I hear you loud and clear. I think it’s funny you mentioned that because I was talking with a cop on a diff forum who said basicly the same thing. And ofcourse I’m always respectful to authorities 
You could try talking to the Warden on his office day. Even swing by and talk to him in person. He might bargain it down or even throw it out. DO NOT CHALLENGE HIM IN THE FIELD, he will get defensive and you will lose. Remeber, there is a time and a place and a way. The field is his turf, his livelyhood. Respect it.
If you are respectful to him, he will likely percieve you as someone who genuinely intends to keep the law. Poachers do not attempt to have reasonable conversations with Game Wardens in their offices, law-abiding citizens do.
Be polite, respectful and dress like a human being. Shave and bathe as well. Perceptions go a long way.
Failing that, take it to court and again remember the above.
I might consider talking to him in person if it were a more serious charge. I’m not sure yet though, 97 bux is alot of ammo…
The one thing that I feel he messed up on was the fact he never searched my truck to see if I had fire equipment. In fact, He never even asked me. He told me that I didn’t have it. He overlooked my truck at the gate before I had arrived but obviously could not get inside. My rear windows are tinted limo black. I may have all the fire equipment behind or under my rear bench seat and he would not know.
He did not protect himself, he didn’t try to prove I did not have it. I may actually have it under my seat right now as I myself have not even checked 
He does have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that I did not have it right? What if I check and I actually do have it? could he prove that I didn’t? Not sure a judge would go for his case when he didn’t even make an effort to look or ask.
Your stating you did not have it was a legal admission of guilt on your part. Too late to try and argue it in front of the judge that way.
Talk to him, you have nothing to lose.
After shooting a rabbit with a black rifle, how much meat actually ends up in the pot:confused:
I dont really get “Varmit” hunting. I understand taking out game that is causing damage to crops, but just cant get my mind around killing for the sole reason of being born a particular species.
I dont beleive in re-incarnation, but it sure would suck to find out it was true and spend eternity being reborn as a prarie dog…
Well, if you sw what prairie dogs and coyotes do to a rancher’s bottom line then maybe you would be more understanding.
I have doctored a calf that had a hind quarter 1/2 eaten by coyotes, have seen lamb counts dive between lambing and docking, and have seen lots of prairie dog towns that are taking the place of good grass.
I’ll kill 'em when I see 'em personally.
Buckaroo
im just speculating
Target Practice!
(I have only been out once to get “rock chucks” and we only saw 1 and hit nothing so I am not a varmint hunter myself)
Chad
[QUOTE][/QUOTE]
Ever swatted a fly? Killed a mouse? A rat? A spider? A mosquito? Or any other pest?
Those vermin/pest gophers as we call them in Montana are pretty rough on a garden. Many a horse or cow broke a leg in a gopher whole. They aren’t around long after the heat really hits, but they can do some real damage. Working for the phone comp I have had to splice a few chewed up lines that someone didn’t burry very deep.
I have seen a complete field crawl with them. That’s when you bring out the .22 rimfire and use iron sights only, to improve your skill, then work on out to the how far away can I get one with the 22-250. It’s also feeding the yotes for future game.
In day’s of old, they used to have a bounty on tails, I don’t remember how much, but kids loved to make enough to buy shells and have fun.
And NO, I wouldn’t like to come back as a GOPHER! Or a Yote, or a rockchuck. Maybe a *****, then I could get anything I wanted. (They don’t call me “Grandpa Pervy” for nothing!)
We need a gamewarden story thread. I haven’t seen many that weren’t little men with too much power. Our local one near the ranch in Wyoming is way out of control.
I understand where your coming from. I have compassion for all living things but for some reason I can still enjoy slaughtering communities of vermin. The morality of hunting vermin has crossed my mind but it is justifiable because of the damage they cause; i guess. Being the dominant species is a tough job, hopefuly if we are ever the vermin someone will be nicer to us
as far as attacking calves and eating up fields/gardens, this is what these animals do to survive. No malicious intent there… We rape the earth of resources, reshape it and pollute it which is more damage than any other animal could cause in its life time. I’m pretty sure we are equivelant to a flesh eating bacteria, so embrace it; i guess
I have a different view of all of this -
It is public information what lands are public and what lands are private. It is your responsibility to know what is what. I’ll bet you own a GPS too… Between county records (section and plat maps), google earth, and USGI quad maps - there is NO excuse.
It is the responsibility of EVERYONE that is going to be in the forest during fire season to carry fire fighting equipment. The most important is a standard shovel. That is the law and ignorance of the law is no excuse.
As for the mag thing - it was an intelligence test to see if you would admit to wrong doing. Looks like you passed.
A shovel is a good thing to have in your rig period. And the private v public property thing come up a lot anyway so there is nothing like pulling out your USGI quad map and GPS and settling the argument right then and there.
Good luck
ETA - killing things that don’t represent a threat or that you don’t eat (killing for the sake of killing) - yeah I used to do that too, then I took a long hard look at ‘why’ and stopped. Maybe that level of introspection could help the gun community as a whole.
They sound more like Gestapo…
Hey guys,
I am a retired Game Warden from Colorado… Now don’t all jump on me at once! I want to address the private land problem. When I was working, part of my job was trying to get private land for hunters to hunt on. I did this by getting contracts where farmers would farm some state property in exchange for the land owners allowing hunting on his/her land. The other part of the job was enforceing the “hunting on private property without permission” statute. I never personally asked a hunter if he had permission to hunt where he was at. I would only write a ticket if I was contacted by the landowner, and he/she agreed to sign the ticket saying he/she would come to court. That would sometimes get the hunter out of a ticket. Landowners did not like going to court. If they did it was between the land owner and the hunter and I was in court only as a witness.
There is a reason why a lot of land owners don’t want hunters on they’re property. Because of all the trespassing that goes on.
Game Wardens are kind of in the middle of hunters and land owners. After all it is the hunters that are supporting the DNR/DOW at least in Colorado the only money used by the Div. of Wildlife is from hunting licenses. That money goes for buying land for wildlife habitat for hunters to hunt and fish on. Also for maintaining and improving lands (habitat).
I personally never wrote a hunter for every violation he /she might commit. I had wide descretion, except for safety violations, like loaded firearms in a vehicle. I always wrote these tickets because 99% of accidental shootings happened in or around vehicles. I wrote a fair share of horrible accidental shootings, and the images were always in my mind when I caught someone in a safety violation like that.
I never wrote a hunter a ticket in front of his/her kid, I would ask the hunter to get in my pickup and explain all the violations he/she had commited and then usually write the cheapest ticket. We did have a lot more power under regulations from the Wildlife Comission to look in places that could hold wildlife, like coolers, etc. if we had reason to believe that a violation had occured.
I never wrote a kid on his first hunt, if I could help it. With the numbers of hunters dropping it is not good buisness to start a new hunter out with a ticket on his/her first hunt. I never wrote a warning ticket. If a ticket was not warranted, and someone made an honest mistake, like being a little off in the wrong area, especially with vauge boundaries, I just gave a verbal warning. I was given a large book of warning tickets and just threw them away.
I will say this, there are a lot of tickets written during hunting seasons, but it is a fact that wildlife officers are only writting 3-4% of all violations… something to think about.
I won’t comment on your violations, as I don’t know all the facts, but it sounds like you did OK… IMHO.
I was more interested working undercover on the hard core poachers, of which there are many.
One more thing, if you like to hunt and fish, being a game warden is the worse job there is. When everyone else is hunting and fishing, you are working! And you are working Every holiday!
Good Hunting!
Thank you for your service! I appreciate your attitude and demeanor.
I can only imagine how difficult your job was and how under appreciated your efforts were as well.
Maybe now you can get some quality hunting time in!
Buckaroo
The reason is because thse species are very harmfull because of the damage they cause to their environment (just like man). The holes and mounds they create not only take away farmland, they also cause injuries to livestock AND wildstock.
It woud not be so bad if there were still enough predators to keep their numbers at bay. But since this is no longer the case (thanks to development and man’s lck of foresight) these species need to be culled (but not wiped out).
Therefore true Varminters (as supposed to criminal poachers) actually provide a service to by taking on this role. This way of culling is environmentally friendlier than if poison were used.
It is very important that ANY hunters not only follow the law, they should hunt “neighborly”. Just because your family has been hunting a particular plot of land for generations, it doesn;t mean you can keep doing so without the expressed permission of th elegal owners. You’d be amazed howmany of these conflicts we have to respond to each and every hunting season. They could have all been avoided if the hunters took the time to ask the owners for permission to hunt on their land. JM2CW.
I applaud the fact you took time to evaluate your priorities and made a decision that was right for you. I’m not comfortable with the fact you feel your “level of introspection”, when applied to the whole, would be categorically beneficial.
I shot prairie dogs a lot when I worked in Colorado. Many ranchers were more than happy to have you there to thin them out. In nature sometimes they will get the plague and that would devestate a whole prairie dog town . The holes that the dogs made broke a lot of horses legs. The grass around the holes was completely gone. Prairie dogs were considered varmits in Colorado. Now this was in the eastern part of the state I workked in Baca county which is mostly farm, and prairie grass ranches. If you got written permission to hunt on a ranchers property for coyotes, or prairie dogs, you were working as the landowners agent and did not need a hunting license.
One funny thing that happened when I was there… A group actually came down from Denver and caught some of these dogs. They took them back and gave them baths, and groomed them. It was in the paper. Then they let the dogs go on the airport property. Everybody thought that was really funny, but the group never caught enough to make a difference.
Thank you Buckaroo for the kind words.
Jack
[QUOTE=CarlosDJackal;198465]
As a Varminter (Coyote) and someone who also help the Game Warden enforce laws during Deer season, I know enough to only hunt with two or three 5-round magazines so that there was no chance that I could be charged with poaching. Think about this, did you really need a 20-round magazine to hunt Coyotes? Could you have done just as well with multiple 5-round magazines?
QUOTE]
Didn’t the anti’s say something VERY similar back in 1994? Gee, do you need a 12/15/30 round magazine capacity? Can’t you just use several 10 round magazines?
We need to stand together still. I disagree with hunters using dogs, but I will fight for their right to hunt that way. I also sometimes use lesser capacity mags for hunting but I also sometimes use hi caps. I think we should use what we want. On the other side, for those hunters that do use hicaps, use some common sense and stash a smaller mag or two to use when around those that may not understand the sport. Show that there are hunting purposes for AR’s and other black rifles in a way that doesn’t scare them with big-scary-evil-feature magazines.
On my land + in my yard + on my porch + in my garage + wife + daughter + dog = in the ground (.308 @ +300yds 165gr)