Behind the Badge - Karma
Karma
District Game Warden James Myhre
Recently, I was talking with a few guys at the local grain elevator.
They had asked some questions about my job and some of the more unique situations that I run across.
This is just one of several stories that I shared with them.
As a game warden you get to answer a wide variety of calls that come your way, so you never know what the next one might involve.
This happened a while back on the morning of nonresident waterfowl opener.
In the area I patrol, nonresident waterfowl opener is a big deal.
It brings many people from all over the country into North Dakota for some of the nation’s best waterfowl hunting.
After some thought, I picked a spot to sit the opening morning.
As shooting time was getting closer, I heard some shooting to the west of my location that was about 5 minutes before legal shooting time.
Then I received a call about an incident that involved a vehicle being stuck in a field, while in the middle of another party’s decoys.
I got the location of the incident from dispatch and headed that way.
As it turned out the incident was a little over 50 miles from where I decided to start my morning.
During the drive, a neighboring warden called and said that he would head that way as well.
I called the reporting party and got the rundown of events.
He said that he and his group had set decoys out and were waiting for shooting time to start.
Then right at shooting time, a pickup pulled into the field and drove into their decoy spread.
The pickup was blaring music and spinning circles in the decoy spread….until it got stuck.
The reporting party walked up to the pickup that was stuck.
A brief altercation took place with the driver and the reporting party, which was soon broken up.
Now the driver of the vehicle went back to the pickup and was waiting.
I told the reporting party that I would be there soon.
My neighboring warden got there a few minutes before I did.
When I arrived, I spoke with the group that had set the decoys in the field while my neighboring warden spoke with the driver of the pickup.
The reporting party said that they used to be friends with the driver of the pickup and in previous years had traveled to North Dakota to waterfowl hunt together but had a disagreement in the past and are no longer friends.
They said that the pickup was spinning circles in their decoy spread blaring the 2Pac song “Juicy” until it became stuck in the muddy field.
Then the music stopped abruptly.
When they walked up to the pickup a short verbal and physical altercation took place.
I spoke with the driver of the pickup.
He said that he learned that this group of hunters were in North Dakota hunting, and they did not tell him that they were here.
This made him angry, and he decided to wreck their first hunt of the nonresident waterfowl season.
The driver of the pickup said that he was trying to be a jerk.
The driver said that he had set up decoys of his own in a neighboring field and was preparing to hunt.
He saw this group in this field and thought he would see who it was.
When he discovered it was his ex-friend, he decided he would try to wreck their hunt by tearing through their decoy spread and blaring music that sent a distinct message.
After some time, the pickup got pulled out of the mud and back to dry land.
The driver of the pickup said that he would be in North Dakota for several days before going back to his home that was more than 1,000 miles away.
I explained that I would talk with the landowner of the field that was now rutted up and then talk with the State’s Attorney about potential charges.
The driver of the pickup owned a house in a nearby town.
I made plans with the driver to meet at the house later that week.
A couple days later, I drove to the driver’s house as we had planned.
As I pulled up, I could see the driver standing in the yard using illegal drugs.
I got out and made contact with him.
He admitted using illegal drugs and then said that he had a bunch more.
After we collected everything, I ended up making several trips to my vehicle with all the drug evidence.
I asked how the hunting had been over the last couple days.
He said that they had shot several ducks and showed me several bags of frozen breast meat with no identification on it.
Waterfowl needs to be cleaned in a fashion where you leave a fully feathered wing or fully feathered head attached to the meat for identification purposes.
I ended up citing the driver for the interference with a lawful hunt, drug violations, and the failure to leave species identification on waterfowl.
The driver made the decision to wreck someone else’s hunt that day, but in the end he wrecked his own.