Do the Right Thing

I was working on a post before this, Quest for Quail, but then something happened. I’d done my research, I’d chased quail for weeks south of Denver and not seen so many as a one, though I’d heard several calling just over the next ridge. It’s always just over the next ridge. Deciding it was time to switch up to Bobwhite I’d gone out to Northeast Colorado at the Tamarack State Wildlife Area after getting a little tip from a 2016 Denver Post article. I was looking for wild pheasants having never taken anything but stocked birds in my home state. I’d looked at the regulations and both quail and pheasant were open East of I-25, yet somehow I’d made a big mistake.

The drive to the State Wildlife Area was long, way longer than I thought it would be, and with weather in Denver already snowing quite badly I’d worried that the area near the Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado border was going to be a snow coated windswept hell-scape. I loaded Abbey into the truck and we moved out just before rush hour on a Friday so we could achieve escape velocity from the city slickers and get onto the open road. Weather began to clear as we drove North and East from the city, racking up toll road bills on E-470 as we hurdled towards the uplands.

I pulled into the little town mentioned in the article and racked my brains and strained my service on my cell phone. The most unhelpful map on the planet stated that there was a Colorado Parks and Wildlife mandatory check station along the road before I could hunt the SWA. I’d driven up and down the roads, kicking up rooster tails of dirt looking for the check in station and looking for signal. I’d foolishly not added the offline maps to my OnXHunt app on my phone, so I only knew that it was off the main road where pickups were blasting by. I’d driven for two and a half hours through a midmorning storm and I just wanted to hunt with my dog before turning around and heading home to cook dinner for my wife who was busy at work like most folks.

It took a while to find, but eventually I pulled off the road into a dirt lot and signed into an area that looked promising for both some ringnecks and bobwhites, ate a peanut butter and pancake sandwich (it’s delicious, try it) as it was already early afternoon and Abbey and I both got suited up for the hunt. We hunted for hours, moving something like 26 birds in 3-4 hours of walking around. The SWA has you sign into an area, but after 9AM if there’s no one else there you are free to roam to the adjacent areas. Toward the end of our adventure Abbey bumped a covey of quail and we took chase. Abbey is a much better pheasant dog than a quail hound. Her points are often somewhat rushed, flash pointing on birds before attempting to creep on them. It works well for pheasants as they’re runners and she’ll often need to relocate. Unfortunately for quail that makes her more of a flusher than a setter. I managed to connect with a bobwhite, holding it in my hand I reveled at it, only having ever worked with my dogs over tame Coturnix quail we used for training. We were both tired, legs sore, and tongues hanging out the side of our mouths panting. I was sweating profusely, the weather in Northeastern Colorado was significantly above freezing in the sunlight despite the blizzard-like conditions in Denver. We loaded back into the truck, happy to have been on birds and put one healthy, albeit somewhat small quail into the game bag. After a 10 minute burr picking session Abbey fell quickly asleep for the ride home.

I was sitting with my wife reviewing where I might go on Sunday or Monday with the pending long weekend off of work. Catie said she wanted to go somewhere with me, but it was the middle of January and I wasn’t sure what was open nor if I wanted to take that three hour drive again. I pulled up the regulations on my laptop and started looking through what was in season. Lily, our youngest setter was likely to break on pheasants and we wanted to get her on something a little more stable, so quail hunting seemed like it was just the ticket. Having just come from Tamarack I knew that there was a couple of quail still holding and some bonus pheasants to boot. Reading through the regulations further, my heart sank. I pulled up my calendar, looked back at the pdf, then back at the calendar. I’d be lying if there weren’t at least a few expletives that left my lips.

In 2018 the quail season encompassed Nov 10 through January 31st for the better part of the state, but note that each season had several geographic exceptions, and for a dullard like me, perhaps a picture would have helped. I was up at the Tamarack Ranch SWA on the January 11th, east of I-25, but north of I-70. The season had closed not even a full week ago when I took one quail out of season. I’d somehow thought while opening the pocket version of the PDF guide that the only delineation of seasons was whether you were east or west of I-25 which bisects the state going through Denver. I’d made another critical error in using the Denver Post article as a primary source as to the hunting conditions and legality as opposed to the actual regulations. Regulations change over the years, and there’s no telling as to when a hunt occurred for an article versus when it was published unless they say so.

You may have seen one of my more well regarded winter social media posts all of a sudden vaporize as I deleted it, not wanting to either advertise nor condone what had happened. I was going to turn myself in. I’d only taken a single quail out of season, but the pain I felt was immense. I pride myself on a strict code of ethics, reinforced by where I’ve worked for nearly a decade for the American people it’s a place where honesty is valued — lest you lose your job. I didn’t want to lose my hobby, outdoor bloggers, television personalities, and authors have all received untold vitriol over the last few years for similar incidents. But all of those folks had one thing in common, they didn’t do the right thing. If it was a mistake, they didn’t admit it. If it was for fame and vanity they knew it. For me, I was just trying to learn a new area and share a successful hunt with my followers. I took down the post on Twitter and researched what I then had to do.

Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching- even when doing the wrong thing is legal.

Aldo Leopold

I looked around the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website to try and find a direct contact for their enforcement division, and found an FAQ that suggested that I call a local police officer to dispatch a CPW Ranger to my location. Most of these were heavily biased towards the killing of elk, moose, and other big game. All of the offices were closed as it was now Friday evening. I wasn’t about to call the police in order to handle the case of the missing quail. After all, it was right in my refrigerator awaiting to be plucked and frozen. I’d anticipated having to give it up, but all of the documentation in the regulations dictated that you had to treat the meat as if it were your own, which I obviously would. Even though the little speckled softball of a bobwhite wasn’t much more than a handful of meat I’d taken it’s life during hunting. It deserved all the respect I could give it.

The next morning I composed my thoughts and contacted the Northeast office of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife via email. I didn’t hear anything back all weekend, but I guess that made sense. Most CPW offices are 8-5 Monday through Friday but it didn’t help my nerves about the matter. I work in a facility that makes access to my personal phone and email exceedingly difficult during the day. While I didn’t want to be a jerk with a fire and forget e-mail, I’d have to walk out to my truck each lunch to check where I stood. I checked at lunch and then again when I left for the day. When I left for the day I sat in the parking lot and saw I’d had a voicemail from an officer who wanted to ask a few questions.

He said that I’d found out about the issue before they even did and was happy I reached out. We played phone tag over the next two days with our schedules not quite meshing up until I was able to go out and speak over one lunch break. He was a nice understanding guy who was a small game hunter himself, like many rangers that I encounter during my jaunts in the field. We spoke about the confusion of the regulations, the bounding box created by the two highways and the nuances therein and how we both had to study the regulations to see what the real issue was. At the end of the conversation he told me that he was letting me off with a verbal warning, that he was glad that someone would turn themselves in over something like this. All in all it went better than I expected. Colorado has complicated game laws and I’m lucky that it happened during small game season and not during an elk hunt where I might have to pack out and then surrender the carcass. I was prepared to surrender my quail and face a fine. After all, the regulations for both mistake kills and killing something out of season are generally quite steep. It was all about doing the right thing, even if you knew that no one was watching. In the case of the Internet and social media though, your audience is global, and they’re always watching. Do the right thing, if you find yourself on the wrong side of the law, and you value your freedom to participate in your hobby then turn yourself in and face whatever the consequences may be.