Game warden stories
Tales from a life outdoors
LAST SUMMER, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources officially changed the name of its law enforcement officers from conservation officer back to the original title, game warden, which dates to 1912.
The name change comes at a perfect time for retired game warden Jeff Finn of Logan County, a consumer-member of Pennyrile Electric, who has authored three books of “game warden” stories from actual cases across Kentucky.
Finn grew up hunting and fishing on his family’s farm in Simpson County, where his father, a true outdoorsman of the old school, taught him well in the ways of nature. But he would need all he had learned, and then some, during 27 years with the department.
In his fourth year as a game warden, fellow officer Bob Banker of Christian County, with whom Finn had worked a few weeks earlier, was shot in the back and killed by a man Banker had just cited for fishing without a license.
“It brought home the dangers of the job,” says Finn. “It made us all stop and think a lot more.”
Beyond their stories of run-ins with well-armed poachers and a variety of other lawbreakers, the wardens share numerous strange cases: Finn tells of answering a call to find a deputy sheriff and an older gentleman named Hardin, who lived alone in a cabin in northeastern Logan County, standing beside a lifeless, overweight coyote wearing a dog collar.
Hardin’s clothes were in tatters, and he was covered with bites after being attacked by the animal when he arrived home and stepped onto his porch in the darkness. Kicking the animal away as best he could, he’d gotten in the door, but realized that the coyote was in the house with him, and still attacking in the dark. He said he’d finally managed to knock it senseless with a stick of firewood, then had dragged it to the yard, assuming it might be dead. But the next morning when he stepped outside, it had regained consciousness and attacked again. This time, Hardin managed to get to his rifle in a nearby camper.
Trying to raise wild animals as pets can be dangerous, Finn said. The coyote had lost its fear of humans, but not its wild nature.
On the humorous side, there was the man Finn suspected of poaching trophy deer, only to discover that the pictures the suspect was posting of himself with trophy bucks on social media had been taken at a friend’s legal deer farm with animals that had been temporarily sedated for treatment by a veterinarian.
Later in his career, Finn worked in special investigations involving the illegal trade in poisonous snakes in eastern Kentucky, shipment of poisonous snakes through the mail, and shipments of small alligators and live piranhas to several Kentucky counties.
“If you think you’ve seen it all,” he wrote, “you haven’t.”
His books, available on Amazon, are: From the Game Warden’s Desk, From the Game Warden’s Campfire and From the Game Wardens Volume 3.
