I’ve always had a respect for the Wyoming Game and Fist Department. Their sense of mission, esprit de corps and independence appeals to me.
WGFD employees, back in the day, all wore red shirts and drove green pickups that were muddy or dusty, depending on the season, and there was usually a black dog in the back.
They were a Copenhagen-chewin’, beer-drinkin’, gun-totin’ bunch of macho men, with whom I had a love/hate relationship when I was ranching.
Probably most ranchers felt the same way about their local warden.
I was gratified to see that a woman, Angi Bruce, was given the nod to replace Brian Nesvick as Game and Fish Director when he retired. I certainly wish her the best, because I nearly got that job decades ago.
Here’s the back story.
After my amigo John Talbott got caught fishing without a license, and lost his job as WGFD Director, I applied for the position.
I had all the qualifications; outdoorsy, government experience, movie-star good looks...so I breezed through the initial interviews, and was on the short list to replace Talbott.
During my interview with the whole Game and Fish Commission, I was asked, “Miller, is there anything in your background that we should know about?”
Realizing that the Commission was likely a little sensitive about violations of wildlife statutes, given what happened to the previous Director, I fessed up. “Well sirs, I was cited for murdering a deer a few years ago.”
Here’s the back story to the back story.
We had endured a sumbitch of a winter in the late seventies, and mule deer on the ID started jumping the fence around our haystack to get breakfast. At any given time, there were a hundred of ‘em in there eating hay, trampling on the bales and creating general havoc.
I got in touch with our local game warden, who was sympathetic to my plight but couldn’t do much because he was busy with other problems elsewhere.
He gave me a handful of 12 gauge shotgun shells loaded with cherry bombs instead of buckshot, and told me to just lob one or two into the dining herd of muleys, to scare ‘em off.
Sho ‘nuff at the crack of dawn next morning, my haystack looked like happy hour at a deer convention. I snuck up close enough a fired into the herd. When the firecracker exploded, deer bucked and shied and jumped and vacated the haystack pronto.
It was a very satisfying sight, and I congratulated myself until I saw the haystack start to smolder.
The cherry bomb had ignited some loose hay, and the flames had started to lick up the sides of the stack by the time I got to it. I spent an hour throwing snow on the conflagration, and beating it with my coat before I put it out.
Next morning I loaded my shotgun with dove loads, tiny little shot the size of sand, and went back up to the haystack to continue the Great Deer War.
I was greeted with the sight of a hundred deer butts around the stack, and touched one off in their general direction. Again, the deer scattered.
Except for one unfortunate doe who kicked on the ground in her death throes.
I hauled her carcass into town, and explained the tragedy to my warden. He cited me for taking a deer out of season anyhow, and I have to say I understood. I broke the law. His parting words were, “You shoulda used those shells I gave you.”
Needless to say, the Game and Fish Commission had the good sense not to give the Director’s job to a scofflaw like me. If memory serves, John Baughman got the nod, and went on to do a helluva job.
Again, good luck Angi Bruce. If you need my help, just holler. I’ll do about anything except chase deer out of haystacks.
Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com
