Public Enemy

Back in 2001 shortly after the terrorist attacks on The World Trade Center and The Pentagon, President George W. Bush gave his infamous Axis Of Evil speech. In the speech he named North Korea, Iran and Iraq as the top three enemies to America. Since then I’ve often wondered whom I would place on my own personal Axis Of Evil list. So one day I decided to put pen to paper and actually make out my “evil-doers” list. Initially I found the task to be pretty difficult, since I could only pick three and there are so many people out there that I just can’t stand, such as Nancy Pelosi, Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Harry Reid, Keith Olbermann, Al Gore, and the Reverend Al Sharpton just to name a few. But after careful consideration and deliberation I would like to present to you Rick Bryson’s Personal Axis Of Evil. Drum-roll please.

1. George Lucas
2. Mike Krzyzewski
3. The Man

Number One with a bullet, at the top of the list would be George Lucas, aka The Beard. He’s an ironic choice since he was one of the chief architects for shaping my childhood. When I was 10 years old, George Lucas was my hero. He’s the man who gave us Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, the Jedi Knights, the Sith Lords and Indiana Jones. But time has not been kind to Mr. Lucas and since his hey-day as a creative genius he’s become a greedy, lazy, egotistical hack. Just look what he did to the Star Wars Universe with those lousy Prequels. Jar Jar Binks? Are you kidding me? And don’t even get me started on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. My five year-old nephew could have made a better film than that steaming pile of a movie. Lucas has basically become a figure of his own creation: he’s become the evil Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious. He doesn’t care about his legion fans that are responsible for his billion-dollar empire; all he cares about these days is making a quick buck. I could rant all day and fill an entire book about my hatred of what Lucas has become but it’s time to move on the next individual on my list.
The number two slot on my Axis of Evil is occupied by a man who needs no introduction to the citizens of The Tarheel Nation; he’s the one and only Mike Krzyzewski, aka Coach K, aka Satan. Krzyzewski is of course the head basketball coach of the despised and hated Dook Blue Devils. The Scriptures tell us, that as Christians, our hearts should not be filled with hate but when it comes to Dook Basketball my heart overflows with white-hot, seething hatred. How much do I hate Dook Basketball you ask? Well lets just say if the Dookies were playing Al-Qaeda coached by Osama Bin Laden himself, I’d show up for the game in a Taliban beard and cheer for the terrorists over Krzyzewski’s bunch any day of the week.
The third and final component of my personal Axis of Evil is an individual simply known as The Man. Now I’m sure some of you are scratching your head and asking, ‘Just who is The Man?’ But for those who spend anytime in the outdoors hunting or fishing, you know exactly who The Man is. The Man is the DNR, aka The Game Warden, and he’s never ever a welcome sight to an outdoorsman in the field, regardless whether or not you’re involved in something illegal.
Personally, I had only a couple of run-ins with The Man in my hunting career and none of them turned out positive; two pricey tickets and one threat to spend a night in jail. Now I know that game wardens, at least on paper anyway, serve an important purpose in enforcing wildlife laws, but personally I’ve never met one worth two cents. Every warden I’ve had the displeasure of running into in the woods have been rude, cocky, arrogant and suffering from a God-complex. Nothing but a bunch of “wanna-be-cops” in my opinion.
But as unpleasant as my experiences with game warden have been, they can’t compare with other individuals that I know. Here are a couple of stories that have been told to me over the years by various friends and family members and their encounters with The Man.
(Also note that since this is one of the more incriminating sections of this book, names have been changed in order to protect the innocent and to keep the author from being slapped with a lawsuit.)

***
Two old boys from back in Mills River (we’ll call them Harold and Garry) used to routinely sneak over and poach deer off the Biltmore Estate back in the mid-1980’s. The method of their crime was deviously brilliant- they would float the French Broad River in an old duck boat and shoot big bucks standing on the banks. They would then simply drag the dead deer back into the boat and float away under the cover of night.
One particularly bitter and cold winter evening, just before sunset, the two men were silently floating their boat down the half-frozen river when they spotted several deer feeding in one of the fields on the estate’s property. Harold stood up the boat, raised his big Ruger rifle and shot the biggest buck in the bunch. The buck dropped in its tracks, deader than a doornail. They rowed to shore and while Garry waited with the boat, Harold hustled out into the field to retrieve the deer.
But just as Harold was kneeling down to field dress the buck, several pickup truck headlights clicked on all around him in the darkness. Before Harold knew what was happening a convoy of DNR vehicles were barreling down on him with their blue lights flashing. Harold left the deer lying, leapt to his feet and began high-tailing it as fast as he could go back towards the river. The DNR trucks screeched to a halt and an army of DNR wardens swarmed out in pursuit of Harold.
Garry in the meantime, who was quietly waiting with the get-away-boat, but now seeing the entire North Carolina Division of Wildlife heading in his direction with guns drawn, decided to abandon is partner-in-crime and began rowing frantically for the opposite shore. Harold on the other hand was running for his life. He later told me that he was running as fast as his legs could take him and never once looked back. At one point he recalled, one of the game wardens got so close to catching him that he could actually feel the warden’s fingernails scraping against the back of his hunting coat as the warden reached out to grab him. As Harold neared the edge of river and seeing that Garry had left him to fend for himself against the onslaught of game wardens, Harold simply hurdled his self as far out into the icy waters as he could. He landed with a loud splash in the middle of the French Broad and quickly began swimming to the other side. When he got to the opposite shore, he pulled himself out of the frigid waters and turned to see a dozen DNR agents standing on the far bank cursing and swearing at him. The wardens weren’t about to jump into a sub-zero river in the middle of winter after some old redneck poacher. Harold and Garry lived to poach another day.
But unfortunately for Harold his luck didn’t last. A couple of years later, after shooting yet another buck illegally on the estate, a mob of game wardens caught up to him in the parking lot of the Dogwood Grocery and beat him within an inch of his life with their billy sticks. Harold referred to the incident as “getting a wooden shampoo from The Man.” After that, Harold “unofficially” retired from poaching deer off the Vanderbilt Family, though from time to time he was prone to sneak onto other small tracts of private land that didn’t have DNR warden watching the premises.

***

To this day Dwayne Higgins is still regarded as the toughest and meanest game warden in Mills River history. Throughout the 1950’s Dwayne patrolled the back roads and game trails of the valley in search of lawbreakers, spotlighters and poachers. He was feared and respected all through the county as a strict enforcer of justice.
One night a carload of punk teenagers that happened to include Dwayne’s son Zac, were out spotlighting deer out on Dave Whittaker Road. Suddenly Dwayne and a couple of his deputy wardens came blazing onto the scene with their blue-lights flashing, ready to arrest everyone involved. Zac, fearing that he would be caught not only by the game warden but by his father, panicked and leapt from the car he was in and starting running across the open field in order to escape. Now to this day it’s not entirely known whether Dwayne Higgins initially knew that was his son running across the field that night, but regardless, Dwayne pulled out his .38 service revolver and sent several rounds in Zac’s direction. After the third or fourth bullet kicked up a plume of dust just inches from his feet, Zac decided it was in his best interest to stop running and quickly surrendered to his father.
Dwayne personally drove Zac to jail that night.

***
My cousin Mike Barnett’s grandfather was name Allen Barnett. Allen along with his brother Willie worked at the CC Camp back in the 1940’s. Like a lot of folks in the mountains of western North Carolina during those years, both Allen and Willie were living through some pretty hard financial times. Jobs and money were in short supply and a person had to feed your family the best way they could, even if that meant poaching a few whitetails out of season.
While they worked at the CC Camp, that was located on Vanderbilt property, Allen and Willie would often shoot deer with a small, busted-up .22 that they kept concealed in their britches leg. If a deer were to walk along while they were out working, they would simply pull the rifle out of their pants, shoot the deer, and slip the murder weapon back without anyone aware of what happened. The two brothers would then creep back under the cover of darkness and retrieve the dead deer. Now unlike most of our modern day poachers and outlaws, Allen and Willie didn’t shoot deer out of season just for the sport of it; it was to feed a hungry family. In a lot of cases the venison they would bring home was the only substance that got them through a long, cold North Carolina winter.
Unfortunately the nobility of their crimes meant nothing to the local game wardens and once they caught wind of Allen and Willie’s deeds, they set up a sting operation to catch them in the act. After following Willie back home one evening with a successfully poached whitetail, the wardens staked-out his cabin and waited for Willie’s wife to start cooking the incriminating venison. As soon as smoke and the smell of frying back-strap began wafting out of the kitchen window, the warden moved in for the arrest. Just before they knocked on the door however, Willie saw them coming and instructed his wife to toss the cooking meat, frying pan and all, out of the back window. Unfortunately a warden was waiting just outside the window and caught her in the act.
Willie was dragged into the Hendersonville courthouse to stand trial for his crimes. The judge sentenced him to a year in jail. His brother Allen was in attendance that day and when he heard his brother’s sentence, Allen marched to the head of the courtroom and stood bravely next to Willie.
“Your Honor,” Allen said to the judge. “My bother Willie has a wife and family to take care of. I would like to serve the sentence in his place.”
The judge glared down at the two brothers and said, “Well, if you’re his no-good-for-nothing brother, then you can BOTH serve jail time as far as I’m concerned.” The judge then sentenced both Allen and Willie to prison for a year and a day for their crimes against the Vanderbilt deer population.



***
Riding out to Colorado one year back in the mid-1980’s with Dad, Ray and the rest of the usual elk bunch was a fellow by the name of Richard Bronson, a retired Alabama game warden. He was good friend of our horse trainer, Elwin Heatherly, who was also a participant on this particular hunt.
Anyway, one night while driving through the desolate wastelands of Nebraska, the hunters got to swapping stories in the tuck in order to keep each other awake. Harold Nash, (the same Harold from the infamous Wooden Shampoo Incident) got to telling a story about the meanest game warden he’d ever met.
“That sorry S.O.B was so low-down that he’d turn-in his own son,” said Harold, obviously referring to Dwayne Higgins.
There was an awkward silence in the truck; apparently everyone but Harold was aware that Richard was a former game warden. After a few uncomfortable seconds of non-conversation, Richard turned to Harold and said proudly, “Well hell, that’s not so bad. I once turned in my own wife for fishing out of season.”



***
There are other tales of course, such as the time Ken Calhoun was ticketed and almost drug off the Moffat County jail for shooting gray jays in elk camp, or the time Uncle Walt punched a particularly mouthy warden in the face for calling him a liar. (Nobody and I mean NOBODY called my Uncle Walt a liar.) But for now I think it’s best that I wrap up this section of the book that pertains to game wardens-talking about the DNR just simply gets my blood pressure boiling.
Hey, we took out Saddam, I wonder if I can convince Congress to approve a military Shock And Awe assault on the local DNR regime?