Behind the Badge
Trust
District Game Warden Connor Folkers
One thing I love about working for North Dakota Game and Fish are the people that I work with.
We mostly work on our own but you can occasionally see us working together on various tasks.
One thing I know is that I can trust them.
I started my Game and Fish career back in 2020, and in February of 2021, was one time I gained great trust in my coworkers that is necessary when you carry a gun every day.
It all started with a call about a stolen pickup out of Belfield.
This led to a vehicle chase into the south unit Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora.
Multiple game wardens responded as they were in the area.
By the time I had arrived with another warden, there were already multiple agencies including Highway Patrol, BCI and numerous surrounding County Sheriff’s deputies.
At this time, the sun was starting to set, the snow was starting to fall, and the temperature was dropping into the single digits.
The radio traffic was chaos in the park.
Deputies had recorded the stolen pickup going approximately 100 miles per hour through the park with sharp turns and we lost the suspect’s vehicle.
We knew there was a male driving the vehicle and that there was a possible female passenger.
We knew that the vehicle would still be in the park but we had to locate it as there were some roads under construction at the time.
I and multiple other units followed one of the National Park unit officers as she knew her way through the park better than any of us.
We located vehicle tracks in part of the park that was under construction where no one should have been.
We eventually caught up to the vehicle that had crashed.
Weapons were drawn and callouts were given to command whoever was in the vehicle to get out.
We had believed no one was in the vehicle and approached it cautiously.
No one occupied the vehicle, but we did observe footprints in the snow.
We had to move fast but carefully because snow was quickly covering the tracks.
By this time, it was completely dark.
Several of us wardens and two BCI agents took the lead by following the footprints in the snow and scanning for the suspects.
Officers waiting at the stolen vehicle stated there was a K-9 officer coming from Bismarck to assist.
Wardens and BCI Agents followed tracks for a few hours but then came up short handed when the snow had covered everything, including most of the tracks behind us.
We walked back to our trucks to meet up with the K-9 Officer who had arrived.
We had taken the officer and the K-9 to where we ended and let the K-9 start working with his nose.
This lasted a couple of hours.
In the end we decided to head back after nearly 6 hours in single digits, walking around and attempting to locate the suspects.
We were cold and hungry.
We felt defeated at the time as it didn’t seem like there was much for us to fall back on.
The search continued the following day with the help of many agencies.
In the end, two suspects had been located.
One male that was driving the vehicle and one female passenger.
That night I learned that it’s good to have trust in the officers that are going to be by your side in situations such as that one.
Grateful to have the game wardens that work beside me as well as other law enforcement in the state.