Run in with the law.

[Dogfish]

My nephew got his first deer this weekend, and after getting it loaded up into the explorer, we headed out of the woods.

On the Colockum Pass Rd, we get stopped by a game officer because he saw our hunter orange. This guy was a credit to his department.

The officer asked to see our firearms that were in the vehicle, all were unloaded, except for the pistol in my holster on my hip. We passed. He asked for license info, and if we had seen any deer, so we told him about Michael's first deer. He checks the deer, Michael's tag and permit, asks us where we got it, and shakes Michael's hand congratulating him on his first deer.

This guy then tells Michael how he got his first deer with his dad, and how hunting together helped them to get along. I told him that I was Michael's uncle, not his dad, and this guy shakes my hand for getting a kid out in the woods.

We waved goodbye, and were on our way in about 5 minutes.

Andy

[Bait O' Eggs]

Its nice when the gammies can treat you with respect. Dogfish nice job on taking a kid out hunting and filling a tag. You just got a forever special spot in that kids heart.

I ran into a gammie about 20 years ago. A buddy and I were shooting 22 calibers into a dirt bank. This gammie pulls up and starts to give us a lecture about safe shooting. He then ask us what HS we went to and were cutting class from. [img]images/icons/confused.gif[/img] We were sophmores at OSU and guess we just looked young to this guy. When he found we were college students cutting class he seemed to be pretty cool about it all and went on his way.

About 5 years ago I knew the same gammie was working the area we were hunting. I had seen him at a distance, and talked to another hunter in the area that had talked to him and passed on his name to me. I knew this gammie would know my brother and identify myself from my brother since my brother knows most of the gammies. He would never remember the encounter we had 15 years early with the 22 calibers.

I shot a 3 point buck that morning and had heard there was a gammie "road block" set up to get out of where we were. Knowing the rules state something to the effect of "securely attach the tag to the animal" and being in a good mood with a fresh kill. I used an entire roll of black electical tape attaching the tag to the horns. There was this big wad of tape around the horn and no tag visible. [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] My hunting partner and I thought this was pretty funny and we figured the gammie would think the same thing.

SURPRISE - they dont find this sort of thing very funny. At least this guy didnt. We get to the spot he had the road block set up and he says he had heard a blue truck got a buck and wanted to know if it was us. When I open up the canopy he starts to complain and fuss about the tag attachment procedure we used. He was just going off on us about he has lobbied to get a law to prevent what we had done. We were on a hunting high and this guy was on a work day blue, we make a couple comments about "securely attached tags" and he complains even more.

He whips out his knife and starts to try and cut the tape. He scarred up the horns with knife cuts which kind of made me mad, but I just let him do his thing. I think he may have thought there was no tag under that mess of tape.

When the tag was finally recovered, it was in 3 pieces from his knife cuts. [img]images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] The first piece had the date punched, the second piece had the month punched, and the third piece had my name on it. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] He looks up at me and ask if I was any relation to my brother and I say "yep". He got a little nicer but was still upset at the work he had to do to check the tag. I think he could have unwrapped the tape 10 times easier than trying to cut it off with a dull knife, but what ever. This gammie has since retired and I dont think I will ever run into him again.

I guess work is work for everybody. When somebody comes along and makes more work for you it doesnt matter what the job is. I look back and see where I may have put this guy in an extra bad mood for the day. But at the time we thought it was pretty funny.

[MoJet Driver]

To Andy and Roy,

You two sure put up some decent posts, not to inflate your heads or anything but those days when I can't make it into the field or on the stream, your posts sure take the edge off sitting behind four walls trying to make a living.

Thanks guys!

Dave

[Fishful Thinkin']

Andy and BOE,
Were these Gammies state or feds?
I had a run-in with some feds about two dozen years ago. My brother and I had a great dy hunting in Maryland that day. We had shot a mixed bag of Gadwalls, Baldpates, Pintails, a Mallard or two and one BIG Blackduck. All in all a fine day. And then? AND THEN?
As we were about to leave we remembered we had left the plug in the boat. So we stopped before we got out of the parking lot and pulled the plug. As we started moving again we noticed a car pulling into the road to block us in.
Two guys got out of the car, in uniforms we didn't recognize, and walked over to our truck. One of them walked right passed us and went to were we had stopped to pull the plug out of the boat. The other guy introduced himself as a Federal Game Warden and asked what we were dumping up the road there.
We laughed and said he had us all wrong. We had just pulled the boatplug. For some unknown reason He didn't beleive us. Can you imagine such a thing?
When his partner came back they seperated us and started asking who shot which birds. All I could remember correctly was the birds I shot. However my brother kept telling these guys how each and every bird was shot. So they concentrated on giving me the trird degree. I just stuck to my guns with my bag limit.
They told my brother that they were sure they saw us dumping birds when we stopped and that if I didn't keep my story straight we were going to get a big ticket.
Finally I got tired of the harrasment and told the fed, "if you think I shot over my limit ticket me and I take it to the Judge". Well as it happens we had shot over our limit but were so tired we never caught the mistake. I was suppose to claim one of his birds but as it turned out that put me over too.
When the fed explanned that we were overlimit any way we counted the birds we realised our mistake. Now we laughed at our stupidity. The feds laughed with us (or maybe at us) and said "you guys seamed to know what birds were shot before they hit the water but your math is a bit rusty".
So we took our $125.00 tickets and no ducks home where our father laughed at us too.
How dare those feds be able to count?

[Dogfish]

The guy was with WDFW, not USFWS. Nice guy, said that he had checked a number of folks that day and not one violation. He said that the dads out there were doing it the right way today, as there were 75 youth doe tags for that unit and not one error that he saw.

[Fishful Thinkin']

That's good to hear that there are still some fathers out there who know how to be Dads. I took my oldest boy out for the opening day of duck season. He got two but he shot some of Cap'n Dans decoys doing it. Tehehe.