Ramblings of a Lowcountry Game Warden: A Memoir

A Few Upland Adventures

A Few Upland Adventures ometimes you bite the bear, and sometimes the bear bites you,” is one of the colorful metaphors I often heard in describing some of the game wardenly exertions that didn’t go according to plan. One such incident occurred off Little Britton Road between Adams Run and Dahoo Landing, near Edisto Island. I had received several reports about night-hunting activities there. After scouting the area, I decided to set up a patrol one night to see if any culprits could be rounded up. One carload of game wardens took a position behind a tomato-packing shed off the main road to Edisto Island. Officer Martin North and I set off to find a spot from which we could observe a large soybean field and signal the others over the radio if we saw any suspicious activity. On the signal they would dash out and block the head of the road. I found a good hiding spot that offered a clear view near the field. We parked the patrol car in a narrow woods road that connected two large fields and covered the car completely with a camouflaged parachute to eliminate any telltale reflections. We could see out, especially if a spotlight happened to be working the field we were watching. Many hours passed. It was getting around one or two in the morning. We had been telling war stories and had consumed so much black coffee that we were practically bug-eyed. Around two thirty we saw the lights of a slowly moving car coming down the road. As it moved across to our right, the lights passed out of view behind the treeline. Several moments later we saw the light over to our right. Scant moments later, we realized that it was coming down the edge of S “ A Few Upland Adventures 123 the field on the same road we drove in on, and before we had a chance to get a grip on this enormity, the vehicle turned in on the very road where we were waiting in ambuscade. We scarcely had time to react. As the car proceeded into the narrow con- fines of that little road with his bright lights pointed directly at us, its driver probably did not know what to make of the camouflaged obstruction ahead of him. At that point all I could think of was a head-on collision. In an instant I turned on my own headlights, plus the blue light on the dash, and hit the ignition key. We must have looked like Captain Nemo’s Nautilus right there in the middle of the woods. The approaching vehicle abruptly stopped and commenced backing at high speed toward the field behind him, just about the time my foot hit my accelerator. The parachute, which was supposed to stay put as we drove out from under it, instead wadded up around the windshield wipers, completely obstructing our forward view of the rapidly disappearing vehicle. To add to our mounting difficulties, I had an accoutrement to a bad habit of mine, a spit cup for chewing tobacco, sitting on the dash. As I blindly lurched forward toward the fleeing vehicle, the contents of the spit cup fell into the ashtray, where we had placed the microphone for the radio, which we had planned to use to summon the other officers to block the road. The drenched microphone made radio transmission impossible , not to mention creating a huge stinking mess. Our half-empty coffee cups were launched to the rear also. I overshot the end of the road and plunged into the ploughed field with a partly billowing, mostly wadded parachute still across the windshield. The question of visibility at that point became moot as it became apparent that we were not going anywhere. The car was bogged to the frame. We sat there looking rather piteous, dripping with tobacco juice and tepid coffee , as our culprit speedily disappeared into the darkness of the night. The parachute, along with various limbs and other debris we could find, provided traction under the rear tires. At length we managed to extricate ourselves and get back to the paved road, where we used two rolls of paper towels to clean up the car and ourselves. The microphone did not survive its immersion. To our good fortune, there was a hand-held mobile radio in the trunk with sufficient charge to make contact with our fellow...