Billy Platt, Sr. Interview, Part 2 of 3

DT: While you were a game warden yo you you dealt a lot with your I I guess the violators. I was wondering if you could also talk about dealing with landowners. I I think that you had cooperation from from some families, like the Garlingtons that you mentioned earlier, but also the the Withers. How could they help you do your job?

BP: Well, the first thing you have to have is the cooperation of a landowner. This landowner and the people that live all out in the rural areas, youre one person. You've got seven hundred thousand acres that you patrol. And if people don't if people dont call you when they know violations are going on, like they hear a shot at night, called you.

If they heard a shot last night and they don't call. Call them, call the game warden the next day, say, we hear shots pretty regular down here at night. Okay, you know this is an area you better go to or need to go to and do a lot of a lot of waiting, a lot of patience. Takes a lot of patience to catch an outlaw hunter, a lot of patience. And you have to your younger game wardens, it takes a long time to learn this. You don't teach this in school.

DT: Well, well, say say somebody calls and says I've been hearing shots at night and what would your next thing be to to try and find who's shooting and and catch them?

BP: Well, I would go down and when you do this so many years you when you're riding down a dirt road, I dont look at this dirt road. I look at the sides of these roads. I look for a buckshot hull or a high powered caliber rifle hull. I look for a drag mark where they've drug something out through the ditch into the road, it'll always be a pile of blood where they lay this deer down to load it.

I look things like this. I would mark areas that I thought I was having problems with or people was hearing problems. I would go maybe late this afternoon or after dark and these different lateral roads that run off of your main roads, I would mark these roads. I'd take a stick or limb or just tire tracks and I'd cross these lateral roads where if a trap track went in, you know it. If it's in and out, you know it. You check them the next morning.

You check all these roads and see where the traffics going in and out. It might be a landowner hunting a cow but you know at different when you mark them at night, they're not going to be out there at night looking for a cow. So its just things you just learn to pick up. It's what you call cutting sign. And its it comes with, you know, time and experience. But and

DT: Would you have to do some of this work undercover so that people didnt recognize that you were a game warden?

BP: No, wh usually when you're I've worked undercover some, you know, for maybe a week or two at a time but it would be off maybe three hundred miles and I'd go work, say, illegal fishing or stuff like this and you go work undercover. Go to the beer joint and listen to them talk and different things like this. But thats not really enjoyable work. I know when I before I retired, we had to go to a hundred and sixty-eight hours a month, work hours.

And they called all the supervisors into Austin and explained all this to us. And I was a working captain. I didn't sit at a desk. I was out with my people all the time. And they started this hundred and sixty-eight hours a month and I said this is not good for us. I said I know it's it's what I know what weve got to do.

We've got to hundred and sixty-eight hours a month, we don't have overtime money. I said a game warden can't work that way. You can't work and do your job. A hundred and sixty-eight hours a month can't even start it. And I asked my commanding officer up there, I said, you mean I've got to go home and tell my number one game wardens that they can't work but a hundred and sixty-eight hours a month?

He said that's what were telling you. I said, I don't know, I said that's hard to do. And I had a few wardens, when they said a hundred and sixty-eight hours a month, they would have to go to work to to work the hundred and sixty-eight hours a month because they didn't hardly do anything, you know. Some of them you had well you had some bad apples in the barrel. But I had some that, you know, they'd leave at seven o'clock tonight, they might not be home 'til the day after that or maybe two nights, they might be gone.

I would take the first of season when deer season opened, I had a grub box back of my car. I carried Vienna sausage, cheese, sardines and a one burner coffee maker and a pot, pour my coffee in the pot, boil me some water, make me some coffee. You know, I might not be home for two days. And sometimes I wouldnt see my children awake for two weeks at a time.

I'd come in after dark, leave before daylight and, you know, she raised our children. My priority one was work. I wouldn't do it again. A game wardens wife and I've seen it so many times, they have to raise their family. The younger gen the younger generation of game wardens I've done a lot of interviews, before they went to work, I'd go meet with the family and maybe they been married six months, a year.

I'd sit down, I'd say well, I want to tell you how its going to be. I said, the holidays, you going to work. The weekends, you're going to work. Your wives is going to have to take care of the home. I said, young lady, can you do that, are you jealous? No. I said, well, your husbands going to be gone a lot at night. I said, if youre jealous, youre going to wonder what he's doing all night.

I said, that's going to cause a problem and I said, you will not make it if you're a real jealous type person. I said, you will be divorced probably in a years time, I've seen it so many times. And it's changed quite a bit over the last few years. They they pretty well give a game warden a weekend off during a month, even during deer season. You've got, you know, two, three, four game wardens to a county and you can take time off. And where, you know, back in my early years, you didn't you didn't have a day off. You just you worked seven days a week.

And I had a radio that sat beside my bed, a mobile radio. My wife would answer the calls, call me on the radio, said go such and such a place. My wife didn't get paid for this. She would stay at home on the weekends to take calls and call me on the radio. And it s not fair the way families used to be treated. And, I mean, I was one of the worst, you know. I devoted my life to it and my wife raised our children and she did a good job with it. But it takes a special woman to be a game wardens wife. That's the way it is.

DT: Well, now, I understand that that you worked alone most of the time as a game warden and of course relied a great deal on your wife to support you and and to take care of your family and your home. I believe you also relied a lot and maybe didn't get the support that you needed from the sheriffs and I was wondering if you could talk about Sheriff Pace and and

BP: Well, when I came here, Sheriff Pace was sheriff here, he was an old fellow, wearing old big western Stetson hat, and wore his pistol hanging off his hip like the old western cowboys. And he was a good old man but he was an outlaw hunter. And when I first came here, well, several people approached me, says, what are you going to do about Sheriff Pace.

He bragged about it, about his hunting, you know, he started hunting deer when we used to, in July. So he would brag about people about bout it, so they told me, said, well he's hunting up here next to this old place out here. Nearly every Sunday morning, they're out there running dogs. So I made a point and I got up and I got out there before daylight, backed in there and hid my car.

And a little after daylight, I heard the dogs start and when you you start what you say, cutting off dogs, you hear them going a direction, you know they're going to cross somewhere down there, but everybody's that's hunting knows theyre going to cross down there. So, the dogs, they'd start. I took off down there and stopped and the dogs weren't too far and I heard a pickup coming.

I said, yeah, that's one of them and it was Sheriff Pace. So the deer crossed the road and I started I said Sheriff, I got a job to do and I said, I'm going to do my job. I said weve got to get along, but I said, you have put me on a spot. And I said, I don't like to be put on a spot. I said, this is wrong. You you you're a sheriff, a law enforcement officer and you put another law officer on the spot.

I said, that's wrong, and I want you to tell me and mean it that you going to quit this. Now put me out here like this again, because I said, I'm going to be here, I'm planning on staying. He said, Billy, I'm sorry, he said I've just done it so many years, he said, I'm sorry. I said, wait 'til deer season opens. He said, alright, I promise you. I didn't have anymore problems with him. And then had another sheriff in a few terms, no problems. And then a fellow ran for sheriff. He was the first man I ever caught with an illegal deer.

He was an iron worker. And he ran for sheriff and he beat my incumbent sheriff. And the night of the election, I walked up there and I'd had some pretty bad problems with him, his daddy and all of his sons, I mean, nose to nose problems, you know, get get down and dirty. I walked up there and I said, Aubrey, I said, we've had a lot of differences, pretty bad ones and I said, you got a you going to be wearing a badge and a gun. I said, you're life is going to change.

I said, you're going to be enforcing the law and I said, I want to let you know right now, bygones be bygones, and if you need any help, you pick up the radio and call me or the telephone, I'll be there as quick as I can drive there. He said, well, thank you Billy Boy, that's what he called me, Billy Boy.

So two weeks later, we had two county operated radios, one for me and one for the warden at the south end of the county. Two weeks later, his chief deputy called me and he said, Billy, I want those radios out of your car and I said, what are you talking about. He said, I need those two radios. I said, you're kidding me. He said, no, Aubrey wants them, sheriff wants them.

And I said I said this is terrible and I said, it ain't supposed to be this way. I said, I get my calls my wife works, I get my calls through the sheriff's department, thats who calls they call the sheriff department. They call me and I go on on the call. I said, taking my radios? So I called the commissioner down at Buna.

He was a good friend of mine, and I told him what happened, he said forget it. He said, I bought those radios for y'all. He said, they belong to the county but they're assigned to yall. He said, forget it. So, it rocked along there and if I caught a night hunter, put him in jail, they would give him a a blank bond form.

He'd walk down there, beat me down the steps and never close that door on him and bring a bond form back the next day. That's not good, that's not justice. And I put up with it for two two or three years. And I'd meet one of my folks out here in a rural area and says, well, did you catch those hunters the other day?

I said, what you talking about? Well, I called in, had some dog runners out here. I said, they wouldn't give me my calls. They'd call in there and they wouldn't call me and tell me there's a violation going on. Well, this was setting me back because I had worked hard to get a good reputation and answering your calls and take care of your business.

I wasn't doing it because I wasn't getting the calls. So I got a job offer, a promotion up at Mount Pleasant and I took it to get away from this, a bad situation. Had the warden down, just retired, Kirbyville. Sheriff Cole was from Buna. His running buddies were you want names, were the Carroll boys, group bad bunch of folks.

They would sell deer, they're one of the groups that did this. And Raymond was working down there one night and he was two miles back in the woods, wasnt nobody miles of him. His car started out and he was in a posted hunting club and he stopped him at (?) Carrolls and they had a deer loaded in the pickup, and killed a doe deer.

He stopped them and one of them, it was three of them, one of them grabbed the deer and took off with it, trying to take off. And Raymond started after him and got [IA] deer and they run up there and got Raymond's pistol out of his holster. I mean, he was by himself back in the boondocks. And they kicked him around there a little bit and stuck that gun at his head, says kill the SOB.

And one of them had enough sense, said, no, we ain't going to do that. So they threw his pistol away, cut his radio wires, threw his car keys away and left. Wasn't nothing he could do. And he walked out and called and got some help. They arrested them the next morning. Tears me up to even think about this. They arrested them the next morning and they did not do one thing with them, put them on probation for six months. And Raymond caught them again and he called me that night it happened.

I was in Huntsville and I trained this boy. He said, Billy, I'm a I'm ashamed that this happened to me. I said, Raymond, dont be ashamed. I said, you know, be glad that you're alive. But I said, you just learned a lesson tonight, how to handle situations. I said, you should've come out of there with that sawed off shotgun and you should've handled that situation right there, dared one of them to move.

And I said, this toughened you up and it did. But this is some more of the judicial system that he we had when I lived here. The district attorney was a good friend of mine. I had known him since high school and he was a hunter, was a good hunter, wasnt an outlaw, but him and Cole were pretty thick. And, you know, a prosecutor will do whatever the pretty well whatever the sheriffs department wants to do.

If the sheriffs got a case, he goes talks to the district attorney about it and district attorney says, well, what do you think about it? Says, ah, it ain't nothing to it, let's just kick this one out. That's what happens. That's the judicial system. So it wanothing ever happened about it and said, I got to get out of here. Well, I was already gone then.

But your judicial system has changed a lot. People got a lot of money in your hunting clubs, some of them paying twelve hundred dollars a gun to hunt here in a hunting club now, you know. It's high dollar hunting here now. And people are more interested in whats happening to a game violator, so they call these politicians, tell them, you know, we want this thing handled. You know, the trespassers and outlaw hunting, we want it taken care of and they do the peoples wishes.

DT: Id like to return to that in just a moment, but I thought that while were talking about, you know, times several years back, you you might be able to tell about some of the other game wardens that you worked with who, you know, had had tough run-ins and and some of whom were actually shot, killed. I think you mentioned Mr. Murphy and Mr. (?).

BP: Well, J.D. Murfrees lived at Mauriceville, which is just south of the Jasper County line in Orange County. And he got a call late one afternoon, it was in December of 60, 3 I I believe 63, maybe 64. And (?) ducks. It was just the old end of my county and w I was fifty miles from there. He always just worked lower end of the county, Newton County, Jasper county.

If you got a (?), he lived right there. We didn't pay any attention to county lines; we just went where it was going on. And he went up there and walked in on it and these two boys was shooting ducks, its an old slough that ran through here, wa waist deep deepest part then it come out shallow. And one of them shot a duck. Of course, it was after hours and the duck fell right in front of J.D. He had slipped up there and was hiding behind a tree.

And this boy walked up, started to pick the duck up and J.D. just stepped out and said youre under arrest. And he turned and ran and he got went through a little shallow place and then hit this water about waist deep and he stumbled. And J.D. was well he was we figured from the pattern that was in where he was shot in the stomach, we figured he was nine feet from the end of that shotgun.

And he turned around and he shot tried to shoot him in the head and the pellets hit the straw part of that hat, didn't hit him in the face and it turned that hat around on his head. This happened in a matter of seconds, and he shot J.D. in the stomach. You know, when J.D. bent over, he shot him right there, a full load of shot, the wadding was in his mouth. Of course, it killed him instantly.

There was another old boy with him and there was three more of the older group just a little piece down this slough. So they drug him out in this slough and covered him up with sticks and everything they could find. They covered him up and was going to leave him. And they went up there and told the older bunch about what happened and they said, you know, they discussed whether to leave him or what to do and they said, well, we better call the law, so they called me.

And we all got down there, it was, oh, ice everywhere that night. We spent the night down there, built a fire. And went through all the deals the next day about what happened and he wasn't lawyered up at that time. So they tried him, found him guilty, sentenced him to two years in the penitentiary, that was a victory for them, for the attorney and and sev that was in 63 or 64.

75, when Ronnie Germany was assigned St. Augustine County, I had interviewed Ronnie the year before for game warden applicant, I interviewed him, me and two more people. And he made it. Ag teacher, had three children and young, he was a super person, super game warden. He ran into the a doctor in St. Augustine that had a little place out in what they call Old Ice Bayou.

It's a bayou that runs up in behind his his place he owned. He had a little shotgun house on it and had it the ole boy, single and he was oh sixty years old, sixty-one, or two. And he let him stay there and the doctor called Ronnie, said there's been some illegal squirrel hunting behind my house out there where this old man was living. And Ron said, well, I'll check it out. And he had ahad a recruit with him, a brand new game warden and he later drowned up there, him and another boy one night.

And Ronnie drove up to the house and the old man, he made whisky, he was an old whisky maker. And he jumped up he went oh e went to the house on a little old tractor and got off the tractor and Ronnie drove up there and he came out on the front porch and had a rifle with him. And Ronnie got out of the car and the rookie stayed in the passenger side.

Ronnie got out to talk to him, didn't accuse him of anything. He said, I run into the docto the doctor and he said there's been some illegal squirrel hunting out here. And he said, well, I don't know what you're talking about. He said, get your blankety-blank ass out of here, he said, don't want you around here. And he just had this gun up like this and Ron said, hey, okay, he says, I just want to talk.

And Ronnie turned and started walking to his car and he shot him right under the shoulder blade in the back, twenty-two, which it that wasn't fatal right there. So up in that area, we didn't have really good radio communications, so Ronnie started to call in to get some help and the radio wouldn t it wouldnt reach that far. So Ronnie made a fatal mistake, the rookie made a fatal mistake.

Ronnie got out of the car, grabbed his shotgun. H he said, I ain't leaving; I'm going to get him. And he said, go out where you can get radio communications and get some help in here. So Ronnie didn't know how bad he was hit, but he was lung shot. And the old man went out the back door, took off running and Ronnie behind him and the old man got behind a tree and Ronnie had buckshot in his right gun.

And Ronnie got behind a tree and they started shooting and Ronnie hit the tree a bunch of times with buckshot, you could see the tree where it hit. So Ronnie passed out on the this happened, you know, twenty or thirty minutes, maybe a little longer. And Ronnie was bleeding but if if hed a got went straight out, went to the hospital, he'd still be alive. But anyhow, that old man walked up there and shot him right there with a twenty-two to finish him off. And he took off, so we had a huge manhunt all day and all night.

That old man hid down there and I went to his brothers house. He didn't live too far over there, which was a nice fellow. We figured he might come over there to his brothers house. His brother said, I ain't seen him in five or six years. He said, we dont talk, he said he makes whisky. And I said, why would he kill aa man that wasn't even fixing to harm. He said, because he had a badge on. He's made whisky all these years and he hates a man that carries a badge. I said, well, bad.

So that night, we had three game wardens in his house and he had a screen door. And about two or three o'clock that morning, it was a bright moonlight night, it wasn't anybody going to go over to that house, nobody was to go anywhere close to that house. They saw this figure walk up. He got to that screen door and they all opened fire, you know, he was ahe was done with and he wasn't going to kill anybody else. And they all emptied everything they had and they ain't touched him, they wasn't ten feet from him.

And he took off running and the ranger there, which was a good friend of Ronnies, Dub Clark, had a young highway patrol with him and they heard all the shooting and they took off down the road and they topped the little hill and there he was with his arms up like this. Well, I wished he had been one of us. He wouldn't have got three years in the penitentiary. They would've buried him right then.

But and I got on Dub about it, I said Dub, you know, I'm a law abiding citizen but I said, that outfit right there just killed one of the best, shot him down cold-blooded murder, said, he don't deserve to live. He said, Billy, I wanted to but I couldn't. He said, I had that young man with me. You don't ever know who you got with you, he said it was just couldn't do it. Said, if I'd been by myself, we'd a had justice in a hurry, which, you know, I guess I shouldn't say this but, you know, there's times and places that you get justice, you do it yourself.

He got three years in the penitentiary. And how can you how can you figure that? What's justice? But, you know, back then that was the kind of the feelings about a game warden in this country. It's a you're a lot of peoples enemies. And you got a jury up there and this is something as you work every day and do your job and do it right, file good cases, you've got to change the peoples attitudes towards a game warden, that they're not a old bear out here you're filing and arresting everybody they see out here in the woods.

You treat people like they need to be treated and ought to be treated and do your job, do it right and you get people that respect you. And Ronnie was a a respected person. But these counties, you you s you get a twelve man jury there, you're going to have some probably some outlaws setting on it that does not like game wardens. They going to hang you up and that's what happened. But and

DT: Lets see, in 1985, you retired from being a game warden and became a a deputy and

BP: Investigator for and DT: and investigator for some of these private lands and

BP: Yeah, Louisiana Pacific Corporation. DT: and timber lands. Ca can you tell about that new job you took on and how it differed from being a public game warden (?) state?

BP: Yeah, we had about five hundred hunting clubs on a million acres of land that we owned. And I was pretty well the I might you might say the ambassador for the company to these hunting clubs. I knew a lot of the people, you know, been here for years, knew a lot of them. And I visited the hunting clubs and discussed different rules and regulations and things that we expected from them. And my final years was trying to fight timber arson. And they had was closing the dogs, voted the dogs out, the game department.

And these people in this country was hostile, bad. And they blamed the timber companies for everything that that happened around here, they would blame the timber companies. And they started burning these plantations and we might have a oh, I know or I remember one day when it got to be the worst, we were just spread out everywhere at daylight and we had seventy-five different fires start in one day. And what they'd do, ninety percent of them, they'll take a piece of rope, quarter inch rope, they either want it a foot long or six inches long or whatever.

They wrap six or seven matches around that rope, tie with tape, tape it around there. They light this rope and it burns real slow. They'll ride along there and just pitch it and it goes out, you know, in a ditch and it it depends on how long the rope is. It might be an hour before this rope barely burns down and strikes the matches and the fire is gone. It's a I worked what eighteen, seven, eighteen years, never made a fire case. None of the Forest Service investigators never made an arson case.

It was the most frustrating work that I've ever done in my life. I always I was always pretty good about investigating a case and making a case, game cases. But arson cases, if you drive around a turn in a road and you see somebody, its fire might be big as a washtub but man, standing there, you run up there, uh huh, said, I just, man, I come around that curve and that fire was burning, somebody just set it.

You've got an impossible case to make. You can't make a case, can't prove it. So that went on for, oh, a long time and it just was getting worse. We had fires over there in Newton County and it'd, oh, it would top these trees. It was like you see in the mountains but these young these plantations they had planted these plantations and its nearly a solid plantation. And these fires get to going and its its even age forest and they'd get up top of these trees with your wind and it it sounds like a tornado.

I've been right in the middle of them, jumping highways and burned thousands and thousands of acres, burned homes up. This was all these dog hunters setting these fires, retaliation. And it it got where it some of your timber companies said hey, were going to have to pull these hunting leases and let them have it. I said, hey, you don't do that. You don't give in to violators and thugs that violate this law and burn your land. I said, you cannot give into them. I said, you've got to fight them. I said, you just replant it.

And, you know, everybody wanted to give into them, but you can't give in to thugs and people like that. You got to do what you got to do. But the the companies, you know, they they started they didn't back down. They just went in and harvested what they could and replanted, cost them millions of dollars. But and we pretty well knew who was doing it, you know. We could probably pick ten people and it would probably be four or five of them that was setting these things, but that's part of it. It's changed a lot.

DT: Well, did did you ever find people spiking trees as well and

BP: Doing what?

DT: Spiking trees so that if they went through the saws, they might hurt somebody who was running the mill?

BP: A a little bit, not much of it, very little of it. We've had a I had one new grader burn one night. I got them. They burned completely burned this grader up. They had a full tank of diesel. That night, they went in and took the fuel filter off and set it on fire and but we got them. One of them got a year in jail and cost us, oh, I a hundred thousand dollars to re they rebuilt it, cost about a hundred thousand dollars to rebuild it.

You can't make them pay for it because they didn't have any money. You can't demand restitution if the person hadn't got money. So they got a slap on the wrist. That was during the Cole days when the sheriff he was still here when I retired and came to work for Louisiana Pacific, but he didn't things like that, he wouldn't fool with. Anything that had to do with hunting or violations like that, he wouldn't touch it.

DT: Wa was there much timber theft or and

BP: Yeah. DT: ( fence cutting that was going on?

BP: Yeah, yeah, we had a lot of fence cutting, a lot of fence cutting, not a lot of timber theft, some but not usually it might be five or six acres around somebody back in the woods, their granddaddy used to own, maybe the timber companies has has had it but these nesters, you know, their granddaddy used to own it or their daddy and they ssay, well, its ours. And you you could forget about doing anything about that. They wont touch it.

DT: I understood that some of your work for the Louisiana Pacific with these some five hundred hunting clubs was trying settle differences among the hunting clubs.

BP: Yeah. DT: Can you give some examples of that?

BP: Well, you had a you might have a ten thousand acre hunting club here that's trying to raise trophy deer. You had another small hu small hunting club over here that they would shoot anything. And you'd always have problems with them squabbling about this and that, your members of this ten thousand acres, the members of the club, they would get to squabbling about this and that and they don't like the president of the club and the board of directors.

And it it was just it was a battle to try and to keep these hunting clubs satisfied. And, you know, I'd go in, meet with them, say hey, you need to do this, you need to do that. Some of them did it, some of them didn't. But kind of trying to be the peacemaker and have a good hunting club that raised game and take care of game. That's what raises game, is to we had hunting clubs, we had very little game.

But when your land was leased and you had your hunting clubs with people paying money for it. And there's hunting clubs in Jasper County right now that the ones that run the hunting club back in my days was some of my worst deer hunters, outlaw deer hunters and they got into a club. I had an instant one time, I heard some dogs running and this was one of these pretty bad deals and I run around try to cut the dogs off and I saw two men run through the woods.

And I pretty well figured who it was and I kept trying to find their pickup. I knew they had a pickup hid somewhere. So I went around an old road, went into a dead-end road and this old black gentleman lived in there, a little old shotgun house, had a little old icebox, this had ice, it wasnt electric. And I went in there and I I said Unc, he was just an old black man that was old, I said Unc, you seen this fellow, I named his name, lately around here this morning? He said, no sir.

And I knew what this outlaw did. He would carry this old maman a hindquarter off a deer pretty regular. So this old boy that I was after was in on this shooting at the Garlingtons. He's the one that put that thirty-thirty right there. He he was pretty bad, had to watch him. This was a littlereal small house, probably five hundred square feet, little ole shack and I said, you got any meat in that refrigerator, in that icebox? And he said, no sir, and I said, do you mind if I look?

And he said, no sir, and I reached and I got that handle and I had this sensation that you get sometimes. And I knew somebody was at my back and I turned around and there this fellow was, that far from me and he was blood red in the face, he was hiding in that house. And I automatically just slapped my pistol and I come out and I said, Charlie, don't you touch me. And he started cussing me. I said, get outside. I said, you ain't going to get a hold of me. And I put him outside and we sat down there for an hour.

I said, Charlie, you know, youre going to have to stop this. I said, all this land is leasing up. I said, youre going to have to change your way of hunting or youre not going to have a place to hunt. I said, it's just that way, and I said, this business in that house, I said, that could've been a bad situation. And he said, well, you know, you get somebody hemmed up, and I said, yeah, I know what youre talking about. I said, youre hemmed up and you want a way out of there.

And tears was running down his eyes, he was bloodshot, I mean, he was out of control nearly. So sit down there and we talked for an hour. I said, you're going to have to lease you some land and start you a hunting club. He said, I would die and go to hell before I pay twenty-five dollars to deer hunt. And I said, well, you're going to have a lot of problems because I said, I'm going to be here. I said, now don't you be scared of me, but I said, I'm going to do my job and you ain't going to like trespassing and going through this all the time.

I said, you ain't going to like it. And it wasn't a year. He leased him some land up there. He's one of the best cooperators we got in this country, don't violate the law around him or he'll get you. Just a change in attitudes, but it's I didn't file on him and I thought I got through to him and time our conversation was over I I could see that he was doing some changing and he did. So, example of talking to people and trying to get them to change their attitudes and he did.

And it s great when you see things like that, you know, things that you how you change people and got them going the right direction. And when you get an old outlaw hunter that does this turn around like I did, when I turned around, I turned around all the way. And a big percentage of these hunting leases now are that's running it are somewere some of the worst outlaw hunters that I had. And it makes you feel good to see them in their position doing that and they change a lot of people that run with them.

You know, some of their old outlaw buddies, I've got some over there at home that, you know, they're some of the worst. And when this game warden that's here now, Phillip Wood, his daddy went to work over there in Polk County. So my boss called me, he said Billy, need to go over there and get with Jimmy. He was new. He said, he can't make a case and he said, go over there and work with him some. So Phillip was just a little ole boy then and I went over there and got with Jimmy one night and we drove out on a hotspot, some of my old hunting territory.

I backed in there and got in the sleeping bag and he got in his over there and we set there about ten oclock. He said, you know, I been getting some reports of some hunting over here twenty miles from there. And I said, no, I said Jimmy, were not going to leave here. I said, were going to sit here til daylight. About an hour or two later, he'd well, he'd been getting some calls. I said Jimmy, don't even mention it. I said, were not leaving here, were sitting here 'till we catch a night hunter and we will get one before daylight.

And about three o'clock that morning, pow, up, down the road, I knew every inch of that country, so I said, there it is. So we bailed off of the hood and jumped in the car and took off. I knew one hadn't come from our left or right and I went about a mile and I saw a taillight and I said, thats going be them. They've turned around and going back, probably shot a deer there and just turn come on down and turn around, going to go pick it up.

So I running with my lights off and I got up right to them and I pulled my lights on, the race was on. And we hit a hundred miles an hour down that old black top and there's a fork in the road up there and one of them went to the left and one went straight to the right. Jimmy was about to have a fit. He'd just gone to work. And I said they going to get to that forks that road, if they take a left, we going to get them right there because they going to have to slow her down a bunch.

And I wasnt sitting on their bumper but I was, oh, a hundred yards behind them and when they got to that there was a little ole church out there, when they got to it, I saw that break light hit and I said, they're fixing to do something. And I saw those headlights start this. They made about two complete circles.

And I went by them and I don't know how I missed them, they just good Lord was with me and I was trying to keep my car from under control and I got it turned around, got back in front of them and it was some of my buddies that I'd hunted with. I said, fellows the game warden over there they they was putting it on him. He was a rookie, you know, and I said, I've told y'all I had a game warden shot over there and they sent me over there and I told my friends he didn't wasn t get killed.

Some night hunter that shot him, he got over it. And they sent me over there to work with all my friends and I said told them, I said, y'all get out here and violate the law and I catch you, you going to go to jail. I said, if you're my friends, you won't do it. I said, that I'm o I'm over here working. And this one that was driving the car, he said, man, I'm sorry Billy. And I said well, you should've stopped when that red light hit you. He said, what are you going to do?

I said, you going to go to jailhouse tonight, that's where y'all going to spend the night, jailhouse. And old Jimmy made an outstanding warden when he found out patience. You get there and you sit. You not going to make a case riding around on the roads up and down the highways, you got to sit.

And he made a dandy and he died here a few years ago, had a brain tumor. And his son, well, he went to work about two years ago. He got his degree in criminal justice andwell, Jimmy had moved to Nacogdoches and had a brain tumor, killed him. But his his son is so much like his daddy, hes [IA]. But so that's good experiences.

DT: You've you've talked about how things have changed, you know, the the laws have changed, ssome of the people have changed, the cultures changed and

BP: Yes, oh, yeah.

DT: and and and you you've I think, off camera we talked a little about how some of the the changes have been in land use too that that timber practice has changed over the years and that pine plantations have gotten planted and prescribed burns are used and clear-cuttings used. How's that changed the land around here?

BP: Well, if you know they've all your timber companies now have gone to even age forest management. They plant this plantation and, say, twelve years, they'll cut it for pulp wood. And we've got these different age plantations everywhere. But before they started clear-cutting, this was all natural hardwood and pine and we didn't have real good deer population. And they started this clear-cutting way back yonder, Kirby Lumber Company, which Louisiana Pacific bought Kirby.

And they started clearing all this land and you had this lush green foliage that's coming up and its ice cream to deer. And the deer population, because of the the plantations, started booming. It brought on more deer because of their habitat is was lush. But when your plantations get four or five years old, it shades out everything underneath it. Nothing grows under these pine plantations, nothing but pine straw. So you lose your squirrels, which depended on the hardwood.

You lose your deer, they depended on the hardwood. But at the same time, if you have more plantations, more clear-cuts, they'll have a place to go. But everything now is it's there's clear-cuts but the the age of the clear-cuts has so much to do with deer habitat and squirrel habitat, that it's it's just nearly a solid pine plantation in East Texas. That's all you see. You see a hardwood tree, you say, how did they leave that tree?

They go in, when they cut these clear-cuts, they'll be be a little stream coming through there. It might not be that wide, but it'll have a little hardwood on each side. They call it a SMZ, stream management zone. And they leave this little strip of hardwood. This is political. It has nothing to do with deer habitat or any other type of habitat. There's not enough of it. But your timber companies leave a little bit of stuff like this and these big firms like Lowe, Parker's, that sell lumber, your environmental groups come in and look at the way timber companies are handling their land.

And I don't remember what, but the timber companies pay these people, theyre outside people, but it might cost LP, Louisiana Pacific a million dollars to sponsor this stuff over their lands. These people come in and see are you leaving enough FSMZ zones? Are you doing your roads where they won't wash everywhere? And you get this stamp they will give you a stamp or approve or disapprove the way you're doing your business, environmental-wise. If they dont have when they sell their their timber products in their at their mill, the lumber and the plywood and so forth, if they don't have this stamp, Lowe's wont buy it.

Your big lumber firms that the retailers will not buy your lumber. And its a a a deal that they kind of force it on you. It it's it's really not it hasn't I dont think its helped because the timber companies and you know, I work for one, and if I don't if I hadn't a been working for them, I would probably have me a a card walking in front of their building saying, don't do this to us. I mean, It it was this this bad with me, is the way the timber companies have handled their lands.

They've when Hancock bought Louisiana Pacific, I went with I went down and met them and I said, I'm not here to try to go to work for y'all like I'm working for Louisiana Pacific. I said, I'm through but I said, I want to sit down and talk to you about your land usage. I said, I understand y'all going to go up on your leases, hunting leases. I said, don't do it. I said, ya'll dont know these people in this East Texas area here. I said, you don't know them. I said, I know them. I said, your local people take care of your land, you know, they do. Your local people take care of the timber companies lands.

And I said, when you price these people out, they all know how to strike a match. And I said, you are going to pay for it and youre going to pay dearly when you force these people out and lease these hunting leases to a millionaire down here that comes up here once a year and uses this for a tax write-off. I said, you know, they don't mind paying ten dollars an acre, but I said, these local people can't do it, they just can pay this.

And I said, they're all ex-outlaws, most of them. I said, they've hunted this ole country all their lives. I said, you better take care of them. And they've started that's been two or three years ago, they've started kicking these prices up, which, you know, your board of directors said were not getting enough money, let's go up on these hunting leases. But I said, these board of directors are from New York and all over the country, I said, they don't have to live here with these people. I said, you know, one big fire out here can cost you a million dollars quick.