In Colorado: Herds and Hostility

By Robert C. Wurmstedt

Minutes after dawn on a chilly morning, high in the Rocky Mountains, Jeff Madison tethers his horse in a stand of aspen trees and moves slowly in a crouch past a beaver lodge, through grass still wet with dew. Below in a meadow at the edge of the forest, some 50 elk are feeding. Quietly, so as not to spook the animals, Madison sets up his 60-power spotting scope on a tripod and begins to count the elk, classifying them by age and sex.

Madison, 32, a Colorado state wildlife officer, or game warden, is worried. Too many bull elk are being killed in the fall hunting season. Consequently, he believes, fewer than half of the cow elk in his district are giving birth to calves in spring. That is much too low; 70% is best to maintain the herd properly.

Madison is also a biologist. His job is to manage game populations and enforce hunting and fishing laws in a vast 1,200-sq.-mi. area, most of it in the White River National Forest of northwest Colorado. It is the home of the largest elk herd (about 18,000 in all) in North America. His base is Meeker (pop. 2,356), the sleepy seat of Rio Blanco County, a town without a traffic light or a movie theater. In winter deer wander through town and are sometimes killed by motorists on Main Street. The town's economy depends heavily on the elk and deer season in October, when thousands of hunters invade the area. In summer people fish for trout in the clear lakes and streams.

The pace of life is slow and local folks have plenty of time to chat. When he heads for work, Madison often stops for gas and gossip at the Chevron station in town. He makes his rounds in a four-wheel-drive pickup truck, his radio dial tuned to the country-and-western sound of station KRAI in nearby Craig, Colo. Duke, his big yellow dog of assorted heritage, accompanies him, riding in the back of the truck.

Ted Bateman, the Chevron mechanic, tells Madison how he was practicing his coyote call while out fishing. "This old boy just bebopped up to me and said, 'Good morning,' " Bateman recounts. "I didn't have my gun so I just smiled at him and said, 'You lucky dog, you.' "

Later a rancher asks Madison where the elk hunting is good and what is the condition of the herd. Madison is polite with him, but he tells a visitor that he suspects the man allowed hunters--illegally--to kill two deer on his land during the season last year. "We didn't have enough evidence to make a case, but we're watching him real close this season."

To the folks around Meeker, Madison's badge and uniform are considered a source of special, even secret knowledge that no one else has. Wherever he goes, he is asked how the elk survived the winter or what lure the trout are currently hitting on up at Trappers Lake. People stop Madison's wife Nancy on the street to solicit her for inside information on such matters.

At night Madison gets phone calls at home, often from out of state. "Some guy will call from back East and talk for an hour about some small opening in the forest where he hunted last season," says Madison. "Hell, how do I know if an elk will be standing there on the morning of opening day?"

So it seems strange that Jeff and Nancy Madison are virtually social outcasts in Meeker. Rarely does anyone inquire after his family, or his health. Madison and his wife are both from Grand Junction, just 100 miles away, where Madison's father is a doctor. But in Meeker they are never invited to anyone's home, not even for Christmas parties, except occasionally by local police officers. "People are friendly on the surface, but we're somewhere below the dogcatcher on the social scale, and there's no dogcatcher in Meeker," says Madison. Nancy is concerned that their two-year-old son Isaac will be shunned in school when he is older.

The reasons for this curious ostracism are ingrained in local tradition. It has been much the same for wildlife officers assigned to Meeker and some other rural areas in the past. For one thing, a big part of Madison's job is catching people who violate the fish and game laws. He hands out an average of 60 fines a year for offenses ranging from fishing without a license ($50) to illegal possession of an elk ($400). That riles Meekerites, who hate the thought of having their freedoms fenced in by government regulators.

Madison also has an ongoing adversary relationship with the outfitters and ranchers around town who make thousands of dollars each season by leasing their land to hunters. They resent Madison's authority to enforce game laws on private land. "It's big money, and a good portion of them don't let the law stand in their way," Madison explains. "There's great incentive to get an animal, even go over the limit, for a client."

In summer the same ranchers complain endlessly to Madison that "his elk" are grazing on their cattle pastures. In winter they blame him when hungry elk and deer are busting their fences and devouring their haystacks. "It's not that folks don't like Jeff personally," says Herb Hughley, who operates the Valley Motel on Highway 13, which runs through Meeker. "But they don't like bureaucrats in Denver making laws about what they can and cannot do here."

For Madison, the end result is the same: he is an alien in his homeland. "It's hard to take sometimes because we're the ones that protect the game and keep this resource for them," he says. "Hunting season is what keeps Meeker alive. I'd like to run for city council but I wouldn't get ten votes." A regulation that would limit the number of bulls killed during the season for a few years would be met with great hostility, though it might improve hunting in the long run.

Madison has been stationed in Meeker since 1979, when he finished his wildlife division training in Denver. The country is truly beautiful--deep aspen and spruce forests, snowcapped mountains and rolling ranchland--and this partly makes up for the lack of friendship in town. So does the great variety of his work. One day he may be up before dawn to survey an elk herd by helicopter. The next day he and Duke may hike ten miles into the high country to stock a remote lake with trout. When Madison checks fishing licenses on a lake, Duke sleeps in the canoe. "He's smart, but I can't teach him to paddle," jokes Madison.

Hunting season keeps Madison on the run, working twelve hours a day and often at night. Acting on tips, Madison checks up on hunters who may have killed more than the annual limit of one deer and one elk; he is also on the alert for out-of-staters illegally using cheap resident hunting licenses. Once at a road check he arrested some men from Kansas after finding two illegal elk concealed behind a false wall in their camping trailer. Their fines totaled $2,400. They paid cash: 24 $100 bills.

"It's a game for some hunters. They don't need the meat. They're just greedy or lucky," says Madison. "To manage the herd, we have to kill some of the animals. I know how happy I am when I'm hunting. And it pleases me to see someone have a good hunting experience. I don't want to get in the way any more than I have to."

Madison has never drawn his .357 magnum service revolver or needed the 12-gauge in the cab of his pickup. But it could happen any time. Once a fellow wildlife officer approached the cabin of two suspected poachers near Colorado Springs, and narrowly escaped a hail of bullets that set his pickup on fire.

Madison is content with his life, in spite of its negatives. The pay--$26,000 a year--is not all that much, but it's enough to get by and he has just bought Nancy a microwave oven. This year he built a deck on the back of their home where they enjoy cool summer evenings. Besides, the alternatives seem unacceptable. Madison hates cities, and traffic makes him irritable. "I love the freedom," he says. "I think I've got the best job there is."

--By Robert C. Wurmstedt