Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden

The author relates adventures from his thirty year career helping to protect America's wildlife.

At six-foot-four and 320 pounds, Terry Grosz nickednamed "Tiny" by his fellow officers seems larger than life, and his stories contain the stuff of legend as well. A natural storyteller, Grosz writes about the remarkable characters he met on both sides of the law and the tight sports he got into, all the while extracting lessons from these experiences that would make him a better conservation officer, and a better human being. In Wildlife Wars, he serves up tales from his early years as a game warden, matching wits with elk poachers, salmon snaggers, commercial-market duck hunters, and a host of other law-breakers. As a law enforcement agent, he learned to sniff out trouble, defuse tense situations, and stay alive; and as a human being, he learned to temper justice with mercy and to treat everyone fairly. Best of all, though, these stories are so remarkably entertaining you won't want to put them down. And yet the cause for which Terry Grosz fought for more than three decades rarely makes headlines or the six o'clock news, and so most Americans do not realize the enormity and the urgency of the problem. The greed of the market hunters who traffic in animals and animal parts, and the egos of the trophy hunters who consider themselves above the law, place a severe strain on America's wildlife. And the stakes are high when thousands can be made with the slaughter of a bear or bighorn sheep, poachers play for keeps, and they play a deadly game. With these tales from the sharp end of law enforcement, Terry Grosz shows the courage and dedication that he and his colleaguess bring to their work every day. Terry Grosz worked for the California Department of Fish and Game from 1966 through 1970, and for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1970 through 1998. He lives in Evergreen, Colorado.