What's been your experience with Game Wardens???

I've been checked a few times shooting PD's in Arizona. Most checks were fine and the 20 caliber wildcat AR's got lots of props from them.

The last time I was 10 miles back in th e field on top of a hill and a young fellow drove up. I left my rifle on the pick up tail gate and walked over to him, I was eating lunch, and we chatted. He saw my license but as it went on he got more and more nervous. I finally asked him what the problem was and he said it was how I was standing that bothered him! I said what was that all about and he said you're balding off on me. I said you mean a T-stance and he said yes. Well I told him that I was an LEO and that in my world that was what you did and that I never squared flat out with anyone period. I then pointed out that he might consider that as he had been completely exposed to me during all of our discussion. I was way past sixty years old and am pretty non-threatening but appearances aren't always correct.

I told him I wished him well but he needed to think tactics. I explained I taught a bit of that and he would have been in serious danger if my regular customers were there and not me. To his credit his eyes got real big and suddenly he decided he needed to go way out yonder. Had it been anymore than this his supervisor and I would have had a set down. I suspect he was new to the job as he exhibited zero situational awareness.

Greg
 
I've had several run ins with Game Wardens. Never had a single problem. I make sure when I go into the woods that I am 100% legal. If your legal then there's no reason to worry. I use to hunt directly behind a rangers home. People ask how I could do that? If your legal then what's the problem??? It was public land and open for hunting. I could see his back yard from my tree stand. The last warden I talked to was during rifle season. I was at my truck having some coffee. He stopped by and visited with me over a cup of java.(Of course he checked my license) Ask if I needed anything. I said nope I'm good. He wished me luck and went on his way. They are just normal people doing their job, same as all the rest of us.
 
I guess I've been lucky. Never had an issue.

I had a pasture neighbor's daughter knock on the door one day with her BF and ask if they could deer bow hunt on our land (small 250 acre/40ish head cattle ranch) and I said "yes". Since if a neighbor asks, I treat it as a "command" :D
The BF opened up and said he was the local GW, but I figured "keep em close". So over the next few years (before they got married and moved to MT -where he became a park ranger) they would come over 1-3 times per year and either bow or shotgun hunt deer or turkey's and I had no issues (even though I performed nightly critter control activities around my chickens and calving cows). He knew what I was doing and I knew what he was doing. In most states, where there may be restrictions on "night hunting" - there are generally AG rules that allow farmers to defend their critters from predators. In that state the rule at that time was "as long as non-lethal means were tried first".
So no issues with the local GW for me.
However, neighbors had issues, and during deer gun season if they were out rolling on the roads at night, they would get stopped by "enthusiastic" game wardens looking for poachers. But nothing actually bad happened, just neighbors didn't like being harassed by GWs. Never happened to me. I didn't roam around looking for trouble at night. I stayed on my land watching cattle and chicken areas.
SInce then, we've hardened the chicken coops and I close and latch all coops doors at night. And since doing that, have lost zero chickens, though I still shoot any predators that get inside the 2 layers of fences we have around the coops :D

A neighbor thinks he lost 2 new born calves last year to yotes, so I keep and eye out and did get a yote last week inside 100yds from the chickens. At change of season all the predators seem to go "banzai" and charge in towards the food sources.
 
I've interacted w/(mostly TX) GW's a number of times (for over 75 years) and never had a negative experience.
I did a lot of night calling on three ranches (spanning four different counties) and had the assigned GW's phone number for each. Always made a courtesy call to them the day before a planned hunt. (This was during early stages of NV and I got a bad one, so had given up and reverted to spot lights.)
 
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