Billy Platt, Sr. Interview, Part 1 of 3

DT: My name is David Todd. I'm here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. It's March 1st, 2008 and we're in Jasper, Texas.

And we have the good fortune to be visiting with Billy Platt, Sr. who has been a traditional hunter, has been a-a game warden and has been a-a-a private game warden or pasture rider.

And I-I just wanted to thank him for taking the time to talk about his life and career in-in those fields. And maybe we can start with a question about your early days and I think that-that you've lived in this country, grew-grew up in Livingston, is that right.

BP: Correct.

DT: In Polk County? BP: Polk County.

DT: And can you remember back before the stock laws were passed?

BP: Yes, back, I guess you might say I started hunting in 19 probably 45, where if you had a buckshot, it was a rarity because World War II had all the ammunition.

And you could hunt probably anywhere in the country without crossing a fence. Everybody let their stock run out and when the calving times came, the landowners would get together and they'd help each other herd their cattle in.

They had dipping vats scattered over the county where they would dip their cattle. Everybody would get together and get the herds together and run them through the dipping vat to-for insects and different things.

But it started, you know, changing in the '50s, you had a few landowners started fencing their land.

You had all of this East Texas area, a-a whole lot of it was owned by timber companies. They didn't charge anything for the hunting or grazing rights.

And after a few years, they started, maybe, leasing their land for, say, fifteen cents an acre for grazing rights. And people fussed about that but, you know, fifteen cents an acre wasn't much back then. And probably in the middle '60s, they started leasing land.

We, you know, the wildlife people, the open country and the way the outlaw deer hunters, including myself, the way we hunted, we killed what we-we went deer hunting, shoot a deer, period.

And the deer population had nearly been wiped out. It's-it was a real low population, real low.

And the company started leasing their land for hunting rights and grazing rights, say, they were charging twenty-five cents an acre, getting, they said, get some of our tax money back.

And when they started closing the land up, you had more protection for your wildlife because the landowner paying money for his lease, he wanted to protect it.

And we had traditionally dog hunting, was-which was legal in East Texas. And when they started fencing this country, the dogs would-they'd turn the dogs out somewhere and they'd go into a private land that was leased.

And the dog hunters would either tear a gate down, cut the fence and go in, get their dogs anyway they could. So the battle started.

DT: Tell me more about the-the other wildlife that were around here before there were stock laws. You said that the deer populations were real low. What about turkey and.

BP: None, there were none left.

DT: Well, why was that?

BP: Well, back in-I guess during the depression, we had the old eastern turkey. And they were a-a good breed of turkey, they were tough, protected their young and I guess probably they were killed out during the depression.

And we went-we had a state game reserve in the lower end of Jasper County in the Neches River Bottom. And they brought in some-a strain they call the Florida turkey that came out of low areas like South Jasper County and stocked them.

And they did pretty good for a year or two, you'd see thirty or forty in a-in a bunch. And they started-they just couldn't make it, they-they just died out, weren't killed out, they just died out.

And then they started-they tried several strains of turkey and oh, West Texas turkey. They come in, boom for maybe a year and then they gone.

Then they started importing the old native East Texas turkey from Iowa, up in that country. And at that time when they first started, we were trading white-tailed deer for turkey. They'd fly them in here and we'd go out and turn them loose.

And when they got tired of trading deer for turkey, we started buying deer-the Turkey Federation, paying six hundred dollars for a d-for a turkey. They were expensive. But they did real well, did real well.

We got a pretty good turkey population now. It's taken years to build up, but we got a-got a good deer p-turkey population.

DT: What can you tell me about other wildlife back then? I-I'm curious about black bear and-and maybe if you've ever heard of red wolves around here?

BP: No, the nearest red wolf we had was down along the coastal boundaries, down around Lower Liberty County, down in that area. And as far as I know now, they are extinct.

They came up here trapping coyotes, government trappers; they trapped all up in this country. And they would do a DNA on the coyotes and they found a few strains in there that had a little red wolf DNA, but as far as I know, now, that's been thirty years ago or longer. It's-they're gone in this country.

DT: Wha-what about the-the black bear or mountain lions, jaguar, did you ever see those?

BP: We-we have some-we have a few cougars left around in here, there's one killed every once in a while. I haven't seen one over my years. I've seen tracks, which I know were cougar tracks.

We had bear, they were predominant in the Big Thicket, which is not far from here, back in the mid 1900s, which there were a lot of black bear in this country. And habitation closed in on them, still a few scattered around the Big Thicket.

But Louisiana purchased black bear from, I believe, Ohio, up in that country and they stocked them along the Sabine River.

And they-they started spreading out and we had one killed in Newton County, it was tagged. They tag them when they turn these animals loose, put a tag in their ear.

We had one-they had released some and a year later, this black bear was killed six hundred miles from the release site, up in a southeastern-one southeastern state, I believe Tennessee.

And this bear was what they call a homer. Wherever you released them, they try to get home to where they was raised. And this bear had traveled six hundred miles in a year, it had a tag, you know.

So, you know, we-we had it here, we stock deer in this country and it was-didn't have many deer, we brought in West Texas deer and stocked them and with, you know, good law enforcement and landowner participation, we've raised a lot of deer.

DT: I'm curious about some of the other wildlife that you saw when you were growing up. Did-did you ever see ivory-billed woodpeckers?

BP: No, no. I've toured a lot of people in what they call the forks of the river at Dam B, the rivers fork, Angelina, out of the Rayburn and Neches River come up the-the forks of the river.

Well, we got a scientific area made up there, Dan Lay, I don't know whether you've ever heard of Dan, Dan was the instigator. And I've toured a lot of people up in that country over the years.

It- somebody said they had heard one and I've toured them all over that country and set and listened but we've never heard a ivory-billed woodpecker. I think they're extinct, possibly there might be one around, but I doubt it.

DT: Well, we've talked about some of the wildlife that you saw when you were growing up. And-and I was curious, when you were talking just a little bit earlier about the Stock Laws, why were those passed? What was the point of-of-of enacting those-those laws?

BP: Well, people-other animals, other person's animals would come in on a person's property and destroy a food plot maybe or what they'd planted for their cows and destroyed.

And a lot of accidents on the highways and blacktops, people getting killed hitting stock and it was everywhere and people just got tired of it and wanted people to take care of their own animals. Now that's the reason the Stock Law was passed.

And the-the small-the small stock owners, it-it hurt more really than the big stock owner because they had to do something with the small herd, they had to fence it. And it cost a lot of money to fence, a lot of money to keep it up and that's pretty well the opposition to it.

And of course your hunters hated it, you know, because it fenced them out and they hated the Stock Law. So it was a battle for a long time, you know, with the Stock Law and still is to a certain extent.

DT: Can you tell me about the-the reaction to these Stock Laws, like the-I think the Garlington situation?

BP: Well, the Garlingtons-I came over here in '62 and the Garlingtons really had the only place in this large area here that was fenced. They had about six hundred acres fenced, they raised Bremer [Brahma] cattle and they-it's a wild breed and you have to be-handle them real easy, they spook real easy.

And it was a-a old maid and her two brothers; they were bachelors, lived back in there. And when the deer dogs jumped a deer, they would go in through this area of the Garlingtons and scatter the cattle everywhere. And they had a hard time trying to handle their Bremer cattle, so they started shooting dogs.

It's a-erupted and they shot some dogs one day and from the county road in to their house was probably a-a long quarter. This group of dog hunters were in a pickup, they drove in towards the house and these brothers, excuse me, met them and the gunfight took place.

And they shot one of them, put him down, didn't kill him. And they shot the other brother and they shot him in the back. He hit the ground, rolled over and this man that shot him walked up to him and-this is first hand knowledge, you know, the Garlingtons were-were good friends of mine, real close friends, walked up to him and point a thirty-thirty at him, he said, you'll never shoot another dog and pulled the trigger.

And the bullet hit him right here, I guess the old boy was pretty nervous that shot him, but he hit him right here and went under his cap and came out, of course it knocked him unconscious.

And they killed one of the dog hunters that was doing all the shooting and it-it was a-was a bad place. And they killed-the Garlingtons killed one of them and they tried them in San Augustine County for it and found them not guilty, self-defense.

And it was bad, all the years that I was here, there's not any-there was not any law enforcement people that would go up there and help those people. And they were badly abused by, pretty well, your dog hunters, bad.

And they couldn't get any help and when I came over here, I went up and met with them. And I helped them for years and it was-that-some bad situations around there that I ran into.

They never did stop killing dogs and it-they did not go anywhere that they didn't have a gun with them. They had to live that way. If they went and fed cows, they carried a gun with them.

And it was a bad way to have to live, they-all they were trying to do is live in peace and have peace but it wasn't that way for them. But they're all dead and gone now and I think their relatives inherited the place and no problem up there now.

DT: You told us how hunting with-with deer hounds worked. I-I was wondering if you could talk how traditional hunting for fox and coyote worked. Ho-how was that?

BP: Well they-you fox at night and coyote hunt at night. That's when your-your animals are stirring the most.

And they just go out and turn a pack of dogs loose and they go out and smell a fox and start running them old coyote.

And they sit around drink coffee and eat sandwiches all night and listen to the dogs. It's good sport, a good sport.

Deer hunting, you-deer have certain places that they cross. They use the same area, maybe ten feet, where they cross different roads.

And when you jump a deer, you put your standards, that's your hunters, you space them out, either on the road or in the woods.

You s-you put the man here and three hundred yards you put another man. And the man with the dogs is called the driver. He goes around maybe a mile from there or half a mile and he starts what you call a drive.

And you turn your dogs loose, they'll jump a deer. The deer takes off ahead of the dogs and they'll cross somebody's area and they're shot and killed. And I-it's a good way to-to kill a deer and it's a-it's a-a good sport as long as you don't hunt on these pri-private roads.

It's a good sport but when you had all open land, you wasn't intruding on anybody. But when the people started fencing their land, it-the problems started because of the dog situation, they'd go in on private property and-which a dog can't help, you know.

He don't know what-the fence he doesn't stop and that's when the really bad dog problem started in this country, when the fencing started, Stock Law.

And it progressively got worse and you would go patrolling and you'd go out to a county road and there'd be a-somebody standing in the middle of the road with a shotgun. This might be a school bus route.

And your prosecution for game violations in East Texas was terrible back in the '60s. You couldn't get a case prosecuted. I don't care what they did, you-you could file a case; the prosecutor would probably dismiss it.

So, you know, we did our job, we filed cases, even though it'd be dismissed, we were doing our job.

And for years I've talked to your dog hunters. I had a lot of good friends that hunted with dogs and I explained to them, you know, if you don't get off of these public roads, if you don't quit cutting these fences and tearing gates down, you're going to lose your dogs, they going to vote them out.

And that's what happened. That's the reason they lost their dog hunting privilege, which was a good sport at one time. But I don't think we'll ever see it back again, not legal.

DT: Well, while we're talking about dog hunting, can yo-can you talk about the-the breeding and training of these dog hounds the-the deer hounds?

BP: Well, about any dog that had any hound blood or a cur dog will run a deer. They just love their scent I guess, but they'll run a deer.

Back in my outlaw days, we used a cur dog. They were pretty well stock dogs.

They would-you could jump a deer and they wouldn't run them but about thirty minutes and they'd be back. A hound might run all day and all night. He might run one deer that long.

But your cur dogs didn't bark a lot and didn't make a lot of noise and that's pretty well what we hunted with. Excuse me.

When I came to this country, people used pretty well straight hounds. They'd run all day and all night, but quite a sport.

DT: How big a pack would you use?

BP: Oh, you'd-y-you know, deer hunting, you'd probably have two or three dogs. You might turn one loose at a time and when he quit, you'd turn another one loose, maybe in another little small area. But it's quite a sport. I still love to hear a dog run.

DT: And say you're-you're hunting for-for fox, let's stop just a moment. I've understood that-that with dogs, especially when you're hunting fox and-that there's some dogs that are good at-at following a scent and then there are other dogs that like to do the treeing and-and is that true?

BP: Yes, your coon dogs, which is a pretty big sport in this country, and your squirrel dogs, they're treeing dogs, which your-your average hound, you've got a-a different breed dogs, they're hounds, but you've got, say, a Bluetick-really it's pretty what you train them to do.

A coon-coon hunter will whip his dogs for running a deer. They're breaking them and they-where they'll just run a coon.

Just nearly any dog, if they come across a d-hot deer trail, they going to run that deer unless they're trained not to.

Your coon hunters have coon dogs that they might sell for five thousand dollars, a good coon dog.

A good squirrel dog is usually a small dog and they will hunt nothing but a squirrel. And they'll trail a squirrel up to a tree and stand up on the tree and bark, tell you where the squirrel is. If the squirrel runs through the tops of the trees, the dogs will follow him.

A good squirrel dog is a hi-high priced item. But we don't have near as many squirrel hunters now that we used to have because of the change in the country. The t-pine trees, nearly all of our hardwood areas are gone and it's pretty well pine plantations and your squirrels don't survive there, so it's a lot of difference in the habitat.

DT: We-we've been talking about your traditional hunting with-with dogs and for-for animals and I was wondering if you could also tell us about traditional ways of fishing that-that might've been before some of the game laws came in?

BP: Well, your fishing is pretty well like your hunting in East Texas. It's a-was a lot of outlaw fishing, which we call, say, telephoning fish, shocking fish, usually use the old three or five bar crank type telephones that they used to use back when you made a telephone call.

You'd ring three rings and this puts out quite a current and it'll shock your fish and they'll come up on top of the water, they're knocked unconscious and they float up. And people net them, put them in their boat, go to another spot.

And this was quite a sport and it used to be legal back in the, say, early '50s, you could use a telephone legally. But there's so many people got to doing it, it was taking-making quite an impact on your fish population.

And netting, a lot of people were netting legally and illegally. They had-we had a three inch net that was legal, anything under three inch square was illegal.

And you had a lot of people-the small mesh net would catch a lot of fish. And your large mesh net pretty well just caught rough fish, which was buffalo and carp.

But they started using what we call a booger net; it would be about a six foot hook net. They'd hang them off of little tree stumps, bait them with, oh, commercial cheese and blood. And you might pick up a net that might have two hundred head of fish in it.

They were making tons of money, your illegal commercial fishermen, using these booger nets. They ran them at night and they would never turn a light on in their boat.

And we started using night scopes to pick them out on the lakes, on these lar-large lakes. And we, you know, we caught quite a few of them. They might have one-one running at night, four hours, they might have two thousand pounds of fish.

Well, we confiscated the fish and that cost them a lot of money and the fines was pretty high. We'd file a lot of cases on their outlaw booger net fishermen, which has slowed down a lot. It's not a lot of it; still got some going on, but not a lot of it.

DT: Well, were these traditional hunters and fishermen, were they mostly hunting and fishing for their own families and friends or were they selling it to the market? What were they doing.

BP: You-you had-you had a few people, not many that killed deer to sell, yes. But it was not a lot of it in this country, pretty well the only thing that was taken illegally in this country to sell was usually fish.

And crappie, you got different areas in Texas, like the Northeast Texas where here in this area, I didn't have that problem, people selling crappie. But I went up to Northeast Texas and it was a problem there, just, you know, different things with different areas, what people got used to doing. But the fines now, it's stopped a lot of your commercial activities.

DT: You've told us about hunting and-and fishing. I-I was curious if you-if you were very familiar with traditional trapping? Was there much of that going on when you were growing up?

BP: Used to be, used to be. The price for pelts back in the 70's, say, late 70's, a large coon hide would bring you seventy-five dollars. And a-a lot of people started trapping and that got to be a problem.

They would stop on the highways and go up under a bridge and start trapping along a stream there. They'd get up on people's property, follow these streams up-trespass. And it got to be a problem but it took a while to, you know, slow that down.

Every time you have something in la-in law enforcement that gets to be a problem, you work on it more intensely and that gets it slowed down. I've worked undercover on the trapping problem and I've gone in and-so, you've got to have a trapper's license to trap and sell.

And I'd go in and take some pelts in to a fur buyer and they're supposed to check and see if you have a trapper's license. And they'd pay me, usually pay you a lot less than they would someone they knew and they wouldn't know me, but they would buy it from you.

And a seventy-five dollar pelt, they would offer you forty dollars for it, where if it was a regular trapper that came by all the time, he'd give me seventy-five dollars.

So they were stealing. But it slowed down. The price of pelts now is-is nearly zero. It's not worth the time and effort now to trap.

DT: Well, you've told us about traditional hunting and fishing and trapping. I guess a lot of this s-started to change when the game laws were passed and started to be implemented here in East Texas. Can you explain ho-how these game laws were passed, both statewide and-and in this particular county,

BP: Well.

DT: that you were responsible for?

BP: You used to have-when I went to work, you had a general law and each county pretty well set their own rules and regulations. Like Jasper County would be different from Angelina County, would be different from Newton County, Sabine County or Tyler County.

Your commissioner's court and county judge, you know, a group of hunters would come in and say we need to do this and we need to do that, politics got in-into it and it was deep.

And then I don't remember the year, the Texas Game and Fish Commission at that time started passing regulatory laws, which the-the Game Department would come up with some different laws for different counties.

The law maybe in Jasper County, the opening seasons and the means and methods of taking wildlife might not be the same as your neighboring county. And they tried to get everything regulated where pretty well everything would be open and closed in means and methods of taking your animals the same.

And like Angelina County, you did not have to go regulatory, but most of your counties did, where they wouldn't have that burden on their shoulders, your commissioner's court and county judge.

It took the burden off of them when the Game Department started doing all the regulating. So it took a lot of pressure off of them and you would have a-a general law county like Angelina County.

The squirrel season there opened the first of October. Jasper County opened N-October fifteenth. So I neighbored Angelina County for miles along the river and the people did not know where the county lines were, a lot of people come in this country start hunting. And for two weeks, I'd have the river bottom full of people hunting squirrels in closed season because it was before the fifteenth of October.

And, you know, you felt sorry for people that didn't knowingly violate the law but you've got people that live there, that wanted to go squirrel hunting and wan-would wait `til the October fifteenth and people that probably didn't know, was killing all their squirrels before the season opened. So, you had to go in and enforce it.

DT: Now, why were these game laws passed?

BP: Well, to protect wildlife. You had breeding seasons that you didn't normally take your game, like deer. Deer are usually through breeding by the first part of November. So you didn't want to take the deer before they were bred. And we-that's the reason we-it's really hard to explain.

A lot of-I'm-I'm not a wildlife biologist, I mean, you know, I'm in the woods all the time and that's where I live pretty well. But our deer population in this area was, like I said before, we didn't have many and they started short-shortening the season some, that helps. But we've got a-we've got a, they say, an overpopulation of deer now and they increase the season, increase the bag limits.

For years, it was illegal to kill a doe deer in this country because we did not have many deer. Now, they say you don't kill enough doe deer. So it's been a drastic change, what, in forty-five years in th-your deer population.

DT: Well, you told us how these-these game laws were passed and-and-and why they were passed, but I'm curious about the reaction to it here in Jasper County or Newton County. What did-what did local hunters and fishermen think of these new game laws that were being passed and enforced here?

BP: Most of them didn't like it. It was a re-revolt, it's-they burned-when your timber companies started leasing land, you started taking land out from a hunter-away from a hunter, maybe that his daddy, his granddaddy, his great-granddaddy hunted all their lives because it was open country.

When they fenced it, that stopped that and this was a common answer. When you'd catch somebody, say, well, you're trespassing, yeah, but my-my daddy and granddaddy hunted here all their lives and I'm going to hunt here, you know, regardless.

So, you know, you got a battle on your hands right there and if you-if you've got good prosecution and good judges, you can enforce the law.

But if you have bad prosecution, bad judges, your outlaws know this and they will try you and they know that the case will be dismissed.

So you've got to turn the prosecution around. You've got to turn your judges' attitudes around and you have to have the people living in an area to change their attitudes and call the judges and call the prosecutors, say we want these outlaws prosecuted. And then it starts changing.

You start getting law enforcement and you start raising game because your violations s-go way down when they know there going to be prosecuted and have to pay a big fine. Only way to stop violations is you get in their hip pocket and get you some big fines. That's the only way you can do it.

And education, you know. Your younger generation now, they're a different breed than what they were, you know, several years ago. They papa used to go kill deer but papa was wrong, you know, he's-he was taking game away and we're going to change that and it's done a lot of that, education.

DT: Well, when these game laws were-were passed, I guess this is in the-in the 1950s in this part of the state?

BP: Well, there's been so many-it started way back, you know, in the middle 1900's when they started hiring a few game wardens. We've gone-at one time I was working four counties at one time by myself. I didn't get a lot done. I did more running around than I did trying to catch an outlaw because you had calls everywhere.

And now it's-they've got a lot of game wardens. They've got-where I-when I went to work in Newton County, I-I was by myself. They've got four game wardens working Newton County now. And it's really one of the last of the Mohicans far as outlaw country, is Newton County.

The storm-when Rita hit here, there was a lot of bad attitudes in Newton County especially, and those-talk about one bad county, bad county. And when Rita hit, it just-it was terrible in this country. People didn't have electricity. They didn't have anything to eat. They didn't have any gas.

They sent game wardens in here twenty-five and thirty at a time and they took people gas. They took people ice. They took people food.

Even the bad, bad outlaws that really despised the game warden, got to see where he was glad to see that green pickup drive up. And it changed a lot of attitudes in East Texas about game wardens,

that they're not the real bad bully bears that people have, you know, everybody-you know, there comes that blankety blank game warden. Now it's a different attitude for most of them. They still got some died in the wool outlaws but it's changed the attitude a lot.

DT: Well, can you tell us about how you became a game warden, I think it was in 1962, what was the start.

BP: Well, I had a seven year old son and my little Grant, my little gang of us, and there was a bun-bunch of gangs over in-in my country, we would kill-maybe four or five of us would kill a hundred deer a year.

You know, we killed lots of deer. And I shot my last one and I-I looked at it and I said, you know, I-I've got to quit this.

My son's seven years old and if we ke-keep killing deer like we're killing right now, my son's not going to have a deer to hunt because there's a lot of outlaws and everybody was doing what we were doing and you could see the deer population just going down.

I said, I'm going to quit it, so I quit it. And-and it was about 1960 and in '62, there was a advertisement in the paper for-looking for game wardens. I said well, you know, I-I've always not-I ha-did not dislike a game warden, I didn't want to see one coming, but I did not dislike them.

And all my friends pretty well were outlaw hunters and I said well, I'm going to apply, see what I can do to help this situation and I did. And my boss, which he got to be my boss after I was hired, came to Livingston, interviewed me and he said Billy, he said, I know of you real well. You're a well-known outlaw hunter.

I said yes sir, I know that, got a bad reputation, but I said I quit two years ago and I want to do something to help.

He said, well, you know all about it don't you? I said, yes sir, I know what I-how outlaw hunters work. He said you're just what we need.

I had a high school education and they hired me. And my wife carried me to Tyler, had a regional office there and I went in and met my boss.

He-he gave me a law book, a badge and a commission card and the-one of the first patrol cars issued was an old six cylinder Ford, '62 model, two door sedan with no air-condition.

He said, do you know where Newton County is? I said, yes sir, he said well, go over there and go to work. I did not have one day of law enforcement experience. I really did not know what a warrant was.

So they sent me to Newton County. I bought my own pistol, moved in over there and it was quite a learning e-experience.

So my first deer hunter I caught illegal, I caught him, a shotgun out of season, with his old dogs was running deer. And I caught him, I said, what are you doing out here? He said, just running my dogs.

I said, well, what are you doing with your shotgun? He said, I just like to carry it, East Texas tradition. I said, well, you're hunting deer out of season. I said, you know, for myself, what am I going to do with him. I said, you going to have to load up with me and I'm going to carry you to the sheriff's office and we going to see what you were hunting.

So I loaded him up, my first arrest, and carried him into the sheriff, locked him up. And I got-got my first lesson of politics, you know, the local sheriff and the district attorney or county attorney wouldn't prosecute it, you know. It's-people did this, this is just a way of living.

And then I caught this-a few days later, I caught two men with a skinned deer. They just had the meat in a igloo. Carried them in, file on them, and a county attorney s-said-I said, I've got to file this case in county court.

He said, no, we file that in JP Court. And I said, no, the law reads I have to file it in county court. He said, I'm the law in Newton County, this was the county attorney, I'm the law in Newton County. I said, well, whatever.

He said, how do you know that was a deer? I said, I know a deer carcass when I see it, seen them all my life. He said, that might've been a goat. You know, this has been-how many years ago, 1962, still remember it to this day real plain. He said, it might've been a goat. I said, no it was a deer. He said, well, you can't prove that, I'm dismissing the case.

So that gets a person kind of riled up, when you en- trying to enforce the law and your own people in law enforcement and the prosecution treat you this way because you are a game warden enforcing the game laws. Every other law, DWI, they'd handle it, not a game warden.

So anyhow I spent my training period by myself in Newton County, went to game warden school, A and M and they assigned me back to Jasper County.

So I went down to meet my judges, stopped at Buna to a judge and I said, judge, I'm going to be working down here a lot, a lot of outlaw hunting here. I said, I'm going to be working a lot of days and a lot of nights. And I said, I'm going to be bringing you a bunch of cases.

He said don't bring me a game case. I said, sir? He said don't bring me a game case. So you walk outside and sit down a minute and says, you know, this is bad. When you get down here and you work your butt off and bring them in here and they dismiss them, I'm no-I'm not going to do that.

So I had judge in Jasper, he was a Humdinger. He would say, whatever you want, you'll get, as far as fines. So when I caught someone down the lower end of Jasper County, I had one, two, three JPs between there and Jasper. I bypassed them all and went to my judge up here.

This might not have been right, you know, but I had to get something done. And people then, back then, really didn't know that I had-I could legally file a case up here. But if they said, no I want this case filed where I live, I had to file it there, if they requested it. But they didn't know that they could do this.

And I would bring them up to my hanging judge and he'd hang them. So, you know, the other judges started looking at the situation and the landowners like the Withers' down at Buna, they used to call that judge right quick, say judge, you need to do something about these outlaw hunters.

Said, I live here and these outlaw hunters are eating me up and Billy comes by here and he catches these outlaw hunters, they take them in there and y'all dismiss it. Says, that's not going to work anymore. We want to see something done with them, and it started changing.

When your landowners and your local people started wanting laws enforced, things started changing and they've been changing for the better ever since. It's good-good situation now.

DT: Well, tell me how you-how you caught these outlaw hunters and fishermen. I-I think when the game warden first hired you, he was really pleased that you'd had experience. How did you put that experience.

BP: Well, this-you can't really train a person to be a game warden. You can go to Game Warden Academy for seven months and you learn many, many different laws for many different things, but you can't teach the instinct of a outlaw hunter.

And you've got a lot of real good young men that's g-n-now you have to have a college degree. When I went to work, you had to have a high school degree.

You got a lot of game wardens now, they come out of college, they've really never-they went from high school to college. They haven't had a lot of e-experience in the woods.

And back in my outlaw days on a, maybe a cold drizzly night, we'd say hey, boy, this is a good night to shoot a deer, let's go tonight. We'd go, we'd kill a deer. So when I got to be a game warden, I knew all this. I mean, I had been an outlaw hunter and I knew how they operated.

If I went to bed at ten o'clock at night and eleven o'clock at night, I heard a drizzle dripping off my house, I'd say, they're stirring tonight. I'd get up and put my uniform on and I'd go out and I'd usually catch a night hunter because I knew how they operate.

But it's changed a lot. It's-the regulations now are stiffer. The penalties are severe for getting out here and shooting a-an old deer at night off a public road or anywhere you can be arrested and put in jail for a year. It can be a-a felony, depending on what kind case you file.

But everything has changed so much, but your experience in the woods and I have a lot of young wardens come by here and ask me a lot of questions about the old days, which, you know, you enjoy telling war stories.

But you've got-you've got a lot good young men that just, it takes them a long time to really learn the woods and how to really catch an outlaw hunter or fisherman.

DT: Well, it-you gave the example of when it-it might be drizzling, cold night and you would get the-that sort of sixth sense that it was time to go out and-and see what you could find. Can you give us some other examples of what a typical chase for a outlaw hunter might be like?

BP: Well, there's-there-there's many different chases and many different methods of chasing and means of chasing. I've had all kinds of experiences with that. I've run them forty miles, running over a hundred miles an hour at night before you can finally get one of them stopped.

It's dangerous. You don't ever know what's going to happen, you know, when you get somebody stopped. A-a scared person, a young person, you've got to be careful with them because they don't think straight when they're up in a tight spot.

But I've run them thirty-five, forty miles over a hundred miles an hour at night and it's dangerous. I've had them throw guns out the window. I've been nearly run over a few times when I'd try to stop one.

And you catch a lot of them, you know, hunting in the river bottom, trespassing, a pretty dangerous situation. I've had-I've looked down the barrel of several guns. And I've been able to talk them out of it and I've had some people really I should have shot because it was that, you know, I'd have a gun down on them, they'd have one down on me.

And it's a decision you have to make in a split second as what to do, should I shoot him? When you tell a man to put his gun down two or three times and he's still got it leveled down on you and you tell him two or three times to put it down and he still got it there. And you've got to make a decision before he squeezes the trigger or you squeeze the trigger.

And I've never had to kill anybody. I've never been shot. I haven't been shot at. Been threatened quite a few times but I've never I gone off and left a man that I had under arrest in that kind of situation. You've got to think and think quick and hope you make the right decisions.

I've had them-one instance, bad outlaw hunter here. He got shot and killed. He was a bad dude. And they caught him one time and night hunting and he ran from me, him and two more, I caught the two and he jumped out and ran. So I got him the next day, arrested him, made bond.

And a few weeks later, I run into him and this fellow just was a bad dude. He had whipped several law enforcement officers. He'd whip people around here and put them in the hospital. He was a dangerous person.

I run into him a couple weeks later and he said, you know, Billy, the other night when you was looking for me, he said, if you'd a taken one more step, you'd a been there where I was. I said, well, are you threatening me? He said, well, you just better be glad you didn't take that other step.

I said, hey, let me tell you something, I'm not going to fight you because you can whip me but I got a wife and two kids at home and I said, I'm going to go home and visit with them that night. If it ever happens again, I'm going to go home. I said, you're not going to make it.

I said, if you ever pull a gun on me or threaten me, I said, I'm going to kill you right there. And he got shot and killed right up the road here and- because he was going to whip a friend of his, you know, the old boy pulled his pistol and killed him, but he died young.

But you've got a lot of instances here where it's how you approach people when they're violating the law, your demeanor. You know, you don't walk around with a pistol in your hand, every time you arrest somebody and pointing a pistol at them, say you're under arrest, you handle it the best way you can and a-a good way, which comes with experience.

DT: Well, give us an example of how you-you'd diffuse a situation where the guy might-he's armed, he may be drunk, he may be young, he's scared, ho-how do you handle it so it wouldn't get out of-out of control.

BP: Well, first thing you do, you say put your gun down. You know, this isn't worth somebody getting killed over, me or you. And you're not helping yourself and put your gun down and let's talk about this.

And when you calm a person down, which it doesn't take long, you know, when you calm a person down, they start thinking a little bit about what they're doing.

Some of them go ballistic and you've got to physically take a gun away from him them or get the cuffs on him and get him loaded up. You're don't have a lot of people that do this but you have a-you have-always have some people that do-that will do this. They're dangerous people.

And most of them you get out here at night, most of them drinking, dope, and they're-they're not thinking straight. And you just got to handle different situations as you come across it and they're all different.