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Crazy Game warden stories

15K views 74 replies 59 participants last post by  PSUbuzz  
#1 ·
I know the bulk of game wardens are good people but we all know that there are some floating around that bewilder hunters with their bad attitudes.

I'd be curious what stories some people have dealing with game wardens.

I have 3.

1. My dad was duck hunting on a warm day. While out on the island he noted some wardens were watching him. Didn't think anything of it. Knocked a duck down, got into the boat, took his coat off because he got hot rowing and got the duck. The day ended, he rowed to the ramp. The wardens tried to fine him for hunting without a license. The reasoning was the license was on his coat and while rowing to get the duck he took off the coat.
He only got out of the ticket because he mentioned being an FBI agent.

2. I was checked at my car by a warden pheasant hunting. I had my stamp signed across the bottom but he refused to let me go before signing the stamp a second time across the face.

3. I wasn't hunting in this next one but it's just as ridiculous. I was hiking at a state park. The park closed at 5:30pm, which i didn't know. While on the hiking trail the wardens in their truck passed me blairing on a speaker that the park closes at 5:30, anyone in the in the lot past that time would get a ticket. I didn't know if the trail circled around so i turned around and picked up the pace to get back. 15 minutes later the same warden passes me again in his truck blairing the same message (obviously i'm going back to the lot.) I get to the lot 10 minutes late and there was the warden writing me an 80 dollar ticket for staying past closing time. I didn;t win the arguement.
 
#2 ·
I dont have any crazy stories just this one is kinda weird

Early goose season here, slow day we see the wardens truck go by and park where our trucks are parked, didnt care, got checked everything was fine, next day same thing, got checked, next day SAME thing, got checked again, and on the fourth day, he wanted to check me, I go, YOU checked for the last three days, You know I havent killed any geese. THen he just goes "oh ya I guess I have"

My freinds thought it was funny how I was actually angry.
 
#3 ·
nice sig there D-S, it works for multiple uses too :biggrin:

only warden story i know of is the Claud Dallas Shootout.
 
#4 ·
had motor trouble on the way in so I mounted the little trolling motor to the front to get us back. as we came up on the launch we noticed the GW was there. we got about 30 feet from the bank and waved at him, he waved back.
my dad said "let me try it one more time". he cranked on it and it started somehow. so I picked up the motor and knelt down on the front platform of the boat. he idled the ten yards to the bank, we got out and the GW wrote us a ticket for me riding on the bow while big motor was running.
we were both stunned. what do you even say to that kind of stupidity?
 
#5 ·
I was running up an undisclosed bayou right at dark. I pull up to the launch and there are three game wardens there. One says you dont have any running lights on that boat, and I say sure I do. I flip the switch and they come on. Now I know Im in the wrong for not having them on but come on. Same kind of deal greenhead. :no:
 
#6 ·
Last year while duck hunting a couple of dnr officers took all the bigfoot goose decoys out of my truck and set them up on and all around my hunting parties trucks. they then hid in the bushes until we were done hunting and then popped out laughing at our bewilderment. :yes: Honestly, I have never met a dnr officer who wasn't a good guy in MI, maybe I'm just lucky.
 
#7 ·
couple of years back, hunting the bay with my dad, State marine police decided to check us out, guy and a girl, girl driving the boat, first, she drives a 23 foot boat right thru the middle of our spread, than proceeds to check us for lic, stamps , steel shot, ( she magneted every single shell we had), every thing was on the up and up, so the guy says thanks guy's, but she says oh no, were not done with these guy;s, then begins to nit pick every thing she could possibly think of, at one point the guy even shrugged his shoulders and looked a little embarrased, she finally gave us a ticket for not having one of those stupid air horns on a 14' boat, and she looked genuinely happy that she was able to give us a ticket. We were both also wearing those floatation suits,and she was arguing that they werent cionsidered PFD"s until we finally took them off and showed her where it says COAST GUARD APPROVED. Like most of us, i am glad they are out there checking people, and i have no problem with them checking me, but there is no reason to act like that, probably just hates hunters and this was her way of sticking it to us
 
#8 ·
Wow. those are some good stories. glad i have never had to deal with anything like that. I have only had good experiences with the wardens around here. I Have been checked many times but they have always been nice. One of them was a woman and not too bad to look at, if you catch my drift, so i didnt complain when she came up to check me out!
 
#9 ·
i have one here to add.

We got checked in the early goose season. The officer snuck up on us through the corn as to not scare any game that would be coming in. Then she did a quick check and told us if she saw any birds she would push them our way. i now refure to her as officer hunny cause she was cute no ring on the finger and i should have asked for her number(i would have if i wasnt so hung over from octoberfest the night before). anyways i should have asked for her number cause that night i was in my drive way and my neighbors (who shot and killed a trumpeter swan last season) were hunting and droped a duck. needless to say i called it in to TIP and i dont think anything became of it. If i am thinking right those damn skybusting kids shouldnt even have a liscense right????

anyways i will always remember officer hunny and she can come and check my blind any day!
 
#10 ·
I've never had a bad run in with the wardens. One day we walked back over to the trucks that were parked along side the road to eat lunch and a couple of federal game wardens pulled up to check us. Everything was fine and we were just sitting around chatting with these guys when several wood ducks get up and start flying right at us. The wardens hand us our guns back and yell "Take em!" we looked at them in amazement and told them that we were way to close to the road to be shooting. They were a little embarrased when we pointed it out. We all had a good laugh about it.
 
#11 ·
A federal officer two years ago checked me at ramp after a hunt, checks everything you can imagine, everything is good, then he gets a tape measure from his truck and i am trying to figure out what in the world he is doing , he walks to my boat and measures the heighth of my registration numbers, the law says they must be three inches tall, well you guessed it, mine were only two and three quarters!!!!!!! cost me 75 dollars.
 
#12 ·
Up until 2 seasons ago I shot a bps-10, and there was one game warden on the lake that always seemed to come and find us when the shooting started picking up.

He was a good enough old boy, and he would always aproach us by saying "allright, who's shooting the howitzer?"

I got checked at millwood by one. He went through every single shell we had, grilled us about where we hunt out of, how many we shot, and what kind are they, all with an air about him. Like he was just WANTING to write us for ANYTHING he could possibly find. Lucky for us he couldn't find anything.
 
#13 ·
I grew up on the lake fishing everyday and for the last 5 yrs I have been huting nothing but public land and have never had to pull my license out of my wallet.

I guess its just luck.

But I have been checked for equipment when just out partying during the summer.
 
#14 ·
i personlally never really had a problem with wardens. i just got stopped at the boat launch today for not having a state park sticker, but i told the DNR that i thought you only needed one if you parked there. Needless to say, he didnt right me a ticket.

We know a guy who has property next to our in kalamazoo MI and he had a DNR guy on his trail camera in a guilie suit. He was wearing his dnr hat and had his pistol with him.

My dad and my uncle were hunting on some land they got permision to hunt on, and it was back when you couldnt hunt from a tree stand with a gun. And my uncle was up in a tree wit a gun and some neighbor saw him when they were out walking, and they call the warden and the lady came, and pushed a nice ten point out right to my dad and he dropped it. My uncle got the ticket.
 
#15 ·
Me and a buddy were hunting last year and we went through the ringer this gw wanted to give out something and cited my buddy for not carrying his hunters education card. You have to show your hunters education card to get your hunting license then after that you can just use the old license for identification the next year. I think he was just wanting to give a citation. He was 19, but i guess you have to be like 25 to quit having to carry it with you.
 
#17 ·
crewchief252 said:
couple of years back, hunting the bay with my dad, State marine police decided to check us out, guy and a girl, girl driving the boat, first, she drives a 23 foot boat right thru the middle of our spread, than proceeds to check us for lic, stamps , steel shot, ( she magneted every single shell we had), every thing was on the up and up, so the guy says thanks guy's, but she says oh no, were not done with these guy;s, then begins to nit pick every thing she could possibly think of, at one point the guy even shrugged his shoulders and looked a little embarrased, she finally gave us a ticket for not having one of those stupid air horns on a 14' boat, and she looked genuinely happy that she was able to give us a ticket. We were both also wearing those floatation suits,and she was arguing that they werent cionsidered PFD"s until we finally took them off and showed her where it says COAST GUARD APPROVED. Like most of us, i am glad they are out there checking people, and i have no problem with them checking me, but there is no reason to act like that, probably just hates hunters and this was her way of sticking it to us
She was probably new trying to impress her superior. Which probably ended with her getting an earful for being anal to you.
 
#18 ·
Me and my freind were out goose hunting we found a feilf loaded down with birds we went and asked the farmer if we could have permission to hunt it. he replied ya sure so we were sitting in the blinds when a truck pulls next to ours ten minutes later two sherifs and a gw were there we decided to pick up and see what was wrong turns out the guy who told us he owned the feild did not i was ferious the gw explained he still had to writ us a big hefty ticket for it but right when the real owner drove away the gw ripped up the ticket and showed us to a new feild were we limited out the next day
 
#19 ·
GooseBuster09 said:
Me and my freind were out goose hunting we found a feilf loaded down with birds we went and asked the farmer if we could have permission to hunt it. he replied ya sure so we were sitting in the blinds when a truck pulls next to ours ten minutes later two sherifs and a gw were there we decided to pick up and see what was wrong turns out the guy who told us he owned the feild did not i was ferious the gw explained he still had to writ us a big hefty ticket for it but right when the real owner drove away the gw ripped up the ticket and showed us to a new feild were we limited out the next day
wow. you sure that was a GW? :rofl:
 
#20 ·
My only ticket from a gw was when I was back in grad school. A buddy of mine and I were hunting and we had a decent shoot going on when the worden snuck up behind us. He went through everything in the boat. Everything checks out ok except we had our ducks piled in the boat. However they were not piled well enought for the gw so he got both of us on failure to seperate bags. This guys was a piece of work. But the plot thickens.... At the time I was dating the daughter of the chief of law enforcement for the DNR. Having this information in my back pocket and after receiving the ticket, I enhanced the gw to give me his opinion of the DNR's higher management. He didn't seem to high up on his superiors. A couple of weeks later at Thanksgiving, I told the girlfriend's dad what happened. He seemed interested in the story. Forward two weeks later and the same buddy and I are just loading up the boat at the same lake and guess who shows up. Yep the same gw. He steps out of his truck and his first words were "why didn't you tell me you were dating the daughter of .......?" I later found out that his sargent had some words with him? Karma, what can you say. But on a bad note, that same gw got shot up pretty bad later that winter helping a county deputy with crazy that held up a gas station. Karma went a little too far.
 
#22 ·
This story i thought was funny and the GW were definitely in the right.

In NJ certain streams are stocked with trout in the spring. Some of them are called closed stocking...so if it's stocked thursdays then on thursdays the stream is closed to fishing until 5:30pm.

Well my dad and i got a little confused on the dates and started fishing a closed stream at like 3pm. Needless to say the fish were REALLY biting well. I almost had my limit and i noticed a GW behind me. I said "HI" in a cheery voice...he said "how's the fishing?" I said "We're doing GREAT the fishing are biting like CRAZY!!" he then asked me to come out of the water LOL :rofl:
Talk about being caught red handed! :eek:ops2:

We only got out of the tickets because my dad brought up his FBI agent card but they still confiscated the fish. :sad:
 
#23 ·
posted this one a while back in a different topic... Didnt happen to me but a friends friend kind of thing. anyway, there is a very notorious warden in their area and on a certain day two guys were out in the boat and were stopped by this warden. the warden asks them the usual questions, including "how many life jackets do you have", having the legal amount they figure they are fine and ready to leave when the warden steps into their boat and says "WHERES MINE"!!!!! he continued to write them up a ticket for not having enough life jackets. However, it just so happens, he stepped into the wrong boat. ONE OF THEM WAS A LAWYER HAHAHA needless to say he was no longer the warden for the area. While there are plenty of great wardens out there who do a great job for us, it just goes to show the power trip some of them are on
 
#24 ·
dukhnter7 said:
I've never had a bad run in with the wardens. One day we walked back over to the trucks that were parked along side the road to eat lunch and a couple of federal game wardens pulled up to check us. Everything was fine and we were just sitting around chatting with these guys when several wood ducks get up and start flying right at us. The wardens hand us our guns back and yell "Take em!" we looked at them in amazement and told them that we were way to close to the road to be shooting. They were a little embarrased when we pointed it out. We all had a good laugh about it.
you didn't fall for the trick. I guarantee you they would have written you a ticket.
 
#26 ·
gomer snerd said:
dukhnter7 said:
I've never had a bad run in with the wardens. One day we walked back over to the trucks that were parked along side the road to eat lunch and a couple of federal game wardens pulled up to check us. Everything was fine and we were just sitting around chatting with these guys when several wood ducks get up and start flying right at us. The wardens hand us our guns back and yell "Take em!" we looked at them in amazement and told them that we were way to close to the road to be shooting. They were a little embarrased when we pointed it out. We all had a good laugh about it.
you didn't fall for the trick. I guarantee you they would have written you a ticket.
i had that happen with a pheasant a few years back, a guy in plain clothes said there was one over there in the ditch on the shoulder, i suspect he was an undercover warden by the way he said it.