Ramblings of a Lowcountry Game Warden: A Memoir

“Mudflat Moïse”

“Mudflat Moïse” came on the job in June of 1978, three years after my initial application. After successfully passing a written state-merit-system exam and a physical-agility test, I sat for an interview with two district captains and the chief of the Law Enforcement and Boating Division at the Columbia headquarters. At that time I was one course away from completing my long-awaited undergraduate degree at the University of South Carolina. I had served for four years in the United States Coast Guard, mostly right in the Charleston area, and had already run through a series of careers that included newspaper writing, house painting, stevedoring on the Charleston waterfront, and operating four different businesses: two catering companies, a taperecorded tour-guide company, and a tourist-brochure distribution service along the South Carolina coast. Although I would hardly call it an obsession, I had pretty much wanted to be a game warden since my first encounter with one back in the mid1950s . Every afternoon while delivering newspapers by bicycle in rural Sumter County, I stopped by a small country store along my route (a forerunner of the 7-Eleven), owned by G. A. Thompson, a delightful and gregarious old gentleman. There I had the opportunity to listen to the adventures of a game warden who routinely arrived about the same time I did. Without fail he would buy a cold bottle of Coca-Cola, which he called a “dope,” and a cellophane bag of salted peanuts. After taking a hefty swig of Coke, he would pour the peanuts and a sleeve of BC Powder into the i “Mudflat Moïse” 5 bottle. There was no end to the stories he told as he variously shook, swigged, and chewed that amazing concoction. He wore a khaki uniform and a brown fedora and carried a blue steel revolver in a leather holster on his belt. I was suitably impressed. He was the only uniformed person I was acquainted with other than the sheriff’s deputies who guarded the stripe-clad chain gang that worked along the county highways. (I met the sheriff, I. Byrd Parnell, in person one time during an unfortunate episode involving the midnight acquisition of some watermelons, but that is another story.) My family and I lived on my grandfather’s farm, about two miles out of Sumter at the junction of Brewington Road and Highway 401. The family called it Ingleside. The house we lived in, the circa 1790 Heriot-Moïse House, is on the National Register of Historic Places. The farm had acres of cultivated fields and gardens, a pecan orchard and grapevine, a large barn, numerous outbuildings, a swimming pool, and the main attraction for me, Rocky Bluff Swamp, which was located across Brewington Road at the end of the holly-tree avenue in front of the house. It was my daily playground. In the tree-shaded confines of the section of Rocky Bluff Swamp that extended between Highway 15 and Highway 401, I explored, camped, hunted, and trapped. I traversed it day or night from end to end and side to side, usually without even getting my feet wet. My hideouts were everywhere. My mother described me as a swamp rat. I became infamous for the “swamp things” that I brought to school (when I bothered to attend). They wreaked havoc among the old-maid teachers and female students. Following a few noteworthy episodes, I was made to promise not to bring any more large spiders or snakes of any size to class, regardless of whether they were poisonous or not, at penalty of expulsion and a good whipping by the principal. My father backed up the school by promises of more to come at home if I caused any more disturbances . My mother was heard to say that I was not an easy boy to raise. Probably because of my legendary show-and-tell episodes in school, in 1958, when I was fifteen years old, the Sumter County Fish and Game Association sponsored my attendance at the Wildlife Conservation Camp in Cheraw, South Carolina. It was one of those “Saul on the road to Damascus ” experiences, for there I found my true calling. There were wildlife classes and daily field trips to study indigenous flora and fauna, and the people there actually liked snakes. I came to know Gordon Brown, the Wildlife Department photographer, who took me under his [3.129.67.26] Project MUSE (2024-04...