Behind the Badge - Simple Tasks
Simple Tasks
District Game Warden Keenan Snyder
Every Game Warden spends a considerable amount of time out in the elements whether it is on a boat, side-by-side, snowmobile, and/or in their state issued patrol vehicles. Sometimes Murphey’s Law can follow us, or we just have some blunders that we must work through.
Looking back earlier in my career I have a couple instances that are engraved into my memory bank that make you take a step back and say to yourself “hmmmmmm, now what?”.
One miserable winter day, Warden Sperling and I were dispatched to an injured/sick moose.
I do not recall the details of the incident of how the moose died whether we euthanized it or it was found dead.
The vivid memory I have is the air temperature was at a minimum of -20 and the wind was blowing enough to cover your track with blowing snow within minutes.
Another warden and myself needed to load the moose up into the bed of my patrol vehicle and take it to the lab for a necropsy.
Now this is typically a simple task because we usually carry ATV ramps and have a large winch bolted into our truck beds.
This moose was not too far into a field and the snow was not too deep. I was able to drive right up to it.
Once at the dead moose, I got out my winch remote cable while the other warden set up the ATV ramps on the tailgate.
I attempted to plug the remote into my winch, the plastic plugs on my winch just disintegrated into many broken pieces rendering it inoperable.
Now what???? How would we get a full-sized cow moose into the bed of the truck? Anyone who has tried to drag a moose knows this is no easy task.
We came up with a plan of using the truck to drag the moose onto the road and then reposition the truck perpendicular in the ditch in hopes to get bed and tailgate on the same grade as the moose.
All we had to do was drag it into the truck bed.
Well, we did not factor the windchill and cold of the day. This simple task turned out to be long winded.
We were only able to slide the moose a foot or two then we had to get back into the truck to warm up to ward off any frostbite.
Once the moose was loaded up, we headed back to the Williston Game and Fish office because as time went on the moose was going to freeze solid in my truck bed.
I also had to take a trip to the nearest store to purchase a new winch.
Another blunder was a late-night call of a lost hunter south of Williston along the Missouri River.
The call came out well after dark on a cold fall night with temperatures hovering around or just below freezing.
We were asked to put the boat on the river and head upstream from the Highway 85 boat ramp and check the shorelines near the last known spot of the lost hunter.
I grabbed the river boat and met a nearby warden at the boat ramp.
We geared up and dumped the boat into the river and headed upriver.
In short order we found the individual along the shoreline and gave him a ride back to a McKenzie County Deputy waiting on a nearby road.
The hunter walked in the wrong direction out of his tree stand and found the river and was going to hang out there for the night.
Once back at the boat ramp, we quickly learned of a potential issue on the ramp. ICE.
When we pulled the trailer out of the water and parked, the water drained off causing icy conditions on the ramp.
We were able to back the trailer down into the water without sliding too much.
The problem soon showed its face even more once I loaded up the boat onto the trailer and we attempted to drive forward.
With the additional weight of the boat on the trailer on the ice, all four tires would spin.
We were stuck there and with any additional spinning of the tires we would slide backwards toward the water.
We were not going to get off the ramp without help.
I first grabbed the shovel out of the bed of my truck and scooped up sand and placed it around all four tires in hopes that it would give enough traction to get up the ramp.
It would work for about 6 inches then all four tires would break free, and spin and the truck would slide backwards losing all the distance we just gained.
Luckily, we used the other patrol vehicle and we were able to connect both trucks with several tow ropes and was able to assist my truck up the boat ramp and onto solid ground ending what was already a very long night.
Sometimes simple tasks turn out to be not so simple.