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

Local convenience store/gas station one evening right at dusk several years back, group of 4 - 5 new young F&G field agents all in a tizzy wanting buy 6 volt lantern batteries planning on busting coon hunters gun hunting coons out season. Store didn't stock them and any other store in our little town that might have had 6 volt batteries was already closed for the day. They were even approaching customers asking if they had 6 volts they could buy with no luck. Pretty forlorn looking bunch as their youthful exuberance faded and the reality of their screw-up at overlooking simple but essential 6 volt batteries for their lanterns sunk in...

Was hunting with a friend who came out of the woods while I was getting checked hy the local warden, it was after dark ,when my friend unloaded at the truck.the wander gave him a ticket for hunting after hours. About a week later the warden made the mistake of ticketing the local hiway patrol man on somthing similar, h p guy told me "I know what car his wife drives and 57 is over the speed limit "

Every year I invite Nam Vets to my bear camp to hunt. My best friend is a wounded vet and my Godfather was one as well. They would invite guys thru their reunions. I had made the state aware of this, guiding laws non applicable since I charge nothing and cover all expense. Word didn’t get down the ranks I guess.
I had two Vets from down south hunting bears with me here ten years ago or so. One morning they decided to drive to a small backwoods cafe in the middle of nowhere for lunch. Owner of the cafe knew me, asked how it was going. Two guys in the joint overheard then stood up and came over to my Vets saying they were game wardens and started grilling them. Said they knew I was a guiding operation and wanted to know what they were paying. Said they were going to bust me. Grilled them hard for quite a bit and finally told them if they found out those two so much as bought me a beer they would throw them in jail.
Sadly they upset these guys so much they packed and left.
I only found out who one of those two wardens were. A local problem child so to speak. We have a healthy disdain for one another still.
I have worked on many things with the DNR in northern MN, plenty of good wardens and researchers but a few bad apples.
In the end, it would be a real **** show up here without them. They are needed.
Sad side note, running out of Nam Vets.

Osky

Only time I ever got written up by a GW, was because I stopped to see if any help was needed. Drizzling rain, almost sleet, and I had hunted until dark. Miserable night to be out doing anything. Driving out, I met 5 or 6 GW pickups on this narrow dirt road. I pulled over and waved out the window for them to stop. Seeing that many at one time, I figured someone was hurt or lost, so I offered to help. Got the smart azz answer, "No, it's just your tax dollars at work". Shined a light in my truck, asked if my rifle in the back seat was empty, and I told him the truth, it wasn't. Wrote me up for hunting from the road.

I dont know what the statute of limitations is, in Ms., so I wont say any more.

About 50 years ago, my dad and were invited over to an old couple we news place for lunch. It was pouring rain about 150 yrds from there home, see a hunter walking down the road, it was Bob he was in his mid 80s dad had a window van stopped told the old man to hop in the side door drove him up the drive and to his garage. Well the old GW was driving towards us coming around the curve, pulled in behind dad with the lights flashing! Gave dad a ticket for having a loaded gun in the van, and Bob a ticket too I can't remember what for. Both had clean records till than! GW said the laws the Law started my Dislike for the DNR then!

Exactly right. He didn’t write us for anything just warned us not to be out there or we wouldn’t give us a break.

I used to belong to a hunting club in Clayton, AL. One morning I was sitting in a ladder stand overlooking a greenfield when a huge black Game Warden walks through the greenfield and asks me”Where’s the corn”? I told him corn and baiting is illegal and our club doesn’t allow baiting. After checking my license he walks the entire perimeter of the greenfield, polluting it with his scent. That afternoon, a different Game Warden walks through a different greenfield to the blind I’m sitting in and also accuses me of baiting. He too walks all around the greenfield to find nothing. I tell the president of our club about the two incidents and he’s surprised by the harassment. The next day the same two Wardens harassed me at two more stands, all with zero probable cause and zero offenses to write me up over. After these four [bleep] in two days, I stopped hunting in Clayton AL.

I met him when he was involved in a skyjacking of sorts. Nice guy.Seem a prisoner got loose and held a female hostage. Nettleton talked him into trading the lady for himself and flew him all over hell and gone before finally landing in Winnemucca. I was working that night so got a bit involved in the affair. Interesting night and I got 8 hours of overtime out of the deal.
I really miss living up there in Northern Nevada. Probably the freest time of my life. Plenty of time off and got to wander the desert whenever I felt like it. Tucson wasn't much different when I transferred here but now there's too damn many people. According to my hunting partner, Winnemucca has gotten to be just as bad. A lot of places I used to wander and hunt are now full of houses.

PJ

Back in the day riding two up on a motorcycle with the guy on back holding a break action single shot .410 was a pretty effective way to cover a lot of back roads and kill quite a few ruffed grouse… or so I was told… Gun laying crossways on the passengers lap broke open with a shell easily removable and slipped back into your pocket with out much notice. About 14 or 15 years old around that time.

One time my cousin wanted to take his dads auto 20 ga. I don’t remember what kind it was but we learned that the only way to get the extra shells from the magazine into the chamber was to shoot the damned thing. We could work the action by hand and clear the chamber but the shells in the magazine wouldn’t advance.

So we are making the usual circle in the morning fog watching for grouse on the sides of the dirt mountain roads. We come around a bend and ther sets Charlie Mountain. a legendary local game warden at the time in his truck. He stops us, we get off the bike and he goes through his usual routine of hunting license gun check and stuff. It never seemed to matter that none of us guys with dirt bikes didn’t even have a driver license, I don’t think we were ever even asked before.

Any way, Charlie going over the gun and asks if we knew that the gun has shells in the magazine. We tell him yes, and that
we don’t know how to get them out! Charlie fiddles with it for a few minutes trying everything he knows to do and nothing works. Finally he just hands the gun back shaking his head and says he ain’t never seen nothing like that.

He turns his attention to my dirt bike. He used to ride a Harley back in the day and his daughter was killed on one.
He was asking all sorts of questions about it and we were doing anything we could to get away from the fact that we still had two shells in our gun.
He said it’s been so long since he’d been on a bike that he doubted he could even start one anymore, he was in his 60s at this point. Of course we were telling him oh sure you can… we’ll he gets on it and kicks starts it. He then says I’ve probably forgot how to ride one it’s been so long. Oh no, we told him. I bet you can! Well he pulls in the clutch and puts it in gear and eases off down the road with me and my cousin standing in the middle of the road with his truck door open and a shotgun with two rounds in the mag!
He goes out of site and in a minute or so here he comes putting back with a big grin on his face like it was Christmas or something. We talk a little bit more and he sends us on our way!

As far as the auto 20, we latter found out that the only way it would advance a shell short of firing one in the chamber was to put the end of the barrel against a tree or something and shove the barrel back into the receiver about an inch or so.

How times change.

My best is too long to type out here.

But suffice to say. It is a good one.

Did something wrong. Got caught. GW had actually been a student of mine in college. And the following fall, there he was in another class I was helping teach. I look up after the intro at the farm and see him there, trying to not be noticed.

I was still in high school and was seeing a girl who lived on Lake Jackson in Tallahassee. We we’re having some fun in her room and as I was laying there looking out the window I noticed ducks coming into the cove she lived on. Next day I get with my friend Paul and we take his duck boat to the cove and set up. There’s a warden watching us from across the lake through binoculars. We’re doing nothing wrong and we’re expecting him to come check us. We set up and wait. Ducks all pile in there in the last few minutes of legal light. We’re there an hour and the warden just watched us. Finally the light gets right and we see the first ducks flying. Just then the warden starts up and comes to check us. He stands there over us sitting in the duck boat and takes every last minute of legal light checking us. Made sure to ruin our hunt. Nothing wrong and the check should have taken two minutes not a half hour. Found out later that there was a state bigwig who lived on the cove and didn’t like people duck hunting. G&F would harass anyone who tried to hunt there. I’m still super pissed about that day.
I made some friends who were G&F biologist later. They’re the ones who let me know what the deal was. They also “accidentally” left me a brand new G&F hat. I’d take that hat to dove shoots and after everyone had shot an extra full limit I’d duck down and put the hat on. Pop up and quickly the field would go quiet. Guys would be slinking off and leave their extras in the field. It was hilarious !

I grew up hunting the same lease for 30 years.
Our camp was at the end of the road....WAY back in the sticks. If anybody came to our camp, they were:
A) invited guests
B) lost

We hear a vehicle drive up one day. When we stepped outside, four game wardens emerged from one vehicle.
"Sorry to disturb you, but we spotted this camp during a flyover. We had NO idea there was a camp back here and just wanted to figure out how to get to it."
With that, the four of them loaded up and left.
In 30 years, that is the only time an on duty LEO came to our camp.

I had just quit school and started herding sheep for a local rancher in the early spring. Things were going along okay, and the camp tender would deliver my necessities every two weeks. This was done with all the sheep camps, mainly to keep track of how the bands of sheep were doing. I mentioned to the camp tender that I had seen a game warden off in the distance a couple of times, but that was the only human I’d seen.
A few days later we got hit by a spring storm and it dropped about 30” of snow. I’d spent all day out with the sheep, getting the ones that laid down back on their feet, as the weight of the snow on them would keep them down. I made it back to the sheep wagon as it was getting dark, and saw a light on in my wagon. I opened the door to find the game warden cooking up some antelope I’d shot for campmeat, and after introducing himself to me, he stated his truck was stuck a few ridges away, and he’d seen my camp and headed to it.
He was a swell fellow, and for the next couple of days helped me out, showing me some tricks to herding sheep, and batching I hadn’t learned yet. In short, my camp was the happiest one in the region during this time. He cooked the meals and entertained me with stories of his life.
After the snow melted enough He could make it to town, he stated it was time for him to go, and after saying goodbye handed me a ticket for poaching an antelope out of season.
WHen the camptender showed up, I told him my tale and showed him the ticket, and man did he cuss out that warden. He took the ticket with him, and my boss paid it. I left a couple of months later to work as a cowboy on another outfit south west of there, and never heard how the warden and rancher got along.