Texas game Wardens live in the communities they serve, and their success hinges on developing good relationships with residents. This month on the TPW TV Series, producer Ron Kabele introduces viewers to game warden Shawn Hervey. And in his case…good relationships begin at home.

Well, Shawn is a game warden up in Texarkana. And the thing that he’s really known for in the community is taking a lot of the local kids out hunting. And a lot of these kids, they’ve never been exposed to nature or they’ve never seen a deer, or they have no concept of what stewardship is.

It was just so out of the blue that he said that. And when you think about that, if a son thinks that, and is able to verbalize that, what is that game warden doing to the community? And that’s really what Shawn does—he inspires people.

This segment airs the week of December 25 on PBS stations in Texas. Check your local listings.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Civil Restitution laws were passed by Texas legislature to make individuals accountable for illegally injuring, killing, or possessing a wildlife resource.

If someone’s convicted of illegally taking one of these resources, we ask them to pay for it. We even offer them a discount if they pay it early.

Kris Bishop, Assistant Chief of Fisheries Enforcement for Law Enforcement.

If they don’t pay it, they passed a law in 1998 that anybody that was in arrears to the state that they would not be able to get a hunting of fishing license, and thereby punishing them. If you don’t pay, then you can’t play anymore. If they don’t pay, then we’ll put a hold on their license and they’re not able to buy a license to go hunting or fishing.

These laws were put in effect conserve animals and create collective consciousness among the citizens of Texas. Of course, there are consequences for those who hunt without a license or have outstanding unpaid fines.

To kinda give that law a little bit of teeth, because a lot of people just say ‘Well then I don’t buy a license- what’s the worse that’s going to happen to me?’ Well, instead of having just your regular Class C misdemeanor, which is a fine of $25-$500, it’s been moved up to a Class A. So it’s a lot more severe penalty for doing that if you’ve had your license suspended already.

Details about Civil Restitution can be found on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.

That’s our show for today…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Each day, hundreds of Game Wardens dedicate themselves to protecting our state’s natural resources. Texas Game Wardens face a variety of dangers in their line of work. While most of the people Game Wardens come in contact with are harmless, Game Warden Kris Bishop explains the risks of being in the field.

:46 Think you’ll see a couple of different scenarios- what Game Wardens experience in the field. In general, the people that we come in contact with are good, family people. They’re taking their family, their children out hunting, and fishing, and boating. That’s how they want to spend their free time. The kind of person who goes out and communes with nature is usually a good person and they have good intentions, and so that’s the average person that we meet. But occasionally, you are going to meet the criminal element no matter where you are. It’s going to be anywhere. You’ll always have that certain amount of danger out there because most of the people that we’re dealing with have knives, guns, things like that, on them. That’s part of what they’re doing. They’re either fishing they they’ll have a filet knife, or they’re hunting and have a rifle or a shotgun. There’s always that little bit of an element of you could possibly get into a situation with a bad person.

Details about Law Enforcement can be found on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.

That’s our show for today…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Being a Texas Game Warden is an important and rewarding profession. Occasionally, though, it takes an outsider to recognize you have the right stuff to wear the badge.

09—When I was going to college, I studied a lot of science and as a Texan I grew up hunting and fishing. One of my professors actually was the one who thought I’d make a good Game Warden.

Kris Bishop, Assistant Chief of Fisheries Enforcement for Law Enforcement, outlines the steps involved in becoming a Game Warden.

15—To be a Game Warden, you have to have a four-year college degree. Once you’ve finished your four-year degree, if you are accepted into the Academy, it’s about a seven month live-in academy, and they teach you everything about the Code of Criminal procedures, Penile code, and then animal identification.

Graduates of Game Warden Academy enforce all state laws because they are Texas Peace Officers.

08—You’re a conservation enforcement officer, and then because you are a state peace office, you are responsible to know and be able to enforce all the laws of the state.

Whether you seek information on becoming a Texas Game Warden, or you need information on various hunting, fishing a conservation regulations and policies for our state—you can find all of it on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.

That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

The fifty-third Game Warden Cadet Class will be the last to graduate from the training Academy in Austin.

And, we’ll archive that class, and sometime in June and July we’ll unplug, and take the pictures off the wall, and load up the boxes and we’re going up to Hamilton County and open up that new facility.

Randy Odom is Chief of training. He says the Police Activities League of Houston donated land for the new center.

It’s large enough to house a new admin building, state of the art classroom, gymnasium, an indoor swimming pool — we hope to have constructed — a firing range, and also an emergency vehicle operating course. To have all of these facilities on site, keeps us from being at the mercy of other agencies and having to beg, borrow and schedule times for events. Not all folks are great at everything, and having on site capability allows us easy and quick remediation.

The sale of the Austin site, plus contributions from benefactors will fund building costs.

Our goal is twelve and a half million to build, and if we get fifteen million it will offer us an endowment to help offset the operating costs once its all constructed. :09

Learn how you can help make the new Game Warden Training Center a reality when you go to passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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To learn about the New Game Warden Training Center, click here.

The facilities at the current Texas Game Warden Academy are limited.

We’re on about six point two five acres in downtown Austin. We have a dormitory; we have a classroom; and we have an administrative office. Other than that, we do a little physical training.

Randy Odom is Chief of Training. The center is next to an Austin neighborhood, so most training is off site – and that presents challenges to instructors and cadets alike.

Currently if we have someone that say, for instance, has a problem with firearms training, we have to schedule the range, go after hours, go on the weekends.

Odom says accessing off site training locations involves hours on the road that could be spent honing skills.

We are in the process now of calculating all of our travel time. We have to travel to a range, from a range. It costs us per diem to pay cadets to be out of county for firing range access. Travel time is built into there, so it cuts into our training time.

The firing range is only one aspect of cadet training that occurs away from the Academy. But that’s about to change.

This facility in Hamilton County, which was donated to us by the Police Activities League out of Houston, is about two-hundred and twenty four acres.

We’ll tell you all about the new Game Warden Training Center tomorrow.

Until then, that’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

For twenty-two years the Texas Parks and Wildlife television series has aired on PBS stations statewide. This month, series producer, Don Cash helps us kick off the new season.

First week of October we start off with actually a show about becoming a game warden. We followed a game warden class the entire six months; and it’s a really interesting and entertaining look at what goes into becoming a game warden.

Coming in with thirty-four other strangers…it’s just, I mean, overwhelming. C’mon Caroline! Push it…push it…push it…push it. Whoever just groaned is going to love this. One…two… three. Good Job!

The second week of October, Abe Moore has got a really fantastic story on the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, which is extinct – maybe. The third week in October, we have story called fishing the late shift. And, it’s about night fishing, and people who fish at night.

It’s just easier for me to catch fish at night. It’s just fun. I catch some catfish and bass, mainly.

We end the month of October with a story on the Spring Trackers. It follows a couple of biologists with the department as they travel the state and study and monitor and count the springs that are in Texas and try and learn a little more about these wonderful resources that we have.

Thanks, Don. Visit passporttotexas.org for a complete listing of stations airing the series.

That’s our show for today…for Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Texas Parks and Wildlife on PBS and Cable
Stations and Air Times
Times and dates are subject to change, especially during PBS membership drives.

• Amarillo, KACV-TV, Channel 2: October–March, Saturday 6 p.m.
• Austin, KLRU-TV, Channel 18: Monday, 12:30 p.m.; Friday 5:30 a.m.; Sunday, 9 a.m. KLRU2, Cable 20: Tuesday, 11 p.m.
• Bryan-College Station, KAMU-TV, Channel 15: Sunday, 5 p.m.; Thursday, 7 p.m.
• Corpus Christi, KEDT-TV, Channel 16: Sunday, 12 p.m.; Friday, 2 p.m.
• Dallas-Fort Worth, KERA-TV, Channel 13: October–March, Saturday, 6 p.m. Also serving Abilene, Denton, Longview, Marshall, San Angelo, Texarkana, Tyler, Wichita Falls and Sherman.
• El Paso, KCOS-TV, Channel 13: Saturday, 3 p.m.
• Harlingen, KMBH-TV, Channel 60: Sunday, 5 p.m. Also serving McAllen, Mission and Brownsville.
• Houston, KUHT-TV, Channel 8: Saturday, 3:30 p.m.; Friday 1:30 p.m. Also serving Beaumont, Port Arthur, Galveston, Texas City and Victoria.
• Killeen, KNCT-TV, Channel 46: Sunday, 5 p.m. Also serving Temple.
• Lubbock, KTXT-TV, Channel 5: Saturday, 10 a.m.
• Odessa-Midland, KPBT-TV, Channel 36: Saturday, 4:30 p.m.
• San Antonio and Laredo, KLRN-TV, Channel 9: Sunday, 1 p.m.
• Waco, KWBU-TV, Channel 34: Saturday, 3 p.m.
• Portales, New Mexico, KENW-TV, Channel 3: Sunday, 2:30 p.m.
• The New York Network, NYN, Thursday 8:30 p.m.; Saturday 2:30 p.m. Serving the Albany area.

Cable

Texas Parks & Wildlife can also be seen on a variety of government, educational and access cable channels in the following communities: Abilene, Allen, Atlanta, Boerne, Collin County Community College, Coppell, Del Mar College, Denton, Flower Mound, Frisco, Garland, Irving, McKinney, North Richland Hills, Plano, Rogers State University, Texarkana College, The Colony, Tyler, Waco and Wichita Falls. Check your local listings for days and times.

It’s illegal for hunters to track deer with dogs. And Game Warden, Major Robert Carlson, says violators can be relentless.

For decades we have had the running deer with dog issue and some 20 years ago when they made it illegal, we just had a significant number of folks that just wouldn’t quit it. We have been actively working on reducing the number of calls, the number of violations that occur with hunting deer with dogs.

Wardens developed strategies to deal with the crime.

Some of the things we’ve done is for 3 years during deer season we had special operations where we brought in about a dozen wardens from across the state. Every time one of the violators loaded a dog, we made sure they seen a Game Warden truck. And so that reduced their opportunity to actually hunt.

A change in the law helped Wardens with enforcement.

Basically what those law changes, and proclamation changes did, was it helped us because it made the offense of hunting deer with dogs easier to prove and it also made it a higher class misdemeanor with the opportunity for it to become a felony with subsequent charges.

That’s our show for today…we had research and writing help from Loren Seeger…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

East Texas is known for more than its pine trees. It’s also known for being the only place in the state where running deer with dogs is commonplace.

Running deer with dogs is an illegal “sport” whereby a dog owner sends Fido into the woods to flush deer into the open. If the dog’s master correctly calculates the outcome of the chase, his prize is a clear shot at a whitetail. Game Warden Major Robert Carlson.

The dog trails the deer and the sport of it is for me [as the dog’s owner] to determine where that deer is going to cross the road and that’s where I need to be standing for me to shoot the deer. When they’re doing this, they’re running across people’s personal property. You know, it just boils down to that was a legal activity years ago, but you were supposed to shoot them on your property. You don’t have a right to turn a dog loose for it to wreak havoc on everybody’s personal property.

Running deer with dogs was made illegal twenty years ago. Major Carlson says this unlawful sport persists, and interferes with those who hunt deer legally.

What happens is with the deer running through there on a semi-regular basis, well that keeps the deer heard stirred up and run off so that the legal hunters can’t hunt either.

Beefing up efforts to eliminate the activity is tomorrow.

That’s our show for today…with research and writing help from Loren Seeger…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Sometimes tragedy makes us appreciate the people and things around us. During Hurricane Rita and Katrina, Game Wardens worked tirelessly to help restore communities hit by the storms.

Major Rolly Correa, Region 9, explains how these highly trained men and women have finally gained well-deserved recognition across the Lone Star State and beyond.

I think within the past few years we’ve really been able to show the public and people just what we really do. It’s always been a covert thing- it’s working behind the scenes.

When Hurricane Rita and Katrina came into play they saw us working the rescue operations and getting out there into the field. People realize that ‘Wow, they are a viable force to deal with and help in emergency situations and things of that nature.’

Game Wardens protect our state from daily tribulations, and are always there when needed…

It’s opened a lot of eyes and I think that people now realize that Game Wardens are commissioned peace officers that will respond to the calls from the Sheriff, Police Chief who needs assistance. We will be there with the equipment and highly trained officers and professional people that will assist in anything we do.

You can find more information about Game Wardens on the Texas Parks & Wildlife website.

That’s our show for today…with research and writing help from Loren Seeger…. for Texas Parks and Wildlife… I’m Cecilia Nasti