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

My only negative incident with a warden happened on Thanksgiving day in the late '80s. My brother and I were hunting that morning without any luck and headed out to turkey dinner with my in-laws. We took what was supposed to be a short cut, but during that summer the area had been logged off and I couldn't find the correct turn off without the old landmarks. After mistakenly taking a dead end road, I suddenly have the part-time warden blow by my truck and suddenly block the road nearly causing me to hit his truck. I had a 4 wheeler in the truck bed and couldn't see him pulling in behind me. He thought I was road hunting while I was only looking for a turn around. After a few minutes he decides he has no reason for writing a ticked and we head back to the primary road.

Ironically I knew what a scumbag he was already. My wife's boss had one of the first video recorders in town. He and a customer had followed the part time warden and the customer's wife to a motel in a nearby town. The visual evidence came in handy in the divorce trial.

Hunting elk in Area 15 in Colorado. Made a supply run into Kremmling and got stopped by a young warden and a cop chick trainee. The young hotshot starts out demanding, not asking, for our licenses. The two guys with me produced theirs but I, truthfully, told him that mine was back at camp in my pack. He made a real scene explaining about having your license on your person at all time, while hunting. I told him I never hunted elk inside the city limits and never in a general store parking lot, which is where we were. He threatened me with a ticket and confiscation of my gun, which I didn’t have. I told him that it would be a fun case to try in court if he did that. He warned me that he was going to follow up on me…. Never heard anymore.

This didn't happen to me, but I knew the man, that was accused of the shooting, but no proof, so he wasn't arrested. He was a salty old gentleman.

This fellow live next to a certain creek bottom and hunted year round, to put meat on his table. By the way, he shot a 22 mag. Deer, ducks, squirrels, whatever.... he shot a 22 mag.

GW's decided they couldn't put up with this and sent in a GW unknown to us. This GW even bragged that he was after this gentleman. About a month, after the GW showed up in our part of the country, he was in the bottom, behind the mans house, looking for him, when an incident took place. He managed to get back to his truck and called for medical help. He had been shot from the side thru both ass cheeks with a small caliper rifle. According to the doc, it was estimated to be a 22 caliber bullet.

They never sent another GW back in that bottom to look for the man.

I was deer hunting with my son in law and his son. It was opening day and they were outside the camp trailer waiting for me to finish taking a dump. I heard someone (female) talking in a rather harsh manner and my son in law responding. and it got a bit louder was was close to being a shouting match The thing is they were female voices. Well I got my business done and when I went out it was two female game wardens. When I came out they both put their hand on their weapons. When I called one out by name and asked what the problem was she said something was wrong with my son in laws son's license. Turned out I knew both lady wardens from teaching hunter ed classes so we got it all squared away.
Most of the Arizona wardens that have been on the job for a while are pretty cool but the recently hire lady wardens can be real bitches.

I noticed someone mention the Claude Dallas affair. The warden he killed deserved what he got. Case in point that I witnessed while on a bird hunt in Idaho. Warden Pogue stopped our truck, checked licenses and guns for empty chambers. Two of us had doubles and the third fellow a pump. Pogue racks the action chambering a round, the passes it back to the owner. Before the owner could clear the chamber, Pogue gives him a ticket for having a loaded gun un the vehicle. That's the kind of S.O.B. he was. On holidays, he would come to town to visit kin. More than once when the wife and I were out to dinner he's be yelling on how hew was gonna kill Dallas if he caught him out in the boonies.. Too bad warden Connelly was with Pogue that day. He didn't geserve killing. I did know Dallas. We knew each other enough to talk guns and hunting every once in a while. I really don't know what the real beef was between the two but we all know how it ended.
PJ

Claude Dallas was a poaching, outlaw piece of s hi tt. Your opinion may vary. Yes I trapped the same areas. Fur stealing, poaching, lowlife, is all he was!

I never said he was a nice guy. But then, I did sort of know him personally. Pretty quiets sort really. He did march to a different drum though. He should have been born about 100 or more years ago. I'll just add that in my contacts with him, there was never any conflict. He treated my wife and I with respect and we did likewise.
PJ

I'm sure your sincere. Not pushing you, just my opinion and experience!

Nothing but good experience across 60+ years of being afield. Last check afield was in Alaska north and west of Lake Clark when a float plane dropped from the sky asking for paperwork and the whereabouts of my moose. They taxied across to check things out and waved as they took off.

As to Claude, read Give a Boy a Gun: A True Story of Law and Disorder in the American West. A strange bird indeed. Was amazed at the amount of public support in his favor.

I was living with my parents for a while in 2014 while i was house shopping. Drove a black tacoma at the time, and my dad drove a white tacoma. Bought a house in december, went up to alaska for a while. My mom calls me and said some game wardens came by my parents house looking for me. Weird. Call one of them and he wants to know when ill be home, where my house is etc. Wtf. Well long story short, in september my dad killed a bull with his bow, as he was pulling into his driveway with the rack visible in the bed a local guy on a side by side stopped at the end of the driveway as my dad was pulling in, like he wanted to talk to him and my dad ignored him. So this jerkoff tells the game wardens he saw me with a bull in MY truck, and that i poached it with a rifle during bow season, and told them he sees me going up into the woods a lot and i act real suspicious. So on his word, had to deal with a wdfw warden coming to my house and harrassing me about poaching elk, and when that was obvious bullshit he just started shaking me down for anything he could come up with, accusing me of baiting bears, shooting deer to fill my moms tags, you name it. All total b.s. and its kind of ironic cause i found out who the dbag was that was accusing me of poaching elk and that guys done a good deal of illegal crap. A year or two later i found where hed been snowmobiling into a non motorized area setting bobcat traps and made sure he got a visit from the game wardens. If he wants to snitch on me for stuff i didnt even do, you bet your ass im snitching on him for stuff he did do.

Not even bacon?

Hard to trust anyone that won't eat a BLT.

we had a game warden buddy a few years back. We be out in the duck blinds and call him up and ask him to run his boat by the rafts of ducks to get them flying for us. He'd come over to my buddy's house to drink beer and eat with us. All the duck and fishing guides smoke and these guys would get on the radio and call a safty meeting and would meet up on one of the spoil islands to burn a blunt and bull chit, the warden would show up and BS with them also, but not smoke. He did get fired but for being accused of sexual harassment by some chick he hit on a party.
My buddy runs Pro fishing tournaments and has a place up north now that a lot of big shots come to hunt ducks and bird hunt. The first thing he did up there was to get the game warden's night vision equipment, all donated by sponsors, he just put on a fishing tournament to benefit the wardens, he knows how to keep them on his side.

He's saying that he once paid a Game Warden to let wabigoon touch his junk.

LOL

I was at an ice fishing tournament with a bunch of buddies on Wolford lake, Co. and the local warden came by to check licenses.

She asked what we were using and if we were catching anything and Tod spoke up, "We're using Boob Jigs"

She thought he was being a smartazz but he reeled up his "Boob Jig" and showed it to her. She giggled and asked for one to pin in her hat.

She brought another warden by for her own "hat pin".

We saw her for several years and she always knew our group as the Boob Jig guys... They still sell them online.


I had an officer check my fishing license and he had a perfect black shiner on his eye. "Did you get that on the job?"
"Yep, and he got arrested at gunpoint." Just buy a license next time...

I had heard the same thing about Pogue.

Fun fact, my dad knew Tim Nettleton, the sheriff of Owyhee County. Tim asked him to fly Tim and Dallas' guns to the FBI in San Francisco.

Pretend the 9 is an "a".

Fishing from the bank of a remote pond, I was explaining to my wife how I had been hunting and fishing since the late 1960's and never encountered a game warden. Within minutes, two of them came down the hill and checked our licenses!

Next weekend, the same two guys drove up in their truck, waved and said "We know you two are ok".

I'd like to see more of them. Our WMA's are over-run with dirt bikes and atv's.

I was on a "ride along" with a DNR cop on Lake Sinclair Georgia over the Fourth. I was an on duty paramedic. This guy posted our boat near a dock where the sign said SPEED LIMIT 5 MPH--NO WAKE TURBULENCE.

A boat full of college girls in bikinis drove by at 7mph. There was no wake turbulence. He nailed them on radar and pulled them over lights and sirens and wrote them a ticket. While doing that he inspected their boat.

He came back to our boat and he said "Did you see that stacked blonde in the little red bikini? Damn what a rack!"

I said "Why did you bust them anyway? There was no wake turbulence."

He replied "Look I am stationed at the Dublin post 90 miles from here. They drag me up to do this god*dam lake detail on the Fourth. I can't stand this detail, riding around all day in the hot sun. I figure if I write enough chicken s*hit tickets, especially to the daughters of some judges and mayors, DNR will pull me off this detail and let me stay in Dublin. So I might as well look at some titties while I am on this lake."

My sister owned a duck hunting cabin over in Minnesota inherited from her late husband. Sis didn't hunt, so I asked her if I could use the cabin with some hunting buddies for the opening of duck season? Holy smokes what a paradise for ducks! Shallow 300 acre lake with two reed islands and wild rice and farm land all around. Sis had the only place on the lake and there were boats and duck skiffs and dozens of decoys out in the shed. Six of us went over there and made friends with the subsistence farmer who owned part of the farm land. We sure liked duck hunting, but duck cleaning and duck eating, not so much. The farmer said that they loved duck, but never had the time to hunt them. Perfect, they would take all we brought them. Opening Saturday we were all scattered around the lake and the hunting was great. Ducks were flying and when we all joined up for breakfast we were over the limit. We put the ducks in the garage intending to bring them over to the farmer after breakfast. One of the guys was doing the breakfast dishes and looked out the window and said guys we are busted, here comes the game warden with a flashing blue light. Gulp, we were all ready to line up outside hands against the wall spread eagle. Just then the guy gets out of his car and it's the mailman! Scared straight from then on.

Father in law in the depression was out with his father cutting firewood. in Colorado. buck wandered by and they put it in the truck and stacked firewood around it and over it.
headed home and the warden stopped them for a gab. talked about a half hour about the tough times then slapped grandpaw on the shoulder and said "well Joe, you better get that wood home before it finishes bleeding out".