Badges, Bears, and Eagles by Steven T. Callan

Author:Steven T. Callan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: hunting, california, fishing, fish and game, wildlife protection
Publisher: Coffeetown Press
Published: 2014-02-20T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Outnumbered

I

Most of the time large deer camps are occupied by friendly, law-abiding hunters, happy to have their deer validated and get a chance to ask the game warden a few questions. Every deer opener, however, we seemed to find at least one camp occupied by hunters with very little respect for game laws.

An experienced warden could detect a “dirty” camp within minutes of entering. The laughing and talking would end abruptly and people would drop out of sight. We would then discover all kinds of deer tag shenanigans. Untagged, slick-tagged (tag not filled out), tagged with the wrong tag for that particular deer zone or tagged by people who hadn’t killed the deer—many of whom had never fired a rifle in their lives. The law required a hunter to fill out his lawfully issued deer tag and place it on the buck’s antlers immediately after the deer was killed. Once the tag was filled out and placed on the deer’s antlers, it had to remain there until fifteen days after the close of deer season. The tag could not be used again and—unless this was a two-deer zone—the hunter had reached his season limit. He was done deer hunting in California until the following season.

Some “game hogs” would surreptitiously transport their deer home without filling their tag out and placing it on the deer’s antlers; this meant they could illegally reuse their tag later and thereby exceed the season limit. Others would acquire the tags of friends or relatives, not using their own tag until the season was about to end—another unlawful means of exceeding the season limit. It was our job to expose these scams and take the appropriate enforcement action. Maintaining control of the situation was absolutely essential—a difficult task if the warden was significantly outnumbered.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.