Keeping Nature’s Peace : Game Warden of the Year Strives to Be Everywhere at Once

It’s Friday. The tall man in khaki with the badge and the gun is working the fish and game beat in the Eastern Sierra. He works alone. He is a few minutes late.

“I had to check out a tip from the campground host at Chris Flat about over-limits (of fish),” he says.

Routine. Not many calls for bank robberies or drive-by shootings on his beat. But he could handle those if he had to. Richard J. (Dick) Padgett, 53, has been a game warden for the California Department of Fish and Game for 25 years. Part of his job is checking folks for fishing licenses. But he still is a cop.

“And he has the reputation for being cloned,” says Rick Rockel, proprietor of Ken’s Sporting Goods in Bridgeport. “Like, he’s everywhere at once.”

One of the few times that Padgett was caught off guard was earlier this year, when he attended the annual advanced officers’ training program at Napa College. The state’s warden of the year was to be honored. Lt. Mike Wolter in Bishop had nominated Padgett.

“But after hearing the qualifications of all the other wardens who had been nominated, I sat back and thought, ‘Well, I’m not on the hot seat,’ ” Padgett said.

And the winner was. . . .

“You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

Wolter said he nominated Padgett primarily because of his investigative report and testimony on the successful East Walker River case against the Nevada farming group that destroyed the prime fishery when it drained Bridgeport Reservoir four years ago.

Wolter also cited Padgett’s teaching of defensive tactics, a successful hunter safety program in his area and “25 years of service and complete commitment to protect the wildlife to which he was entrusted.”

A day with Padgett gives a hint of how he does that. It starts at 9:10 a.m., when he pulls away from Rockel’s store in his state-supplied dark blue ’88 Dodge pickup with the scratched-up sides from driving through brush. He radios the Mono County sheriff’s office, his local contact base: “(This is) fifty-five eleven. . . . I’ll have a ride-along today.”

He drives north on U.S. 395, on his way to Lobdel Lake. En route he meets sheriff’s deputy Larry Sherman coming south. They talk on their radios about suspected deer-poaching in the area the previous night.

Near the Lobdel dirt turnoff, Padgett sees a pickup truck parked by a barbed-wire fence next to rolling, sage-covered hills. He does a U-turn and parks behind it. Hands at his side, he approaches it slowly and looks inside, then walks to the fence.

“Two sets of (human) tracks going through the fence,” he notes.

He searches the landscape with binoculars, finds nothing and says, “It’s the time of the year when archers are out scouting.”

He jots down the license number of the truck.

At 9:45, along the dirt road to Lobdel, a stick standing at an odd angle catches his eye. He stops and finds some shot-up bottles and cans and several .30-06, .22 and .45 shell casings--the remnants of someone’s informal target practice.

“A fine example of your upstanding sportsmen leaving a mess,” Padgett says.

He places the trash in a bag in the camper shell of his truck. It’s illegal under California law, he explains, to shoot from a road but OK to shoot across a road--but not OK to shoot an arrow across a road.

Farther along, he checks out tire tracks leading off the road, a place where a grader has pushed dirt and rocks into Cottonwood Creek--only three feet wide but still under his protection--and a wisp of smoke in an empty campground.

“Looks like somebody went off and left their campfire burning,” he says.

He scoops up some water from the creek in a plastic bag and puts out the smoldering ashes.

“It probably wouldn’t be a problem,” he says, “but as dry as it’s been, and with the afternoon winds we’ve had. . . .”

The recent flurry of brush and forest fires in California underscores his concern.

At 10:45, there is Lobdel Lake--or what’s left of it. Lobdel is a shallow basin dammed by ranchers as a water source many years ago. But the drought has reduced it to half the size of a football field. Padgett’s concern is for the rare population of Arctic grayling, although he is surprised not to find any dead fish around the edges.

Continuing on the back road, he encounters the campers who left their fire smoking and politely cautions them. Then, an approaching pickup sees him and stops 50 yards away. Padgett stops, too. It’s against the law to carry a loaded weapon in a vehicle, although some hunters do it.

“You certainly don’t want to go running up on a vehicle where you may have an individual in there trying to unload his weapon,” Padgett says, watching the other truck. “I used to do that when I first came on, in the interest of making a case. I’d rather get home safely now.”

Padgett says he has never drawn his handgun, although “over the years several incidents have been very close.”

“In the city the officers have the opportunity of drawing down (on someone who is armed),” Padgett said. “Out here it could be a poacher--or a law-abiding sportsman.”

When Padgett wants to find out which, he will usually start casually with, “Hi, how are you?” and allow the small talk to drift gently to the point.

His nearest backup might be miles away. The sheriffs or California Highway Patrol might be available in an emergency, but there are only 350 game wardens in the state and, because they are allowed to work only 40 hours a week, Padgett and Tom Lipp of Independence are the only two watching over the entire Eastern Sierra this day.

“The only thing you can do is try to keep (violators) guessing,” Padgett says. “Make them think they’re liable to see you any place, any time.”

In the East Walker case, Padgett said: “I had been at the reservoir the day before, taking photographs. (The next day) was opening day of the dove season. I was working doves when Rick (Rockel) called the sheriff’s office and told them the reservoir was, in fact, ‘dewatered.’

“I drove down and started collecting evidence of the dead fish. There were quite a number.”

Padgett also assembled a solid report and appeared in court.

The farmers were ordered to fix the stream, which they did this summer.

Padgett was asked to address this year’s graduating class of wardens “about what it was like to be a game warden.” He was frank.

“I told them that before too awfully long, today will be like the good old days. I told them (about) the frustrations . . . having deer concentrated on the winter range and checking them one evening, then going back the next day and finding that someone had poached a deer.”

That makes Padgett angry. While, he says, he believes in giving a suspected violator the benefit of the doubt, “I tell people, ‘You break the law, you’re going to get a ticket.’ Some people think because they know me they should be cut some slack. My feeling is, if they know me, they know where I stand and shouldn’t put me on the spot. If you are my friend, you’re not going to be poaching, and you’re going to have a fishing license.”

At 2:10 p.m., Padgett stops at a campground on Robinson Creek and mentions that he suspects deer poachers are working the area at night. A campground hostess tells him, “If they’re putting spotlights on my Bambi, go get them!”

Every fisherman he checks has a license. In the late afternoon, after checking anglers at Twin Lakes out of Bridgeport, he is met at the entrance to Mono Village by a small crowd petting a doe.

“The trouble with this,” Padgett says from the driver’s seat, “(is) it’ll knock down some kid for his peanuts and cut him with a hoof, and they’ll call me to come take care of it--kill it.”

At the Mono Village office, manager Norman Annett Jr. tells Padgett about black bears roaming the campground, especially a bold one that keeps inviting himself to lunch because natural forage is so thin.

“Do you move it from one marginal food area to another?” Padgett asks. “Wouldn’t it be more humane to just thump it in the head?”

The question goes unanswered. Padgett checks his log for the next day.

“I need to see the deputy district attorney about over-limits of fish from Kirman Lake . . . complete my daily activity reports . . . complete a TR-291 (defensive tactic) training form . . . contact the U.S. Forest Service regarding Lobdel . . . call the (DFG) biologist about the bears causing problems here. . . . “

He loves his job. Before joining the DFG, he worked in a chemical lab in Anaheim, driving the Santa Ana Freeway every day.

“There’s still a potential for ulcers and stress here, but it doesn’t come from sitting on the freeway,” he said. “Over the years I’ve been on lieutenants’ and captains’ lists and I’ve turned them down to stay here.

“I’m just like any other game warden in the state, doing what we’re trained to do, and doing the best job we can. I, fortunately, was recognized.”