A Classic Catch-22
Kids are great and all, but how old do they have to be before they start doing things you tell them to do the first time you tell them to?
You know, something easy like taking out the trash? It’s frustrating, and sometimes, it’s easier to take out the trash yourself rather than harping on them all day long to get them to do it.
But I digress - this is a possum cop column.
You might find this hard to believe, but game wardens hold grudges sometimes.
That’s just what happened to recently retired Game Warden Derek Iden at an Atascosa County hunting camp a few years back. It was the first weekend of the Special White-winged Dove Season, and there was a bunch of shooting coming from a piece of property Derek hadn’t checked in a while. Now, there’s a bunch of shooting in a lot of places, and many times, it may not mean much. But in this case, it was in an area where there weren’t many white wings.
Derek didn’t do any surveillance before he went in to check them, even though he had a sneaking suspicion that he ought to have.
His suspicion was confirmed when he could see about 10 to 12 people starting to move around nervously the minute they saw him. It was a long drive in, and by the time he got there, whatever may have been wrong was fixed.
The very next year, that camp was on Derek’s list to visit on the opening day of the Special White-wing season, only this time he made a more deliberate approach.
There wasn’t near as much shooting as the year before, but he walked in and found a 40-ish year-old man hunting dove off the tailgate of a truck right next to a deer feeder. There was a bunch of milo and rolled corn beneath the man’s feet – a big no-no. Things got worse for the guy when Derek asked him to see his birds. He didn’t have a whitewing one, but he was already over the limit on mourning dove. But wait - things got even worse.
Derek saw a feed sack in the back of the truck that appeared to have something in it other than the “rolled corn” purported on the label.
Derek picked it up from the bottom and dumped out two wild turkey carcasses. It was nowhere near turkey season.
Derek asked, “What the heck is this?”
The guy looked shocked at first, but then said, “My dad shot them this morning. He asked me to take them out and get rid of them. I obviously haven’t done that yet.”
“Well,” Derek said, “let’s go see your dad.”
Derek and the dude walked a hundred yards or so to the hunting cabin where Dad was hanging out on the porch.
Upon arrival, Derek announced, “State Game Warden,” and asked, “you got any birds?”
“No,” the dad replied. Derek shot back, “Not even turkeys?”
And just like the Devil in that Charlie Daniel’s song, the dad bowed his head because he knew that he’d been beat. Though he didn’t lay his turkey meat on the ground at Derek’s feet, he fessed up anyway and handed it over more conventionally. He explained that the turkeys had come to the feeder that morning, and he shot them with a rifle from the porch. Apparently, turkeys like rolled corn and milo, too.
In the end, Derek gave the dad and his son a couple of tickets each for doing that which they ought not have done.
You know, I’m sure that dad wished his 40-something son would have “taken out the trash” the first time he asked him to that day, but in that moment, he also must’ve, or should’ve, been proud.
At least “the kid” was honest, right?
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