Billy Platt, Sr. Interview, Part 3 of 3

DT:When we were on the last tape, you were talking about how Louisiana Pacific had sold this land, I believe, was it Hancock, is that right?

BP:Yeah, Mopus and Mopus sold to Hancock.

DT:And it sounds like a number of these companies, International Paper, Champion and, and

BP:All split up.

DT:Louisiana Pacific and just recently Temple-Inland

BP:Temple, right.

DT:have sold their lands. And I was curious what sort of impact that is having on the habitat and wildlife around here.

BP:Well, its going to take a few years to see the impact of it. You don't know right now because it hasn't been enough time. I know some of them have divided the land and are selling off particles of the big landownership.

They're selling parts of it to different groups. And most of them that I hear about and some of the forester's that talk about it, say these people are not buying this for the long haul.

They're going to buy it for maybe four or five years, cut the good timber off of it, get their investment back and make a lot of money off of it.

And then what are they going to do with the land, are they going to sell it to sub-dividers and sell it off by five acre blocks or whatever and make a ton of money and sell this land just like that, you know, four or five acres at a time.

Is this what its happened in other places, but if this is what's going to happen to you, your large landowners like Temple, I know they just split off ten thousand acres, of this Hancock land that they purchased from Mopus and they've just sold ten thousand acres of it.

But they had, you know, they, they been going in and cutting the best and you can get returns back quick selling this timber.

And probably timber prices now has gone down some, but as long as your mills have got plenty timber, the prices of timber goes down, is when your demand, you know, that's like everything else, the meran, the demand raises the price of your timber if your mills start running short.

LP shut their Silsbee mill down and Bon Weir, they shut Bon Weir down, which you looking at both mills, seven or eight hundred people.

And your logging contractors, they all had to go somewhere else. And they're, they're over logging, a lot of the mills, there's so many loggers that went out of work, they're all pretty well going to what mills are left and they're blocking them out and they're not getting to work much.

So its affecting the whole economy in East Texas because timber business is the economy of East Texas, you know, that's it. Shut the timber industry down, you're shutting East Texas down, except for maybe Jasper County, which Sam Rayburn tourist industry here is a big, big thing.

It keeps Jasper going is your tourist industry, fisherman, tournament after tournament which has no, you know, its not anything to do with the timber companies, but everything works together.

It's, it just remains to be seen how its going to affect our wildlife and our hunting clubs. Its just going to be in the future, probably pretty near future, the effect of breaking up these big timber companies.

DT:I guess and another land use change that, that is in process now is that there's a lot of discussion of some reservoirs on the Natchez River and, and elsewhere. Wh, what do you hear about that?

BP:Well, you've got you, your companies fighting it. It takes your prime habitat, game habitat, out like Sam Rayburn.

Sam Rayburn, I was here when they were clearing it and I watched, you know, thousands and thousands of acres of hardwood, pure hardwood just cleared.

And it, it's taken thousands and thousands of acres over there, prime wildlife habitat out, will no longer be here. They've kicked the Rockland Dam around now for several years.

That's when they built Dam B; they built it and were, were going to build Dam A, which would be the Rockland Dam, above here, running north, northwest. That would be a huge reservoir like Sam Rayburn.

And you've got a lot of environmentalists that are fighting this tooth and toenail, which that's great. I don't, I don't want to see any more huge lakes in our bottoms, that's the only thing you got left.

And your environmentalists are fighting it. Your timber companies are fighting it and they're not, not getting along too well with developing the Rockland Dam.

And I don't think I'll live long enough to see it. It will probably be built in the future. They'll have to have water, more water. But I don't think I'll ever see it because there's too many people fighting it.

DT:I guess the, the last change I wanted to ask you about that you've seen is the passage of Hurricane Rita through here in, in the fall of, of 2005. What, what kind of impact did you see from that storm?

BP:A lot, a huge impact. Of course we had millions and millions of dollars worth of damage all over this country, the eye hit us. And I've got a deer lease about fifteen miles from here that borders the Big Thicket for about three miles.

And I'm a squirrel hunter and about all I hunt and the Big Thicket of course, I said join me and I always got a permit every year to hunt in it, its free.

But I could go out with a twenty-two and kill ten squirrels, my limit in an hour and a half or so, if I, if I want to kill that many. But it was huge hardwood and pine plantations. I mean, not plantations, natural hardwood and pine, huge.

I want to say its been three years ago, can't keep up with the years, anyhow, I been in there, I believe my road, it borders the Thicket and everything outside the Thicket and my club is a plantation (?).

And the habitat in this Big Thicket was just, you know, hardwood trees everywhere, huge acorn crops and you cannot walk. Its about six thousand acres in that area, you can't walk fifty yards.

I've been hunting three times. I killed one squirrel one time. I saw another squirrel fifty yards from me I could not get to. The huge hardwoods are just solid, all the tops, everything fell together.

You don't see, and its been this long, you don't see a squirrel nest on what hardwood that's left, you don't see a squirrel nest. I got one tree right here got ten nests in it.

And you don't see, I don't know what's happened to the squirrels. I think it killed them, I don't know, but they've never reproduced and its sad. But your, you know, they advertise a Big Thicket come enjoy the Big Thicket, you cannot enjoy this Big Thicket if you can't get in it.

They don't it's an area, a wilderness area that they call it and the pine beetles have gotten in it and killed several thousand acres of your huge pine trees. It falls over and rots.

And I don't believe in that, you know, I believe in taking care of the Big Thicket. If it wasn't for it, we wouldn't have anything to look at that me as a child used to look at, natural woods.

It's a unique place but its certainly a unique place now since that storm because it, it just destroyed, still got plenty pines growing. It didn't do a lot of damage to pine but it just nearly destroyed the hardwood.

And its sad, you know, I won't see it in my lifetime ever come back and a lot of people, young people now will never see it as it was, you know, before Rita. But there's nothing you can do about it, you know.

I think they should have gone in after the storm and harvested this hardwood. There was millions and millions of feet of hardwood that could have been harvested and it would've cleaned up the area some, you know, taking this all this stuff out of there.

Where now its going, it's rotten. Its got the rot and just takes this stuff years to, to be able where you can walk through it. But its, that's, wilderness areas are fine but there's, there should be a, a grey line in here where in a disaster like this was, they could go in there and do something with it and help the Big Thicket but they didn't and they wont. So, you know, that's just the way it is.

DT:Umm, this makes me think of a question we often ask as we start to wind down interviews and, and that's about favorite places that people have that they enjoy visiting, that, that gives them some solace and pleasure.

And you've mentioned this hunting lease that you visit near the Big Thicket. I know that you like to go fishing over at Rayburn and I'm sure there are other places. Maybe you can tell us about some of the places you enjoy visiting.

BP:Well, I really don't enjoy Sam Rayburn. I worked it for all these years and I had more problems on Sam Rayburn with recreational incident than I did with any of these old outlaw hunters.

You, you know, I don't, Sam Rayburns a big lake. I like the rivers and the small lakes, that's where I like to go or anywhere in the forest, you know, where you've got natural forest. I get tired of looking at pine plantations.

But Sam Rayburn is a it, its a unique place and it keeps this country going as far as tourists. But, you know, I like to sit here and watch that pink tree right up there, you don't see a lot them anymore.

DT:Redbud?

BP:Yeah, that's wild, in fact, I got it down there next to the Thicket and dug it up when it was a little ole thing, planted it up there, two of them. But I really don't, besides the woods, I don't have a really a favorite place to go, not in this area, unless you want to look at pine trees.

DT:Well, one last question, you know, you've spent a lot of time trying to protect the game around here at, and no mean cost to yourself

BP:And what?

DT:At no mean cost to yourself, I mean, its a, a frightening kind of job to have. I'm curious looking back on it, why did you do this? Why was it important to you to do this work?

BP:Well, I took it personal. You know, they say don't let your got, job get personal with you, I'm right the opposite. I'm going to say a game warden, that's a good game warden, takes his job personal.

And if you don't take it personal, you're not going to really care about this ole boy you hear that's killed fifteen deer. You know, if its just, well, he's killed fifteen deer.

But to me, it got personal. I'm going to catch him and I'm going to make him pay for all these, all these deer he's killed. But I was reading an article a week ago; it was in a game warden publication.

The president of this publication had written an article, he had his priorities, one, two, three, four.

The top priority was God, great. The second priority was family, great. His thirty, third priority was friends, great. His fourth priority was game warden work.

That don't fit with me. I just, I really when I looked at that article and I looked at that fourth priority, I said, that, that game warden not doing his job if that's his fourth priority.

He's working forty hours a week and probably not working that much. He writes a good article and he's the president of the association, but I said, that man's not a game warden.

And that's the way I felt. And to a degree he's right which I, maybe that should [IA]. My first was work, second family. If I had it to do over, my first would be family, second would be work.

And I'm a Christian, but God would not be my first priority as far as my job goes or my life because my job was to catch outlaws and that's, that's the way it was.

And I have enjoyed my work, good gracious alive, loved it. There's not, I had some bad days, some bad nights, sometime I didn't know whether I was going to get home or not but I enjoyed getting up and putting my uniform on and going out and go to work.

And I guess, if I could afford it, I would've paid them to let me work. And I had, I was working with one of the young ones here last year, oh, he was gung-ho and we was sitting out here one night and he said, Billy, he said, I love this job.

And I said, I know that, but I said, you know, you told me something here a few weeks ago, that you got your sleeping bag and you went down to Evadale and you was gone three days. And I said, you got a wife and a little baby setting out here.

I said, you're going to lose them. He said, no. I said, yes you are. I said, I'm telling you right now, y'all are from (?), your wife doesn't have any family up close. And I said, you're gone all the time and you talk about doing this.

And he had told me, he said, I'd pay to work, I said, okay, you're a dedicated game warden and I admire you for that but you better take some of this time to go spend with your wife and kids. Six months later, she packed up and left him.

And that's where priorities get reversed, which family should be first and you still got your priorities, the family first, you still got time to do your job. Maybe you going to, you know, going to spend a little time, too much time out, but don't give up your family.

And I hated to see this worse than anything. I told him, but he was just exactly like me, he thought he had to be there twenty-four hours a day or somebody's going to mess up and he wouldn't catch them. But its been interesting and it's a job that you got to love to stay with it if you do your job.

DT:Well, clearly you did and thank you very much for telling us about it.

BP:I love it.

BP:Well, I enjoyed your visit and and it's good to be able to, to tell people about things that went on that they don't know about.

DT:Well now we know a little bit more, thank you so much for explaining.

BP:Well I appreciate it. Y'all doing a good job.

[End of Reel 2430] [End of Interview with Billy Platt]