Spotlighting Fun, Part 3

Another incident that has made the annals of Game Warden history is the night two officers were working in a sedan. It was just a marked law enforcement  patrol car - one of the late 70's classic Plymouth tugboats, but without overhead lights.  They were watching for spotlights and sure enough, a pickup truck accommodated them.  They blacked out, and pulled in behind the truck as it drove slowly along forest roads.  The going got a bit hard on the car, but they were undaunted.   Being Game Wardens and all, what's a few rocks.  

The road would up higher and higher, and got rougher and rougher, until the car was bottoming out on rocks.  SO, John Horvat, an absolute monster of a man, who was sitting shotgun in the car, grabbed his 870 pump shotgun and exited the car, leaving Sly Conaker in the car.  John walked along behind the truck for a while until it came to a creek crossing.   When the truck bounced over large rocks in the creekbed, John hopped onto the bumper, and then into the bed of the truck.  The two men in the cab continued looking for deer.   This went on for about a mile, when, sure enough, the spotlight lit up a nice buck in the timber.  The rifle came out of the passenger window, and the deer dropped with one shot.

The two men jumped out of the cab, and ran over to the deer, talking and laughing.  One more shot finished it off, as the muzzle blast lit up the forest.  The men each grabbed a back leg, and the ran back toward the truck, dragging the deer, mumbling something about getting out of there in a hurry, before the Game Warden has time to get a call and respond .  They pulled the deer around the back of the vehicle, and dropped the tailgate, about the same time that Big John chambered a round in the shotgun.  If you have ever heard a 12 gauge shell being chambered into an 870, it is a commanding and ominous sound that one never quite forgets.  It has a way of causing the most hardened of men to say 'yes sir'. . 

The two men looked up into the business end of the 12 gauge, and John said "Good Shot, men."