Game Warden Encounters and Stories
- Thread starter Alan
- Start date
I have 3 stories. They span the spectrum of interaction.
#1 Went to work doing feral hog control for a landowner. Landowner wanted me to contact the GW to let them know I would be hunting at night. Tracked down the local GW in a nearby town. He was very nice, but it was all he could do to not tell me I was wasting his time as night hunting is a common thing now. He knew it. I knew it. The landowner needed assurance.
#2 Different county. Local cemetery has a problem with hogs rooting up the ground around the graves and ask me to come and shoot the hogs. I am set up and watching the cemetery when a GW comes cruising in with a report of "night hunting" (see the irony). I give the GW my hunting license, hunter safety card (not needed as I am age-exempt, but I have one for when I took the class with my daughter), my DL, and answer his questions about "..what you are doing here." He asks if I have a note giving me permission to hunt. I said that I did not. He asked for the phone number of my contact so that he could verify that I had permission. I inform him that under Texas law, no such documentation is required and I am not having him wake up my people in the middle of the night. And there is where I think I made him upset. He asked me how he was supposed to know if I was there legally or not if I don't provide him with the information. I told him that I had provided him with 100% of the information I was legally required to provide him and that beyond that, I was not in a position to tell him how to conduct his job, but that if I was in his position, I would talk to my dispacher and have her (I could hear her when he called in my info) do a county records search for the Cemetery Asscociation and get the contact number from the county record and call the person listed as the contact for the property, or he could just do it on his cell phone, but the records don't display right on a little cell phone screen. He told me that they don't do that and that I would have to provide him with the inforamtion. I declined and he said he would trespess me from the property. I said, "Go ahead. What are the grounds for trespass? You don't even know who the landowner is and so you don't have a valid complaint from the landowner to trespass me. My hunting license is current, not that I need one for feral hogs on private property. You can't trespass me without me given I am not violating the law, or without a valid complaint from the landowner. We went back and forth for a while. He left and and I continued hunting.
#3 Still a different county, was shot at by neighbors who set up targets ON THE FENCE that divides the properties and using my property as a backstop. I was mowing our apiary that day and so was in a white bee suit and pushing a lawn mower. The stupid thing was that the property they were shooting one was larger than my property, and so they had plenty of room to shoot safely on their land, but opted not to. I called the Sheriff's office and while they took the initial report, the deputy informed me that the matter would not be moving forward as "the Sheriff's Office does not handle game laws" I was told, and shooting across property lines is a game law violation. So, I sent the video of the event to the game warden and asked if he could cite my neighbors for shooting onto my property with me on it and included a video of the event. The GW called me back and was not happy at all that the Sheriff's office had both identified a case as pertaining to the GW jurisdiction and then refursed to refer the case to the game warden. The GW went to chat with the sheriff and the next day the head of the investigation division for the Sheriff's office was interviewing me as to what happened on the day after that. All three shooters got misdemeanor deadly conduct convictions that as first timers, had their records expunged after one year if they remained clean. Anyway, here the GW did me a solid.
#1 Went to work doing feral hog control for a landowner. Landowner wanted me to contact the GW to let them know I would be hunting at night. Tracked down the local GW in a nearby town. He was very nice, but it was all he could do to not tell me I was wasting his time as night hunting is a common thing now. He knew it. I knew it. The landowner needed assurance.
#2 Different county. Local cemetery has a problem with hogs rooting up the ground around the graves and ask me to come and shoot the hogs. I am set up and watching the cemetery when a GW comes cruising in with a report of "night hunting" (see the irony). I give the GW my hunting license, hunter safety card (not needed as I am age-exempt, but I have one for when I took the class with my daughter), my DL, and answer his questions about "..what you are doing here." He asks if I have a note giving me permission to hunt. I said that I did not. He asked for the phone number of my contact so that he could verify that I had permission. I inform him that under Texas law, no such documentation is required and I am not having him wake up my people in the middle of the night. And there is where I think I made him upset. He asked me how he was supposed to know if I was there legally or not if I don't provide him with the information. I told him that I had provided him with 100% of the information I was legally required to provide him and that beyond that, I was not in a position to tell him how to conduct his job, but that if I was in his position, I would talk to my dispacher and have her (I could hear her when he called in my info) do a county records search for the Cemetery Asscociation and get the contact number from the county record and call the person listed as the contact for the property, or he could just do it on his cell phone, but the records don't display right on a little cell phone screen. He told me that they don't do that and that I would have to provide him with the inforamtion. I declined and he said he would trespess me from the property. I said, "Go ahead. What are the grounds for trespass? You don't even know who the landowner is and so you don't have a valid complaint from the landowner to trespass me. My hunting license is current, not that I need one for feral hogs on private property. You can't trespass me without me given I am not violating the law, or without a valid complaint from the landowner. We went back and forth for a while. He left and and I continued hunting.
#3 Still a different county, was shot at by neighbors who set up targets ON THE FENCE that divides the properties and using my property as a backstop. I was mowing our apiary that day and so was in a white bee suit and pushing a lawn mower. The stupid thing was that the property they were shooting one was larger than my property, and so they had plenty of room to shoot safely on their land, but opted not to. I called the Sheriff's office and while they took the initial report, the deputy informed me that the matter would not be moving forward as "the Sheriff's Office does not handle game laws" I was told, and shooting across property lines is a game law violation. So, I sent the video of the event to the game warden and asked if he could cite my neighbors for shooting onto my property with me on it and included a video of the event. The GW called me back and was not happy at all that the Sheriff's office had both identified a case as pertaining to the GW jurisdiction and then refursed to refer the case to the game warden. The GW went to chat with the sheriff and the next day the head of the investigation division for the Sheriff's office was interviewing me as to what happened on the day after that. All three shooters got misdemeanor deadly conduct convictions that as first timers, had their records expunged after one year if they remained clean. Anyway, here the GW did me a solid.
LDB
Well-known member
I used to watch "Lone Star Law" when our provider aired it. I enjoyed the GW's and their adventures. I remember seeing you on one segment. Your scenario 3. Probably wasn't you, but same scenario, shooting across property line without proper backstop etc. I'd like to meet a local GW and ask a fishing related question.
LOL, yeah, that was not me, but the guys shooting had literally attached targets to the barbed wire fence I installed when I bought the property. They knew what they were doing, but claimed that they didn't think anyone was on the property - not that they bothered to look.
