Roadside Negotiations 101
I’m not much of a deer hunter anymore, but I like to have deer meat in the freezer.
So last Sunday in classic “put off until tomorrow what you could’ve done today” form, I waited until the last day of the of the “Special Late” season to go.
I got up early, and everything went well. I hunted what we call the “Hill Blind” in the back pasture and it didn’t take long to take two does.
When I got back to the house and started quartering them, I saw a game warden truck heading my way.
So, this is what it’s like from the other side of the dashboard, I thought to myself.
The truck stopped. The door opened. It was my old partner, Atascosa County Game Warden Derek Iden.
After we exchanged pleasantries, I was quick to point out how I had everything in line like it ought to be before he had a chance to ask any questions.
However, we both knew he wasn’t there to check my deer. He dropped by to say hello, and as game wardens often do, swap a story or two.
Over coffee, Derek told a story about a detail he worked in Zavalla County during deer season about a year after he graduated from the Game Warden Academy in 2001.
Along with six-or-so other wardens, he was sent there to try and quell a reported increase in nighttime road hunting incidents.
It wasn’t a well-organized detail. About dark-thirty on the first night, each warden was given a county map and told to fan out and get to work.
It didn’t take Derek long to stumble across something interesting. As he rounded the bend on a farm-to-market road around 10:00 p.m., he saw a truck that was stopped in the middle of the road.
Derek pulled up behind it, turned on his red-andblues and radioed what he had and where he was.
Game Warden Mike Morse heard the call and radioed Derek that he was close by and headed that way. Derek got out and approached the truck. T w o mid-thirtyish men were sitting in the front seat with a couple of rifles between them. They said they had just left a nearby ranch and were on their way to another one, but their story didn’t make any sense.
When Mike, who at the time had been a field game warden for about 10 years, got there and heard their story, he wasn’t having any of it and the look on his face said as much.
Addressing the two men, Mike said, “We’ve been watching y’all from that hill over there (pointing) and we saw everything!” Then, Mike turned to Derek and said, “Derek – go back to your truck.”
Deferring to the more seasoned warden, Derek did as he was told.
About a minute later, Mike walked back to Derek and, expressionless, said, “All right, they’re gonna show us where they killed the deer.” “Wait. What?” said Derek.
Mike continued, “They were road hunting. They shot a deer back there (pointing) and they were fixing to shoot another one when you pulled up.” “Wow, really? How’d you get all that out of them?” “I just told them to tell me the truth,” Mike said, nonplussed.
The wardens followed the two men to an 8-point buck stashed off the road in some brush a couple of miles back. Tickets were issued, the deer was confiscated, and the rifles were seized.
Derek was excited because it was his first real road hunting case, even though he knows that it probably would’ve never happened if Mike hadn’t shown up and delivered his impromptu lesson on Roadside Negotiations 101 – whatever that was.
But then again, as a game warden (later Frio County Sheriff) and as a man, Mike always showed up and delivered if someone needed help. Mike passed away last October; a good man gone too soon.
