A night to remember?
“He’s never gonna believe us!” “You’re right — he’s never gonna believe us,” Bill said to his brother as the spotlight from a game warden patrol vehicle lit them up while the two men were trying to break into their truck. Both men had blood on their hands. It didn’t look good. “Shut up and let me do the talking,” brother whispered.
“State Game Warden. What are y’all doing out here?” If brother would have been telling the truth, he would have said that they were at the truck to retrieve a pen to fill out the tags for the two legally killed deer they had lying in a pasture a few hundred yards away but got sidetracked because they had locked their keys in the truck. But brother wasn’t about to tell the truth. He knew that Bill was in the process of being evaluated for the upcoming cadet class at the Texas Game Warden Academy in Austin. Brother also knew that a ticket for an untagged deer was a sure-fire-way for that process to come to a screeching halt.
“Well, sir,” brother said, “we shot us a couple of hogs way back there in the brush.” He continued, “We walked back to get the truck to pick them up, but we locked our keys in it, so now we’re kind of stuck.” The game warden said, “Hmm. Let me take a look at y’all’s hunting licenses and some kind of ID.” As brother and Bill pulled out their wallets, brother began to lay it on thick, saying, “Yeah, Bill here just passed his physical readiness test for game warden school.” “Oh yeah?” muttered the warden. “Yes sir. All Bill has ever wanted to do is be a game warden.”
“Is that so,” said the warden as he searched in and around the truck with a flashlight. “You boys have permission to hunt this place?” “Oh, yes sir — we do fence work for the owner, Mr. So-and-So, and he lets us hunt over here,” Bill said. “I know better than to mess up, now. I’m right in the middle of my background investigation.”
The warden’s countenance became steadily more agreeable as Bill talked about his desire to be a game warden. “Let me see what I got in my truck,” the warden said. After scratching around some, he returned with some wire and what-not that he used to eventually unlock the truck. Bill and his brother were grateful. “Did you want to go look at those hogs?” brother asked. Bill wanted to kill him. The warden looked at Bill and said, “Nah — you boys go on. I got another spot I want to get to before it gets too late.”
The warden went on his way, and Bill and brother followed. About two hours later, the two men came back in a different truck and entered the property through a different gate. After retrieving and tagging their deer, they got out of there without a hitch. Yep, they got a sure-enough story to tell about putting one over on the game warden, to boot.
It’s a story Bill tells to this day. Like me, Bill is now a retired game warden. Unlike me, Bill remembers well the untagged deer incident and the warden who checked them that night — ME. Looking back on what I don’t remember, I guess I’m glad that I trusted that want-to-be-warden all
