Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Wild Justice.....and game wardens in general

Does hunting have to ultimately rely on anybody? W/o management and regulations and someone to enforce them, there would be no game. Without hunter's paying the freight there would be no game.

This sounds very much like the chicken and the egg conundrum. Both groups need the other.

I've had good and bad experiences with COs, just like with any other group of people. In the end, they are as much a part of the solution as anyone else. And to the extent that some of them are part of the problem - hell that can be said about plenty of hunters too.

Thanks for the job you do Blake. We can argue symantics, but without guys such as yourself doing that thankless job, our heritage WOULD be gone before we know it and definitely as we know it. The next generations thank you too.
Keep safe.

We teach a hell of a lot of them here. And I sure don't anything that gives credence to your claim.

I agree with much of this statement especially when in regards to the TV show "Wild Justice" as it is based in California.

I've been a hunter all of my life of 50 plus years.
As kids my brothers and I hunted waterfowl and pheasants with a passion.
During that tme, we were regularly checked by wardens in the field, they were always pleasant and seemed to enjoy seeing us kids out there hunting, they often seemed sincere as to sharing our desire for success.
I felt they were our allies in the field.

Watching "Wild Justice" I sometimes just cringe.

Certainly you cannot generalize the entire Fish & Game force, but I think that the extremes are what the TV producers are looking for to make "good television".

Unfortunately as a California outdoorsman, the rest of the country watches that show and assumes what they see on that show as the norm.
Busting marijuana farmers, meth smoking pipes in the console of the hunter's pick up. transvestites roaming the woods with [bleep] in their pockets (yeah, no kidding) are all portrayed as normal outdoor activities that you see in the woods every time you hunt in California and it is really an embarassment to the dedicated sportsmen of this state that are continually trying to defend what good remains here.

There is all kinds of people wearing the badge here, some good, some not so much.

I get a little bent when some of those wardens on the show run away with the "guilty until proven innocent" tactics.
On several shows they approach a home and the camera pans to a rafter full of deer antlers.
Immediately the melodramatic music starts, then the warden declares..."Look, no tags on those antlers".
The warden immediately assumes all of the antlers were poached when right there in black and white the state statute says that the tag only need to remain on the antlers for about two weeks.
Another warden looks at a guys trophy room and declares " Man, this guy likes to kill things" and again the dramatic music plays eerily in the backround ....WTF?
In another episode they are investigating a suspected poacher, they confiscate his smart phone and start rummaging through his photos.
They come to a photo of the guy with a big buck.
In the photo the backropund is dark so with an authoratative voice the warden exclaims..."Look, this was killed at night!... Who hunts deer at night?" assuming that because the photo was shot with a dark backround that it was shot at 2:00 o'clock in the morning......GMAFB.

Does that guy even know the first thing about deer hunting?....sheesh.


Ok, all that said & done, Opening day of our local rifle deer season opened on the 11th of August.
I went out opening day on one of my private properties.
I hunted until things got too warm, saw a copule of small bucks then loaded up and headed for home.

I just get onto the ranch access road and I am pulled over by two wardens in a marked Fish & Game vehicle.
The driver gets out, a female officer (and the best looking one I've ever seen by the way ) and asks me if I'm hunting.
I politely tell them "yes" and they proceed to run me through the paces checking my license and tags, checking to see that my rifle was completely unloaded including the magazine and asked me where I was hunting.
I must say that after watching several recent episodes of "Wild Justice" I started out a little on the defensive and must have seemed a little uptight.
That show is not good for them or us in my opinion.

The two officers were courteous and professional and even joked with me a bit at the end, lightening up the encounter a bit.

I left the stop with a feeling that they were good officers protecting the local properties from trespassers and would-be poachers.
Having had problems with trespassers in the past their presence is a welcome sight.

To sum things up, as with most things in life, when you generalize, you really are doing a diservice to a great many folks that aren't anything like what you believe them to be, unfortunately many of the guys that are there doing a good job with California's dept of Fish & Game don't have the personality that reality TV shows are looking for.

I have had nothing but positive experiences with COs. Had the local guy check us field hunting for geese last year and was nice enough to hit the deck when a flock was approaching. He didnt know it was me at the time because I have gotten to know him. He is just like you or me and his job happens to be a CO.

That pretty much nails it.
Imagine a thread by WEO's about hunters, what do you generally think of them.
Many of the accounts I hear from my son leave me shaking my head.
A funny, to me at least, story.
My son was giving out tickets to a family that was power boating with young kids and had no life preservers on the kids.
While he was writing out the ticket the women was just mad dog mean and berating him the whole time as a joy killer.
He finished writing the tickets and got down on one knee to face level with the kids who were almost in tears.
He nicely told them to not be sad or blame themselves as this had nothing to do with them. It was their parents responsibility to follow the law and a bit of the safety concerns.
He finished with"now when you grow up don't ever treat or speak to anyone such as your mother has." and went on a bit why. I forget his exact words but unlike me he is very articulate.
The Mother didn't say another word but was about spitting her teeth out she was so angry.

Excellent point, or fishermen.

when i was 10 i shot a doe on opening day of buck season by mistake of course they was standing right behind one another my dad was with me we didnt know it was the doe till we followed blood trail to see her that was my first deer so dad told me it was illegal and wrong.so he called the game warden an told them what happened he figured that doing the right thing by reporting it would be okay and they let me keep deer etc the warden wrote my ass a ticket for killing deer out of season but i never forgot what my dad said he said you know i was trying to teach my son a lesson he said you have if it ever happens again we damn sure wont be calling yall it was a honest mistake by a ten yr old anyways i had to go court etc course they threw it out but man was i scared

Sounds like a son to be very proud of FVA.

I hunt legally. I've nothing to be worried about, and the ones I've had interaction with have been pretty good guys over all. Most of them (at least around here) are hunters themselves.

I'm not checked nearly enough, but they have always been polite and fair. .02

You should use more of the keys on your keyboard.

shreck; TCMU (That Cracked Me Up).

Ditto.

SL- If you really want to 'sew it up', do what I did, marry the local game wardens daughter!

I'm serious bout my huntin & fishin!

well, OK. seems like a nice enough fellow, but could stand to lose a few pounds. Whatever floats your boat though.

;-)

ON a more serious note, I have had a fair number of encounters with game wardens in NJ and two in Maine. Nary a problem, and the fellow in Maine, whose name I still remember to this day, was about the most straight up and polite LEO I have run into. I mentioned that I think he has a great job, and asked him some quesitons about it, and he told me I could ride along with him some time If I were truely interested.

GW have been top of the heap in terms of LEO imo.

It all depends who you run into in Montana. There are a few decent ones, but most of them are complete Nazis when you put a badge on them. I think it's part of the job description.

If I took a kid hunting and they made an illegal kill I would not call a warden. Here is what could happen:

The warden says, "Kid, you shot an illegal deer, here's a warning ticket, have a nice day." or

The kid gets ticketed and their weapon confiscated.

or

The warden says you shot it and are blaming the kid, confiscates your weapon and takes you to jail.