Retired game warden Steven T. Callan's love of nature and passion for
protecting wildlife took root long before he experienced the adventures
described in his memoir, Badges, Bears, and Eagles. In The Game
Warden's Son, he recounts more of his own investigations, along with
those of his game warden father and their colleagues. Intertwined with a
half century of adventures and investigations is a story of the lifelong
relationship between a boy and his father.
The book begins in the 1950s in the canyons and on the beaches of San
Diego with incidents that sparked Steven's youthful imagination. After
an idyllic boyhood in the Northern Sacramento Valley farm town of
Orland, where he rode on patrol with his father, Steven became a game
warden himself in the early '70s, joining the "desert rats" who
patrolled the California counties banking the Colorado River.
With wry humor, Callan tells how he and his fellow officers outwitted
the perpetrators--most of them crafty, some of them hilariously
foolish--who poached deer, lobsters, and abalone, baited bears and sold
their parts, shot wild ducks to supply restaurants, and killed songbirds
for epicurean dinner tables. Their cases took them across the Channel
Islands, through the back alleys of San Francisco, up the Sacramento
Valley, into the Sierras, and along California's pristine North Coast.
While these dedicated wardens saw their share of greed, they also
appreciated the many hunters and fishermen who obeyed the laws and
respected the earth's resources.
In the end, it was all about protecting California's natural resources
for future generations, which is what Callan and company did, enjoying
themselves every step of the way.
