Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden Read online

  Wildlife Wars:

  The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden

  by

  Terry Grosz

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2015 Terry Grosz (as revised)

  Wolfpack Publishing

  P.O. Box 620427

  Las Vegas, NV 89162

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-62918-867-6

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  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Preface

  Originally, I hoped to leave behind some form of written word as a record of my days as a California state Fish and Game warden, then as a U.S. game management agent, and finally as a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Initially, this dream of short stories was committed to loose stacks of paper in a forgotten corner of my office, which were someday to act as a reminder to my children and grandchildren of what their father and grandfather had done with thirty-two years of his life. However, as the work in progress grew and others shared in the reading of those loose stacks of paper, another dream began to grow. Today those dreams and paper stacks have metamorphosed into the book you now hold in your hands. This book traces my footprints across the face of time in the world of wildlife as I tried to protect those natural resources, our national heritage, if you will, against forces hell-bent on their destruction.

  In this book, and I hope others to follow, I have tried to describe the very essence and soul of the wildlife protection trade through the many faces of human conflict as my ship of life crossed many others on the great sea of our natural environment. I was very fortunate in my years as a wildlife law enforcement officer to have seen and experienced the end of the very best years of the California Department of Fish and Game. I was also fortunate to have witnessed the end of the very best years of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Suffice it to say that in over three decades, one sees many changes in the world and, as is to be expected, many are not for the better.

  I was also fortunate to be blessed with a body that more or less held up to the rigors required by the profession in the form of long hours, lousy food (usually sat upon by my Labrador retriever), dangerous animals, inclement weather, poor supervision, budgets designed to not allow one to do the job one was trained to do, national politics skewed toward private interests, wildlife that would not cooperate, equipment purchased from the lowest bidder, unsympathetic government attorneys, juries that did not have an ounce of common sense, judges who had no sense of history, more long hours, crooked state politics, useless state and federal help, and many more obstacles.

  I was also blessed with a wife who had a deeply unique sense of her husband and understood what he was trying to do long before he knew himself. Over those thirty-two years, she quietly assumed the position of second love and patiently waited until I retired to assume her rightful place as my first love. I also had two sons and a daughter who, like their mother, realized Dad was on a quest and, also like their mother, provided unmitigated support and love in order that my vision quest might be fulfilled.

  I was also blessed over the years with some of the best staffs and officers in the nation to assist me in achieving the many goals I set for preservation of our natural resources. Most of these folks were of such quality that no accomplishment was impossible as long as you gave them a little time to figure out how to administer the program or run the bad guys to the ground. They were so good that I often teasingly told them if they ever got on my trail, they should expect a bullet. That would be the only way I could get them off the trail once they set their sights on their target. The American people truly owe those folks a debt of gratitude for what they did to preserve the natural resources of this land for those yet to come. It is a fact that the wildlife one sees today in this country is a tribute to those wildlife officers who came before and those who currently hold that position, representing the “thin green line,” and their front-line staffs.

  It might be surprising to learn that my career all started with the malicious tossing of a snowball. In 1954 I was a twelve-year-old boy living in Quincy, California, a town nestled in the northeastern Sierras about eighty miles west of Reno, Nevada. It was the dead of winter, and in those days the snow in that lumbering community was higher than the shoulders of Babe the Big Blue Ox. I was walking home from school that winter day and chanced to see a bunch of out-of-work lumbermen tossing snowballs at a covey of mountain quail huddled under a manzanita bush alongside the highway. The snow was so deep that the only place the quail could go was under some of the deeper stands of brush in order to find some ground to stand on. One of the men, called Gabby by the others, whanged a quail on the head with a snowball, killing it instantly. The men ploughed through the waist-deep snow to retrieve the dead, fluttering quail as the rest of the covey flew off into the ponderosa forest to safety.

  Well, I was a ragged-assed kid in those days and was able to talk the men out of the quail so I could take it home to share with my family. However, once I had the quail in my hand, I turned around and walked back into town and straight to the local game warden’s house. There was just something about fair play, deep snow, and starving quail that hit a nerve, even for a twelve-year-old hungry kid. The game warden was a stoop-shouldered man, the stoop having been caused by a poacher’s rifle bullet, but a damn good man and an excellent game warden. Paul Kerr listened to my story, then loaded me into his patrol car and headed for Gabby’s home. In those days everyone knew everyone in such small mountain communities.

  Driving up in front of Gabby’s house, Paul knocked on the door and was invited in. I often remember that in those days the law was a welcome and respected sight. Shortly afterward, Paul came out of Gabby’s house, got back into his patrol car, and took me home. He had written Gabby a ticket for taking a game bird during the closed season and seized the quail for evidence. However, before he took me home, he took me by his back porch, opened up his evidence freezer, and pulled several packages of deer steak from it. He placed the meat in a paper bag, telling me to take it home for my mom to cook up for us kids. He also thanked me for obeying the law and turning in those who took advantage of wildlife in its deepest time of need.

  I never forgot those words. Years later I went to college at Humboldt State in Areata, California. In 1966 I graduated from Humboldt with a master of science degree in wildlife management. Shortly after that I took the California state Fish and Game warden’s exam along with 1,300 other hopefuls. Forty-five of us were selected for the physicals, and ultimately twenty-five of us were selected as game wardens, of whom twenty-three were sent off to a training academy in southern California. Upon graduating from the academy, I was assigned to a warden’s position in Eureka, California, and spent a year and a half there. In 1967 I was
transferred to Colusa, California, in the heart of the Sacramento Valley, about eighty miles east of Sacramento. I worked in that area until May 1970, when I resigned my state commission and accepted a position as a game management agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. From that day on, I never looked back.

  This book, which I hope will be the first of several, deals with only a small portion of my state wildlife law enforcement career and experiences. Even though these events are true, they have been altered so that no one will be able to identify any of the real-life characters. I have even incorporated some blind alleys into the text to throw off the really astute students of wildlife law enforcement history, be they pursuers or pursued. The places described in the book are very real, but the names of the characters have been changed to protect any who remain living or their families. You may find many of these tales sad, disgusting, evil, funny, moralistic, or just plain and simply gross. However, they all come from the actual fabric of my life’s adventures, and the events they depict are still ongoing in new forms and places.

  Regardless of your reactions, bear in mind that these events actually occurred and that they are the adventures of just one officer. There are almost ten thousand like officers, state, federal, and provincial, across North America who could tell similar tales. That being the case, imagine the scope and degree of illegal activity and the actual soul and essence that meets such activity on a daily basis in the world of wildlife all across North America.

  I hope that you will be able to read between the lines and realize the amount of destruction that takes place daily among your plant and animal communities, national and international. There are fewer and fewer natural resources over the horizon. In fact, for the most part they are going or gone. Also, I hope you will understand the dangers met by those wearing the badge and those left behind on the home front. They are tremendous, many times requiring the ultimate sacrifice.

  Bear in mind that the business of extinction is alive and well. Let us hope and pray that we do not all go the way of the passenger pigeon. Then again, maybe that would be the way to go, and let Mother Earth heal and start all over again—perhaps this time with better results.

  Acknowledgments

  My greatest debt in connection with this book is to my daughter-in-law Carrie Grosz, a tireless supporter of the work, a gallant transcriber of the rawest form of tapes, a gifted craftswoman of the English language, and a genius in the world of computers. This combination, along with her talent in gently guiding her father-in- law from the electronic dark ages to at least a benthic level of light in the world of computer electronics, ultimately enabled these stories of one man’s thirty-two-year battle as a wildlife conservation officer protecting this nation’s natural resources to be told.

  Chapter One

  Leaving my house in Eureka for work as a state Fish and Game warden one morning in 1966, I was acutely aware of the warmth on my back as the cold, early-morning Humboldt County mist met my face. Looking up into the typically foggy Pacific North Coast morning and appreciating the moisture for its effects on the redwood forests, I hurried to get into my patrol vehicle. I checked to make sure that the gear needed for the day’s outing was present in the back seat of my “office,” then turned the key in the ignition. As the engine on my Mercury Comet roared into action, little did I realize that I was heading for a unique survival chapter in my life as a wildlife law enforcement officer.

  Picking up the radio mike, I called in to the dispatcher and notified her that unit 154 was 10-8, or on duty. Nancy, our dispatcher-secretary, acknowledged my call and matter-of-factly informed me that Captain Gray wanted to see me “right now.” The tone of her voice told me that failure to meet with the captain promptly would do nothing but bring the “wrath of God” down around my ears. The start of a perfect north coast day had lost something of its promise. What the hell had I done to offend our Fish and Game captain? I mused. In those days the captain of a Fish and Game squad was viewed as if he were seated at the right hand of God. Crossing either of those two usually meant someone was going to pay the piper.

  I ran my image of Captain Gray through my mind, as I had done many times since my entry into this Fish and Game squad. What a work of art! He was captain of the Pacific Coast Squad, which covered an area comprising Humboldt, Del Norte, and Trinity Counties and contained seventeen land and marine wardens whose job it was to enforce the California Fish and Game laws. He had been captain of the squad for years and was solidly backed in that position by his supervisor, Inspector Les Lahr, another old-timer and ex-marine, who had fought in the “Banana Wars,” as he liked to tell it. Inspector Lahr and Captain Gray were two of a kind, for the most part, and to cross one was to cross the other, with usually foul results. Because Inspector Lahr had originally selected Captain Gray for the Pacific Coast captain’s position, there was little wrong the good captain could do, and hence there was no way to appeal over Captain Gray’s head. So not getting along with the captain meant a pitching deck in a Type 8 gale, if you get my drift. Captain Gray didn’t like anyone with a college degree because he didn’t have one (he didn’t feel a game warden needed any schooling); didn’t like anyone with a degree in wildlife management (a typical old-school game warden, he thought of someone with a wildlife degree as nothing more than a hated biologist); didn’t like Germans (I never did figure that one out); and didn’t like anyone larger than he (240 pounds). Well, that left me out on all counts, especially with my 320-pound, six-foot-four-inch frame.

  In addition, Captain Gray enjoyed his alcohol and was usually into his “martini cups” by ten every morning, work or play. My biological father was an alcoholic, and this disease had caused the breakup of our family when I was just a small lad. As a result, I was raised by my mother, and times had been hard, to say the least. My memory of those desperate days did little to provide me with compassion for those who let alcohol ruin their lives and those of like ilk around them. My youth and immaturity often got in the way of my patience and common sense, leaving me little stomach for Captain Gray and his drinking. Basically, we became grandly intolerant of each other shortly after we got to know one another; Walt Gray disliked me for what my background represented, and I disliked him for his booze and behavior.

  As I write these words, my first meeting with Captain Gray comes vividly to mind. I remember walking up to him my first day at work after I had completed my training course at the Fish and Game academy. Keep in mind that I had recently undergone all the required state testing for the position of Fish and Game warden and had been one of twenty-five selected from 1,300 statewide applicants to become a member of the next warden training class. Twenty-three of us had attended a law enforcement training academy in southern California. Out of a class of eighty diverse law enforcement officers from all over the state, I had been elected the class president and finished sixth in my class academically. The state of California had assigned me to Eureka, California, under the then unknown Captain Gray. That first work day, I recognized the captain by the two gold bars on his uniform shirt, walked over to him smiling and sticking out my hand, and said, “Good morning, Captain, I’m Terry Grosz, your new boarding and backup land officer.”

  I clearly remember his words and cold stare as he faced me. “Mr. Grosz, it’s Captain Gray to you, and as long as I’m captain of this squad no goddamned biologist is going to work for me as a game warden.”

  Somewhat taken aback, I said, “Pardon me?”

  “You heard me,” he replied. “You are on strict probation for the first year and general probation for the next two after that. I don’t expect you to be around after the first year.” With that he spun around, walked into his office, and closed his door, thus ending the conversation.

  I stood there stunned until I felt a firm hand on my shoulder. Turning, I found myself looking into the steel-blue eyes of Warden Joe Devine from the Areata duty station. “Don’t worry, Tiny; I will keep an eye on you and see that you remain gainfully employed.” His
smile told me that no truer words were ever spoken, and we became fast friends and remained so until the day he died. However, from that day on I got all the shit details Captain Gray could hurl my way in the hope that I would screw up or quit and he would be rid of me. But I came from good German stock, and it didn’t work that way! I was his for the duration, like it or not.

  As Captain Gray had indicated and I came to find out, the California Department of Fish and Game had a program whereby during your first year with the department your supervisors could let you go for almost any job-related infraction. After that you remained on probation for the next two years, during which time it was a little tougher to let you go, but they could still dismiss you without a whole lot of fuss. With that possibility in mind, I was pretty careful not to let anyone grind me under and did what I had to do in order to survive professionally. In a little over one year I had become number one in the squad for citations issued, had a prosecution rate of 100 percent, and was the number-one pistol shooter among all seventeen officers, among whom were some pretty fine shooters, such as Warden Herb Christie from the Fortuna duty station.

  * * *

  But at this point I was still only a few weeks into the job. Coming back to reality and the moment at hand, I acknowledged the dispatcher’s request and, wondering what Gray had in mind for me today, drove to the main Fish and Game office in Eureka. Entering the captain’s office, I stood at attention, said “Good morning, Captain Gray,” and waited for him to acknowledge the presence of a lesser mortal.

  After a few minutes the important activity of cleaning his fingernails was concluded, and he looked up at me with a grin. That grin meant only one thing: that he had something on me. Sure as hell, here it came. “Terry,” he said, “what the hell are you doing out there for a living?”