Angeles Forest Game Warden : He’s the Guy Who Hunts the Hunters

He’s a bush policeman, guardian of deer and fish, the guy who writes tickets to fishermen who catch more than the legal limit.

Ken Walton is game warden in Angeles National Forest, and he finds hunters in the brush despite their camouflage. He checks their licenses and tags, keeps tabs on their movements and knows where to find their prey. In a sense, he hunts the hunters, and sometimes, he hunts the most elusive prey of all: poachers.

Walton, a five-year veteran, wears sneakers and a pistol. His territory in northern Los Angeles County is the rugged southern slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains--roughly 20 square miles--and he usually handles it alone. He puts in long and irregular hours, sometimes working at night to catch “spotlighters,” who illegally use lights to surprise and disorient deer before shooting them.

Walton, 35, said he has never felt physically threatened by hunters and has never had to draw his gun.

Fishermen Lie

“With hunters, when you catch them doing something wrong, it’s usually a ‘You-got-me’ type of thing,” he said. “Fishermen will look you right in the face and lie to you.”

Wardens and fishermen have something in common, though: When they get together, there is talk of the one that got away.

“Every warden has somebody in their district doing something wrong,” Walton said.

During last fall’s bow season for deer, Walton was checking the papers of six archers when he heard gunshots nearby. Since deer-shooting season had not opened, the hunters could be fined $500 or sent to jail for six months.

Walton spent the next hour moving from spot to spot in his four-wheel-drive truck, pausing for long intervals at high vantage points, combing the hot, scrubby distances with binoculars or simply searching ravines and slopes crowded with vegetation.

Exhaustive Check

Despite an exhaustive reconnaissance of the hillsides, however, Walton could not find the source of the gunfire.

Some poaching, he said, is done by overeager sportsmen trying to get a jump on the deer season. These hunters shoot deer during bow season or kill more than the single deer allowed by the state.

But far more common, Walton said, are hunters who make their living by poaching, contributing to a multimillion-dollar illegal industry statewide.

In 1983, the most recent year for which figures are available, the state collected $41.8 million in revenue from commercial and private hunting and fishing interests. State Fish and Game Department officials estimate that $2 million was lost in the same period to illegal hunting.

Walton said poachers traffic in a variety of illegal items, including bear claws, deer antlers and the horns of federally protected sheep.

Poachers also get a good price for deer meat sold to restaurants, and items such as bear gallbladders--considered by some to be an aphrodisiac--can be sold to ethnic herb shops willing to pay up to $100 an ounce.

Elusive Poachers

Deputies, Fish and Game wardens and forest rangers often work together to keep poaching in check, but there are some poachers who consistently elude capture.

Walton said one such poacher, who kills deer out of season and sells the meat, has been operating in his territory for three years.

“This is a poacher in the full sense of the word,” Walton said.

But despite intensive tracking and recent reports of the man’s presence, Walton has been unable to arrest him.

Strategy Sessions

Walton often holds impromptu strategy sessions with rangers and sheriff’s deputies at the Camp Williams Cafe, located deep in the East Fork of San Gabriel Canyon, and he sometimes receives tips on poachers passing through the area.

After a brief conversation at the cafe with a ranger and two deputies, Walton was back out on the dusty roads. But by mid-afternoon most of the bow hunters had left; the deer, Walton explained, are largely nocturnal animals that prefer to rest quietly out of sight when the heat is most intense.

Walton’s day ended at home, when he completed the voluminous paper work detailing his contacts and observations.

Walton came to the Fish and Game Department after working with juvenile offenders at a California Youth Authority detention center for 10 years. He said he got the warden’s job partly because he knows a lot about fishing.

But he’s not the stereotypical back-to-nature game warden.

“I hate hiking with a passion.”