia was a guy I graduated high school with in 81.
He was squared away also when I was up their from 98 to 01.
Had alot of good talks with him.
2 fed wardens on FTCKY are squared away.

Cant say any of that stuff above about TN wardens....

20 years or so, my dad and I were hunting in Katy/Sealy area for snow geese. I was still in high school. We didn’t have enough for a full group, so we were joined with a few guys from DFW. It was foggy, and there were several ibis in the area. The guide made note of this to us and made sure to beat into our head to wait for him to call the shot, so to keep us from shooting an ibis mistaken for snow goose. The two guys that joined us were mega hungover and popped the first two ibis they saw that morning. They asked the guide what they should do. He replied “I don’t give a damn what you do, but get them out of here and you’re done for the day”. We finished a few hours later and returned to the truck where we discovered the offenders had buried the dead ibis in a shallow grave a few hundred yards away. Shortly there after, we were checked by the local game warden, who was a woman with a chip on her shoulder. She was trying to hammer us on “possession of specs, because we had them in a pile”. We successfully talked our way out of that, and just as she was leaving we realized the dog was missing. We went on a search, and when he finally returned to the group, he had a dirty dead ibis in his mouth. He was so proud. I don’t know how much the ticket cost those guys, but I’m sure it was significant.

Pretty much the same here...

Unless he needs some killed (I have better rifles than they do... LOL).

Like the dude driving across the dove field?

1 tiny example....

My and my buddy were involved in a very slow high speed chase with a game warden.

We were 12...so no license to drive. We did have hunting licenses though.

I figured since we weren't allowed to drive...we may as well not stop at the check point.

I was wrong.

Another time a couple of wardens joined in the chase and they held guns on us for 10 mins or so.

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.

That being held at gunpoint by the Law is always fun, eh?

The only time I ever seen a Game Warden I was around 14 or 15 and we were staying at my Uncles Cabin in the High Country Soap Stone area in Utah.
we had my Dads Sisters family with us and we wanted fish for dinner so all of the guys went and the girls stayed behind.

We went to several lakes with no success then we came up on this one lake that had Albino Rainbow Trout and the were between 4 to 6 ft off the bank

We all started fishing and nothing was biting
I got bored and told my dad that I was gunna go on the other side of the lake and try my luck.
He told me to take my Cousin who was 5 years younger than I was.

The fish were still not biting on the other side of the lake.
So I got a GREAT Idea and picked up a large branch and started clubbing the fish. They were right off the bank. and at between 16 to 20 inches they were all legal size

About an hour of Clubbing fish we were limited out for everyone with a license so we started heading back to our Parents

As we were walking back Here came the Game Warden Driving slow up a dirt road.
I dropped the Fish and my Club hoping that he did not see what we were doing.

Well we got back to our Dad's and my Dad smiling big held up his barely legal Fish that he caught (single fish)

I yelled out that that was GREAT look what we Caught and held up our stash of fish.

My Uncle started laughing and my Dad said that we did not hook them how did we get them.

I told him that we gotum what difference did it make how.

He poked me a bit and I would not tell him all the way back to the Cabin

My Mom started cleaning them up for dinner that night and came in and asked all of us why all of their backs were broken.

Well after a big Butt Chewing i had to fess up on how we got all of them.
Again my Uncle just Laughed and my Mom and Aunt did to.
My Dad had to take a week or so to cool off but he got over it.

Those Rainbow Trout sure tasted good from that Cold High Country water

I have always had good interactions with the warden. One is a friend, have him on ‘speed dial’. And I’l dial your ass in.

Renegade doesn’t like my warden friend.

Dale thinks Ren is unhinged and needs special help after a series of emails. 😂😂😂😂🤯🤯🤯

He’s moved way up now and is in the judicial opinions level now.

The best game warden story is no game warden story.

Thinks?

Or Knows?

in regards to that "unhinged" bit?

One just moved in a couple 100 yards from me seems ok so far!

Our old game warden lived to write somebody a citation. I believe he would have ticketed his mother for running over a squirrel out of season. I got along fine with him. The local Mennonites and Amish lived in fear of him.

The new warden, whoever he is, has yet to be seen in my area, and won't return phone calls. The local Mennonites love him, whoever he is.