COVER STORY : The Night of the Hunter : Game Warden Braves Perils of a Dark, Menacing Wilderness to Stalk Nocturnal Poachers in Mt. Baldy’s Back Country

On winter nights in the forest, as Orion the Hunter mocks from the heavens in starry repose, the game warden is listening.

Darkness swallows the forest whole, robbing the warden of sight, playing tricks on his mind. In the stillness, the patter of deer hooves on brittle sycamore leaves is no longer charming, the graceless crashing of a black bear through brush holds menace--and the crack of a high-powered rifle is so sure that the warden sometimes imagines his heart caught in the cross-hairs.

Mark Jeter, 34, a state Department of Fish and Game warden, is on overnight patrol for poachers in the Angeles National Forest’s Mt. Baldy area, just north of Glendora. He has no partner, no reliable radio contact, no immediate backup. Every hunter he meets is armed and most likely up to no good--hunting at night for most animals is illegal.

Through the forest’s unforgiving back country, his lonely patrol is one that most people never see--and his job, Jeter says, is woefully misunderstood.

People look at the state seal on Jeter’s four-wheel-drive in puzzlement. “Fish and Game?” they ask. “What kind of games?”

Or they remember the September news coverage of wardens preparing to kill spa-hopping Samson the bear in Monrovia--until Gov. Pete Wilson pushed for a reprieve. State officials finally found Samson a home at the Orange County Zoo. Or the day Jeter fired tranquilizer darts at a scared bear that lumbered through an Azusa neighborhood in May and then was shot to death by police.

“They call it ‘fish and maim,’ ” lamented Jeter, a folksy Oklahoma native who lives in Glendora with his wife and two children. “(They say), ‘You’re either killing something or sitting in a coffee shop.’ ”

But there’s no coffee shop on Jeter’s mountain beat--the only coffee he gets is his own instant cappuccino out of a thermos.

Fish and game wardens also get a bad rap from other law enforcement officers who dismiss them as “critter cops.” But wardens have the same legal authority and power of arrest as police officers, and their work can be even more risky.

*

Game wardens stand six times the chance of being assaulted with firearms as an officer on the street, according to a 1990 federal study. The U.S. Department of the Interior study concluded that the game warden’s patrol is the country’s most dangerous form of law enforcement.

In his third year as a game warden, Jeter sets his own hours, working by land, sea and air. One day, he’ll chase lobster poachers by skiff off Catalina Island or work a plainclothes detail at a swap meet, searching for illegal bear-claw jewelry (It is legal to kill bears with the proper permits, but it is illegal to sell their parts). On another day, he’ll put on shorts and hiking boots and backpack eight miles into the woods in search of bighorn-sheep poachers. Or, on a busy hunting weekend, he’ll patrol the forest by small plane.

Of all his assignments, Jeter prefers night patrol in the forest, a prime time for poachers who skulk through the canyons under the cover of darkness.

Some kill black bears and peddle their gallbladders--for about $265 a gram--for use in pricey Asian folk remedies for stomach problems and other ailments.

In the Angeles National Forest, wardens have found only one bear recently with a sliced-out gallbladder, near Ojai. But in June, Jeter and other area wardens arrested a Rosemead businessman for allegedly trafficking hundreds of gallbladders, most from black bears killed in other Western states. The arrest was the culmination of a 1 1/2-year undercover operation.

In winter, when deer, bear and other large game animals are in season, Jeter patrols the forest about three nights a week for hunters. It’s illegal to hunt most animals at night because the darkness gives hunters an unfair advantage, state fish and game officials say. Also, it is more dangerous to shoot in darkness.

*

For cover, Jeter dims his two-way radio light and kills his headlights. His Ford Bronco’s grille is painted black so the chrome doesn’t catch the moonlight. If he parks for a long time, he pulls an olive-drab parachute over his truck and anchors it with a tree or rock to avoid a telltale silhouette.

One night a week, under a blaze of stars, he camps out on a portable cot in a sleeping bag, with a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and flashlight at his side, a two-pound bulletproof vest snug beneath his clothes. He sleeps fitfully, trying to shut out the eerie scream of the mountain lion killing prey, and the hungry young owl that screeches and snaps its bill when it begs for food.

He’s up by first light, when hunters start their day, antsy for action.

“If something gets taken illegally or something gets poached, it’s my fault that I wasn’t there,” Jeter said.

Most nights, Jeter sits for hours in his truck, or walks the roads, watching for lights, listening for gunshots. In the bustle of the city, sometimes gunfire passes unnoticed, or is dismissed as a car backfiring. In the still of the forest, there is no mistaking gunfire.

If all is quiet, he drives on to hot spots, including water holes, where hunters search for forked deer prints in the mud.

Jeter’s Mt. Baldy beat is roughly 132,470 acres, a territory almost 10 times the size of Pomona. In California, about 265 wardens patrol 100 million acres, an average of 377,358 acres per warden.

In his forest-green Bronco, Jeter drives carefully on winding, unpaved roads with no guardrails. He keeps watch over deep canyons, thick with chaparral, manzanita and canyon oak, where bears prowl for acorns, holly leaf and coffee berry.

At night, far from the city lights, the forest is as black as the backdrop of a search-and-destroy video game. Poachers shine 1-million-candlepower spotlights into the hills until they hit pay dirt--deer eyes, which glow emerald green. And then they shoot, sometimes with high-powered assault rifles, equipped with night scopes. The guns, which are legal for use but frowned on by many hunters, can quickly pump 20 or 30 rounds into a deer.

To save money, some hunters don’t pay for the required licenses. It costs $24.95 for a hunting license, plus $16.55 for a “tag,” or permit to shoot a deer, $23 for a bear permit. If you’re caught without the proper permits, it’s roughly a $650 fine.

Others hunt while drunk, or try to take more than the two deer and one bear allowed under law. Still others set leg-hold traps--and fail to check them once a day, as required--or use illegal bait, such as a cut-up fawn or a deer shot out of season to attract bear, mountain lions or other animals looking for a meal.

Last year, right before deer season, Jeter got a tip about an illegal bait-and-shoot ruse in the foothills above San Dimas. About a quarter of a mile off the road, a hunter had hacked a 40-yard swath through laurel sumac and built an eight-foot-wide shooting lane. At the end of the lane, the hunter dug a pit, with brush trimmed around it so only his head could peek out. At the lane’s other end the hunter left bait--a water trough, two hunks of salt and a bale of hay.

For three dark mornings, Jeter staked out the pit, showing up at 3 a.m., so cold that he could barely move. The hunter never showed. Eventually, the brush grew back and covered the setup.

Jeter was undaunted.

“Sometimes you go all night and don’t even see a light, not even hear a gunshot,” Jeter said. “But if you don’t do the time, if you don’t do the hours, you’ll never catch these guys. You can’t expect to go out for an hour or two and go, ‘No bad guys tonight. Time to go home.’ ”

This hunting season, Jeter has so far issued seven citations, mostly for deer poaching and weapon violations, about average. The season began in October for animals including deer and bear, and in November, for most others; deer season ended Nov. 6, and bear season ends Dec. 25.

Most violations are misdemeanors, punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

An estimated 95% of all poachers get away, according to fish and game studies on detection rates. Last year, wardens issued 2,150 citations for poaching, about 17% of them for illegal taking of deer, the most common offense. In 1988, the Department of Fish and Game had 14 wardens in an undercover anti-poaching unit; now, because of budget cutbacks, the unit has only one permanent warden.

U.S. forest rangers also patrol the woods, but their shifts end by 5 p.m., and by midnight, sheriff’s deputies are done with mountain patrol. After that, Jeter is the lone law enforcement officer on duty in his district.

At night, nobody knows exactly where Jeter’s patrol takes him. In the canyons, his radio contact fades in and out.

Night patrol is heart-stopping duty. It is a tough drive, on windy, unpaved roads through steep canyons, hard to follow after long nights driving endless stretches, or when a light in the hills diverts Jeter’s attention from the road. Sometimes, a tire on Jeter’s Bronco catches the side of the road, or his bumper scrapes the canyon’s steep edge.

Or, sometimes, Jeter watches the hills with a night scope and spots hunters, who sometimes spot him as well, so they unsling their rifles and move on.

The worst moment is when Jeter drives up to one of the U.S. Forest Service’s locked gates, which are there to keep people out of areas that are off limits. He is wary about reaching for the combination lock into the gate post’s nook, a potential nestling place for rattlesnakes, though he’s never found any there. With his back spotlighted by the Bronco’s glaring headlights, he is a sitting duck if anyone wanted to take a shot. At that moment, if a twig or two cracks in the wind, it’s enough to set Jeter--a former federal drug enforcement officer--on edge.

“It’s not me thinking, ‘Gee, that’s a bear or a mountain lion,’ ” Jeter said. “It’s, ‘Is that a person? And what the heck are they doing 12 miles up, in the middle of nowhere, on the road or up behind this locked gate?’

“I just have a hard time believing that a mountain lion is going to come up and make me a meal. The thing I fear is the crazy person, the person who’s not right.”

Last Halloween, in a thicket of trees near Mt. Baldy, Jeter ran across three young people in white robes and black masks. Near pentagrams chalked in the dirt, they sat with a sword, owl’s wing and a jar of goat’s blood, chanting at the moon.

He confiscated the owl’s wing--someone said they got it from a road kill--and sent the group on its way.

In an emergency, Jeter would try to radio his dispatch center in Sacramento or forest dispatchers in Arcadia for help from Azusa or Glendora police. But his back-country beat, which rises to an elevation of 6,000 feet, includes Devil’s Canyon, Barbecue Alley and Valley of the Moons, places that aren’t on any map.

So far, Jeter hasn’t run into a situation that he couldn’t handle. In his three years on the beat, Jeter hasn’t shot anyone or been shot at. Mostly, he runs into nuisances.

In pitch blackness, for instance, he will hook a chain to a snapped yucca plant that blocks the road and use his truck to drag it away. Or he’ll run into careless hunters who use their great-grandfather’s old rifle, some with taped-up stocks, or the barrel rusted shut, or half a stock so they have to shoot from the hip. Old rifles aren’t illegal, but they’re dangerous, and the shooters are as likely to kill themselves--or someone else--as any animal.

On a recent late-night patrol, Jeter issued a citation to a 60-year-old man for keeping a loaded rifle and handgun in his four-wheel-drive truck, next to his 13-year-old grandson. The craggy-faced man, a hunter for 28 years, said he keeps the weapons close for protection, not to take illegal shots from the road.

Thirty minutes later, Jeter suddenly stopped his Bronco. In the moonless night, he had spotted a glint in the road, maybe a shell casing from a .38-caliber handgun, the type of weapon owned by the man he had just cited. He backed up and looked, jacket-less and in short sleeves in air so cold that he could see his breath. No luck. He backed up again.

Sure enough, Jeter found a .38-caliber shell casing, but it was an old one, sitting upright in the road, full of water from the previous night’s rain. But Jeter checked the casing anyway, against the shells he had just confiscated. No match. If the shells had matched, then maybe the man had lied--and had indeed shot at something from the road.

Jeter says his job is nothing, compared with his brother’s, who works as a policeman in Roseville, outside Sacramento.

“I ride along with my brother sometimes,” said Jeter, who has a degree in criminal justice from Sacramento State University. “We go to gang fights. Oh, man. Everyone’s moving around. Everyone’s (cursing) everyone. I am, like, stressed at the end of the night. . . . I think his job is a lot more dangerous than mine.”

The warden’s job demands a love of the outdoors, the ability to sit still in the wilderness for hours on end, for a starting salary of $26,400.

Jeter is not a hunter. He won’t even run over snakes in the road. Instead, he uses tongs to move them out of the away.

In the forest, there are sights to behold.

On the darkest of nights, the Seven Sisters constellation lights up the sky. Once, in an electrical storm, Jeter watched a lightning bolt split a big pine tree and set it afire. Another time, in the early morning near the San Gabriel River’s East Fork, he saw what looked like a dog at the side of the road, digging madly, dirt flying everywhere. It turned out to be a small bear, head buried in an ant hill, only its butt sticking out.

He even runs into regulars, such as the great horned owl that perches on the highway marker night after night.

“I never get bored of seeing (animals),” Jeter said. “Like the deer I saw the other night. That was great. It’s not like, ‘Oh, there’s another deer, I see them every damn day.’ ”

Even on his days off, he drives to the forest with his wife, 11-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter, for camping, fishing or hiking.

His job takes its toll on the family. During the height of deer season, Jeter often leaves home Friday night and returns on Sunday.

This is Jeter’s dream job, the one he always had his eye on, even when he was working in drug enforcement. He still has the sixth-grade essay he wrote on why he wanted to be a game warden. As a kid, growing up near rural areas, he spent all day outside.

At age 10, in Florida’s Panhandle, he and a friend decided to camp in the woods--until it got cold and dark. Two hours later, scared to death, they moved to a spot under a street light on the edge of the woods.

“I’ve come a long way now,” he said. “Now, I don’t need the street light.”

Now, Orion the Hunter, a winter constellation, lights the night sky for him, bow and arrow perpetually poised, ready for the kill.