The Game Warden’s Point of View
It might start with an Operation Game Thief (OGT) call. Then again, maybe the person wishing to report a wildlife crime doesn’t care about a cash reward, so they call a game warden directly by finding the game warden’s phone number on the Texas Parks and Wildlife (TPWD) homepage. It’s as easy as clicking on the “Game Warden” tab at the top of the main page and then searching “Find a Warden” to select, by county, someone to talk to. It’s a good way to get county-specific information from the horse’s mouth, and yes, maybe even report some suspicious activity.
But just because you dialed their number doesn’t mean a game warden will be able to answer their phone and handle whatever issue you may have right away. So, the best way to get prompt attention is to call the OGT hotline at 800-792-GAME (4263). If you forget that number, you can always Google; just be sure you put in more than “OGT” or you’ll be directed to things like “Oxford Gene Technology”, or “Ohio Graduation Test”, or maybe even a page about O-GlcMAc transferase (whatever THAT is). Anyhow, the TPWD OGT line is answered 24/7 and reported violations are guaranteed to get passed on to a game warden in a timely manner.
With all that in mind, I invite you to harken back to last week’s column about imagining you’re a fish; a 43inch drum, no less. Now, let’s review that exercise through the lenses of a game warden’s binoculars. We’ll call our game warden “Bob”. After receiving a phone call about oversized black drum being taken from a pier along the JFK Causeway, Game Warden Bob formulates a plan and calls one of his partners – we’ll call her “Sue”.
It’s after midnight when, dressed in plainclothes, Bob drives his personal vehicle down to the pier and parks in a spot that affords him a nice view of the area. He doesn’t exit the vehicle for fear he might be recognized, so he just sits there with a pair of binoculars and tries to pass himself off as just another weirdo in a parking lot. Game Warden Sue parks her patrol vehicle down the road a ways and waits.
After some time, Bob sees a guy on the end of the pier catch a large black drum. The fish is netted and placed on the pier deck, where it’s left to lie and gasp while the guy who caught it makes a phone call. A crowd gathers. Then after a few minutes, the guy picks up the fish and has his picture taken with his catch as a car pulls up near the pier entrance. When the fisherman sees the car, he hugs the fish tightly and starts running.
You know, navigating 20 yards of a dimly lit, crowded fishing pier while carrying a slimy 40+ pound fish is not something one does gracefully. The drum-toting fisherman bumbles and stumbles his way to the car that pulled up and throws the fish into the trunk. He looks around – nothing. Relieved, the fisherman calmly walks back to his spot on the pier.
Bob picks up his portable radio and calls Sue to pass along the license plate of the car that just left the pier parking lot. Sue turns on her red-and-blues and stops the vehicle about a mile down the road. The surprised driver is issued a ticket for possession of an oversized black drum, and Sue releases the still gasping fish back into the water before heading to the pier to give the drum-toter a ticket too.
Thanks to Bob, Sue and OGT, all’s well that ends well, I guess.
If you see a wildlife crime in progress, call the 24/7 Operation Game Thief hotline at 800-792-GAME (4263) immediately.
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