I graduated from the Game Warden Academy in the spring of 1991. When I was told my duty station would be Willacy County (Raymondville), I had to hunt down a map to figure out where the heck Raymondville was.
Being from Pleasanton, I took pride in being a South Texas boy, but what I didn’t realize at the age of 24 was that there was a whole lot more country south of where I grew up than I ever figured.
Boy, were things different then. Although game wardens are licensed peace officers charged with upholding ALL the laws of the State of Texas, back in the day, you got called on the carpet if you enforced anything other than fish, game and water safety violations. No biggie. That’s what we signed up for. I wasn’t keen on doing traffic stops on busy highways, anyway.
Over the course of my career, things changed considerably. By the time I retired, we were all over everywhere enforcing whatever came our way, including immigration enforcement.
But things always change. Heck, life would be pretty boring if they didn’t. A while back, a friend of mine loaned me a book titled “Texas Game Warden: My Story” by retired Texas Game Warden John R. Wood (d. 1996).
John wrote some great stories and included some well-researched Texas Parks and Wildlife history in the book.
In one of the book’s appendices, John included the first set of rules and regulations issued for game wardens sometime around 1940.
Life was way simpler back then; there were only 22 rules. A few of them are quite interesting, and they all shed some light on what life was like for wardens back then.
The first rule required uniforms to be worn if full, but the wearing of a gun was optional. That’s some straight-up Andy Griffith stuff, there, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense when one considers a good number of the contacts made back then were with gun-totin’ rednecks and hillbillies. I’m assuming most of the wardens wore at least one firearm.
Rule no. 3 required game wardens to carry full camping equipment at all times, which was a good thing because Rule no. 6 mandated that wardens should avoid waste of miles in patrol work by patrolling out one day, camping, and patrolling back in the next.
When I started, just about every warden I knew had some sort of chuck box and camping equipment in their truck, but it wasn’t mandated.
The department (the Game, Fish and Oyster Commission back then) devoted 4 of the 22 rules to the wardens’ hunting activities.
Rule no. 8 prohibited leave time from being granted during hunting season. “Excessive” hunting and fishing was not allowed (Rule no. 10).
If a warden were to find time to hunt or fish within the established parameters, he (there were no shes until 1979) was not to give away his own kill or catch of game or fish to anyone (Rule no. 9).
On top of all that, Rule no. 17 stated, “Wardens shall have hunting license.”
Yep, all those were some pretty oppressively oxymoronic orders, or something, if you ask me.
Those guys probably didn’t give any of that much thought, though. Heck, if you tell a bunch of game wardens — then or now — that you’re gonna buy their gas, let them go camping and running around by land and by sea at all hours trying to catch folks doing things they ought not to, they’ll want to know where to sign up. Because really, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
If you can get your hands on a copy of “Texas Game Warden: My Story,” you should check it out.
