I reckon I've got an experience from several years back to share with regards to Game Warden interactions that left a bad taste in my mouth. To quickly set the stage- a coworker of mine invited a few of us to go waterfowl hunting with him and this is the fella that has the boat, decoys, and almost hunts waterfowl exclusively so had much more experience than we did. The catch was- he was a diehard waterfowl hunter and needed some help setting up all of the decoys/blind etc. and he was one of those early morning types. Now I'm NOT a morning person by any stretch and am fully in the night owl category but I was excited to receive the invite and agreed to meet him at the boat launch something like 0500 for this hunt which was about an already 45 minute or so drive. So I hardly got any sleep to speak of and there's the 4 of us at the launch loading up the boat with gear and shuttling everyone back and forth to an island in the middle of the river. We get the decoys & blind set up and it's probably January so quite literally freezing but we settle in and wait for first light/legal shooting hours. As we wait we notice that several hundred yards in front of us, facing down river, there's now another group on a distant island doing the same thing and this coworker is telling our group stories about how competitive & protective people are on 'their spots' and something about hanging a plastic jug to mark their perceived territory (on public grounds nevertheless). Well they're comfortably outside of shotgun range and just off to the side of our shooting lanes (probably at our 10 o'clock and shooting between 11-1 o'clock) with regards to how our blind was positioned so I didn't worry too much about it.
Anywho now that's out of the way- we get into legal hours and start calling and much to my surprise started having some success calling ducks in. We bring in a group and knock a few down- and then the coworker and another guy have to hop in the boat and chase the dead ducks down river (towards the other group) before the current carries them away. While the chase is on- we stop our hunt because our crew is in a position that wouldn't be safe to shoot for the two of us still on the island. We probably got only 2... maybe 3 volleys of this in before we notice a boat coming upstream from us and we're glassing them and notice that it's 2 game wardens and that they're glassing us. Of course they're doing this smack dab in our shooting lane, birds are flying overhead and we can't shoot with where their boat is positioned in the river. And they watch us watching them for... oh I'd say a good 15-20 minutes (again while birds are continuing to fly overhead and we can't safely take a shot at any of them even though they're right over our decoys). We also notice that they're only watching us and not the other group directly at their... 5 o'clock position.
Well eventually they put their binos down and start heading to the direction of the little island we were set up on. They approach our position, have us secure their boat and then once that was tied off- have us all unload our shotguns responding to a 'complaint' and looking for 'compliance'. We do as instructed and unload and then every one of our shotguns is inspected (slowly) to ensure not only what we had loaded was at legal capacity but that we all had the plugs installed to prevent us from loading more than we legally could and they seemed rather disappointed that we all checked out with only being able to load 2 shells in the tube. They checked all of our shells to make sure we didn't have any lead shot, and again were disappointed that we were all using steel/appropriate alternatives for lead and then searched our bags looking for 'hidden' lead shot rounds in our bags and didn't find anything. At this point they separated our group to perform license inspections (did I mention that birds were overhead and quite literally landing in the decoys we set up before daybreak while this is all going on?).
I was the first of the group to have their license checked and when I presented all of my documentation (I think someone mentioned the licenses being printed off like a CVS receipt and that was the case here) but they now suddenly kept harping on that they suspected us as drinking alcohol while hunting and I needed to "make things easier for me and my friends" by "coming clean". I assured them that nobody was drinking any alcohol and that we've been here since 0 dark thirty getting everything set up. They'd ask a few questions about my turkey tag then follow that with asking how many beers have we been drinking. I'd remind them that as they can clearly see- there's nothing but coffee thermos and water bottles at our blind. They'd come back with something like "oh, ok"-then go back to asking about my unfilled deer tags and throw in a "so how many wine coolers did this group drink", I repeated myself and we went onto my unfilled antler less tag, and they'd respond my answer with "so how many mixed drinks were you all drinking"... etc etc. Ducks and Geese are still swimming in our decoys but this is how my "license check" went and even though my shotgun was legally plugged, was shooting legal ammunition, clearly demonstrated there wasn't any alcoholic beverages in our tiny island sitting in the river, and had the proper waterfowl/migratory bird license & federal duck stamp they continued to grill me without any probable cause. I, of course, didn't get the opportunity to observe the other 3 license checks but afterwards, we all were sharing the same exact experience. Oh- the birds that were in our decoys had long since left by now and the crew that set up after we did were shooting throughout this 'random inspection'.
Well to skip over all the details- the next 3 people of our group were questioned and it wasn't until the last one said something about shooting a deer at his relatives place either this season or the previous that the game wardens changed their story for why they were talking to us completely and said that his deer tag from that season wasn't filled out and had to ticket him because he 'likely' shot that deer from either 3 months ago or 15 months ago but by not remembering which season implied some sort of acknowledgment of guilt and implicated himself by hiding it. Once they got their ticket written, they again had us hold their boat for them and they jetted off further upstream. After they left I remember the question being floated amongst the group was as they took their boat away, were they telling themselves "I can't believe that worked" or is that their SOP on filling tickets.
What really irritated me was throughout this (as I remember it at least) approximately during a 1.5-2 hour long process they kept saying as if they were trained to repeat it at a set interval that "they weren't interrupting our hunt". Which I'd estimate was once every 15 minutes or so despite us playing these games with them the whole time and not being able to pursue/shoot the game that was literally swimming in our decoys not even 30 yards out. And of course the crew downriver was now shooting up a storm. I'm pretty confident in the recollection of my memory because I distinctly remember them finally leaving after grilling us over a 'routine inspection' and having to immediately end our hunt because we needed to break down the blind and collect all of the decoys up by early afternoon so my coworker/the boat earner could get back to another commitment later that they had.
Whelp- that's a heck of a lot longer than I anticipated this would go on for and I have more to say but I'm sure most folks wouldn't read this post already due to its length so I'll save my alibi rounds for another post then.
-LD
