Game Warden: Friend or Foe?

Hey Gang,

Over the weekend, I had a few beers with my deer-hunting buddy, Lloyd (pictured to the left) . Our conversation ran late into the night, covering everything from the up-coming Fox 9 debut of KHO to his wife, Pam's recent decision to start up a dream catcher kiosk at the Mall of America. Eventually a matter of great importance made it's way into our conversation, one that Lloyd convinced me is far too important not to address in this forum. The matter of which I speak is one that causes no small amount of controversy every season, controversy that could easily be avoided if a few basic principles were discussed openly in the run-up to opening weekend. The topic, my friends, is the game warden: his relationship to each of us as individual hunters and the crucial oversight role he plays for the hunting community as a whole.

Now, like everybody else, I have a few nightmarish stories about a power-mad game warden; one up in St. Louis County nearly drove me to start up a "Take-the-Forests-Back-from-the-Bureaucrats" style militia in the late '80's! But, fundamentally, I have to say that I believe that our state's game warden's perform a crucial function, one that no amount of incendiary rhetoric from some corners of the hunting community should be allowed to diminish.


Without the warden out there patrolling our forests, every gun-toting man, woman, and child in this state would be free to run wild, wiping out protected species, racking up absurd buck-to-doe ratios, and generally creating Sadr City-style lawlessness in our pristine woods. This clearly must be avoided. Most will agree, but a few contrarians out there will surely say, "KHO Appreciator, it's as if you think us hunters are the wild animals! You can't really believe that the game warden is all that stands between us and anarchy?". Well, yes and no.

Clearly, if the office of the game warden were to be abolished, most of us would not choose to rampage through the forest like Ted Nugent, shooting bald eagles with flaming arrows. The idea is absurd. BUT, I can say with confidence that the sum total of all of the minor indiscretions each hunter is guilty of in a season would add up to a very unhealthy and unsustainable situation in our beautiful wilderness, if the proper checks were not in place; and the man (or in some instances, woman) who sees to it that these checks are in place is the game warden. Like it or not, he, in many concrete ways, stands between us and the abyss.


I'm sure some of you are taken aback by my position on this matter, for this I cannot apologize. I dislike bureaucracy as much as the next guy but I'm not one who is willing to follow that sentiment to it's logical end, neatly summarized in the phrase, "Every man for himself and devil take the hindmost". Moderation, my friends, is the key. It's time for us hunters who occupy what Arthur Schlesinger called "the vital center" to band together and speak out against the anti-regulation cries emanating from the shadows; and while we're doing that, lets also speak out against irrational, over-regulation. We can find the golden mean but it's going to take a lot of work, including reaching out to the responsible game wardens out there doing their best to uphold the laws that our legislators and their appointees have put in place. I don't know about you, but I'll take a society of laws over the alternatives any day!

(Intellectual Hero: Arthur Schlesinger)

But I don't bring this subject up just to lecture the readers of this blog on social philosophy & the necessity of law and order. To the contrary, what really convinced me that this topic had to be addressed was the totally unnecessary personal suffering that so often stems from a misunderstanding of the important role the game warden plays. Haven't we heard enough about the barroom brawls and land-battles that stem from some run-in with the warden years earlier? Really. How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man???


I feel as if I've driven my point home, maybe a little more aggressively than I had intended. But like my earlier piece on spotlighting, I think the stakes are a bit too high to dance around an issue and please all sides. I hope that, at a bare minimum, everyone out there will consider the ways the game warden works to protect the interest of all hunters. If you're not convinced, so be it. If you are, why not take a few minutes to let the warden know you appreciate his work the next time you see him out in the woods?

On behalf of all of us at Stuffed Pheasant, thanks for reading and HAPPY HUNTING!

Until next time!
KHO APPRECIATOR

(Your only real adversary this fall!)