A Day in the Life of (Installment 2)...
Predicting a day in the life of a game warden is nearly impossible, as each day brings new challenges and new adventures.
One long day comes to mind when someone asks me about the type of things I do during a typical workday.
It was a hot day in early August when I headed up to the Lewis and Clark State Park to meet district game warden Josh Hedstrom to take the boat out and perform fishing and boat safety checks. Warden Hedstrom and I patrolled Lake Sakakawea checking anglers and boaters for about four hours until the wind started to pick up. We decided it would be safer to check people on shore instead of trying to hold boats steady on the water.
There happened to be a tournament occurring at the Lund’s Landing boat ramp that day, so we continued to perform checks there as people were coming back with their fish for the tournament. We checked anglers for about three hours until the tournament was wrapping up and most everyone was off the water. Overall, it was a successful day. Many walleyes were caught, there were no violations at the tournament and we had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people. Warden Hedstrom stayed behind to wrap up some checks and I started to head back to the office to get some reports done after spending a long day in the sun. After finishing some reports, I began my trip home around 7 p.m.
About 5 minutes before I arrived home, I received a call from a McKenzie County Sheriff’s Deputy about some individuals he had pulled over who had possessed multiple dead birds. This was about 40 minutes in the direction I had just come from so I turned around and headed to the scene.
On my way out there, around 8 p.m., I received a call from State Radio dispatch about some people walking on the Lewis and Clark WMA with shotguns. I talked with the reporting party of the hunters and it sounded like they were hunting for beavers, which was legal because they can be hunted year-around.
That was good news, so now I could go back to focusing on the first call. I arrived on the scene of the car pulled over with dead birds to observe one hen pheasant, one meadowlark, three mourning doves and five pigeons. The deputy had stopped the driver and arrested him for DUI.
I seized all the evidence and rifle involved in the case and drove back to the office to inventory the evidence.
I finally arrived home around 11:30 p.m. after 14.5 hours, feeling exhausted, but satisfied with the day’s work as a game warden.
- District Game Warden Connor Folkers