Game Warden Blotter

BOATING ACCIDENT ON SABINE RIVER

Texas game wardens investigated a boating accident that left two people hospitalized. Wardens were called to a single watercraft collision on the Sabine River just south of White Oak near the Highway 42 bridge. White Oak EMS, DPS troopers and Gregg County Sheriff’s Office deputies assisted. Two occupants were on board the craft when the collision with some kind of obstacle occurred. Investigators said it was not clear exactly how the collision happened, but one of the injuries was so severe a lifeflight helicopter had to be called in. Another person was treated at a hospital and released.

MISSING MAN FOUND ON LAKE WACO

Search crews returned to Lake Waco in the search for a missing man. Fire rescue personnel were told a jet ski had overturned about 400-500 yards out from the pier at the Ridgewood Country Club marina. Police, fire crews, Texas game wardens and park rangers with the U.S. Corps of Engineers searched an area between the Ridgewood Country Club Marina and the Twin Bridges park. Search and Rescue boats also patrolled the area. The crews searched for a 23-year-old man who was a passenger on the overturned watercraft. A woman on the jet ski was rescued by a boat passing by. The next day, the body of Daylon Dixon was discovered.

POACHERS SHOOT FIVE ALLIGATORS

Texas game wardens are seeking information leading to the identification, arrest, and conviction of the persons responsible for five alligators that were shot and left in an irrigation canal on a deadend road, off Old Seadrift Highway, near Seadrift in Calhoun County. The incident occurred between April 24 and April 25. Call Operation Game Thief with information.

WARDENS RESCUE 10 FROM RIO GRANDE

Texas game wardens, DPS troopers and Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents teamed up in the rescue of 10 migrants who became distressed while illegally crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico. Game wardens responded after hearing people screaming for help in the river. A video showed game wardens in their river patrol boat approaching the U.S. bank of the Rio Grande with a group of migrant adults and children. The game wardens heard the 10 migrants screaming for help and pulled them into their boat. Once they arrived at the Texas riverbank, Border Patrol agents and Texas Department of Public Safety troopers assisted in offloading the migrants and getting them ready for processing.

SHRIMP BOATS WITH MORE THAN SHRIMP

Jefferson County game wardens inspected a Gulf shrimp boat in Port Arthur as it was unloading. During the inspection, several large red snapper were found in the freezer that had been taken in closed federal waters. An illegal game fish, a cobia, was also discovered. Multiple cases are pending against the captain of the shrimp boat and the fish were seized and donated. Also, the wardens were patrolling for commercial violations near Sabine Pass when they discovered 21 lightning welks (illegal aboard a shrimp boat) and nine undersized flounder on board a commercial Gulf shrimp boat. Multiple cases are pending against the captain of the vessel.

BECOME A FRIEND OF WARDENS

Texans may sign up with the Friends of Texas Game Wardens, a program of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation. Funds sustain Gear Up for Game Wardens, a program to purchase specialty equipment to equip game wardens to serve the people of Texas. With a $100 donation, you will receive a special decal to show your support of Texas game wardens.

REPORT ILLEGAL HUNTING AND FISHING ACTIVITY FOR A REWARD OF UP TO $1,000. CALL OPERATION GAME THIEF AT (800) 792-4263

AN AMERICAN LEGEND

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Fishing for conservation

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They also released a red that won for having the most spots.

“We have been doing this for a while,” Davis said. “We like to compete, but we practice conservation.”

The group said they have been putting fish back in the water way before the February cold snap took a toll on speckled trout and baitfish in this part of the Gulf.

Now, most fishing tournaments held along the coast or scheduled to take place are either doing away with the trout category or requiring release of the fish.

At the BDS, three fish per team were allowed, a trout, a redfish and a flounder. The maximum lengths were 20 inches for the trout and 25 inches for the redfish.

For Garza, another team angler, that was perfectly fine.

“We caught about 12 trout and redfish between the three of us,” he said. “Fishing was great, but we don’t believe in having a lot of fish killed.”

JR Rodriguez, the tournament director, said the competition went real well — all things considered.

“We had close to 60 entries,” he said. “We expected more than 80 but you know what has been going on these days.”

TEXAS AVENGER

TILT

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record book website and went viral. The amount of harassment she received from anti-hunters following the leaking of this photo was indescribable.

“After countless death threats and a massive bombardment of hatred, I realized that the anger coming from the nonhunting public was not directed at me individually, but rather towards all hunters and the sport of hunting,” Longoria said. “I saw that the question I was truly being asked was, why do I hunt? From that point on, I understood the need to be a better modern storyteller and articulate the why. I wanted to become an advocate for my internal story, and share the emotion, the adventure, and the journeys that are far beyond just taking a trophy photo, with the world.”

Longoria’s realization motivated her to tell her story of why she hunts, both on social media and through a blog site. Recently, her “why” was challenged again, when her personal Instagram account, @brittlongoria, was disabled by the social media platform’s administration. At the time the account was disabled, it had more than 44,000 followers.

“This time, these challenges and efforts were not in the form of harassment,” Longoria explained. “This was a coordinated silencing — a direct result of the world of cancel culture and censorship that we find ourselves living in today. It’s quite scary when you think about it, and it’s something that all of us as hunters should be mindful of and concerned about.”

Longoria said she did not violate any of Instagram’s policies or bylaws on her account.

“The powers at be within Instagram confirmed that the disabling of my account was not contact related,” she said. “In other words, this was not a result of any action I took via a post or comment with my account profile. This was the result of a coordinated effort by anti-hunters, who were reporting my account because they did not like the fact that I was a hunter. They had been doing it for so long that it reached a threshold in terms of Instagram’s policies, automatically disabling my account.”

As disheartened as Longoria is, she said her voice has only gotten stronger and her narrative more refined.

“This incident has even further strengthened my

Britt Longoria took this Sindh ibex in Pakistan. Her Instagram account was temporarily blocked as a result of protests from anti-hunters. Photo from Britt Longoria.

ability to understand that this is not about me,” she said. “This is about all hunters and the sport of hunting.”

Longoria is currently working on her Ph.D. in Strategic Communication and her focus is on the traditional uses of storytelling around the hunting narrative. Her goals through her research and education are to better understand why today’s world considers it appropriate for an indigenous person to hunt and harvest an animal for a sacred reason other than food, but unacceptable for a western hunter to participate in the exact same activity.

“As modern, western hunters, we seem to have lost the ability to convey the sense of sacredness within the sport of hunting,” she said. “Through the miscommunication of what and why we do what we do, and our lack of storytelling associated with that, we have completely separated ourselves from an activity that is regarded as acceptable all over the rest of world.”

Longoria feels that the only way to change this, is to be able to articulate the “why.”

“The why is going to look a little different for each and every hunter,” Longoria said. “However, the narrative that would evolve if each of us has the ability to articulate that why could be extremely powerful. The why personifies something that is otherwise a stereotype for which anti-hunters misjudge us by.”

After much effort, Longoria’s account was back up and running on May 9.

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lures on bottom and tight to structure like pilings, bulk heads, channel drops or just about any structure you can find,” Farah said. “I’ll be fishing the smaller baits with a soft-tip medium lite spinning rod. The reel will be loaded with 15-pound test braided line and a 2-foot fluorocarbon leader. This rig allows me to work lures in tight to structure.”

The guide also uses a slab spoon that can be fished on bottom where flounder like to lay up and ambush small shad and minnows.

“A 1/4- or 1/2-ounce spoon is good in gold or silver,” Farah said. “Another option is to use tandem rigged soft plastics. I’ll rig a heavier jig on bottom, with a light one on top. The best colors for soft plastics are predominately white, pearl or glow/chartreuse.”

Farah chooses a lengthy leader, 2 to 3 feet, when targeting flounder in the Laguna Madre.

“That allows a flounder to pick up a live bait without feeling the rod tip,” he said. “With live bait, I’ll often wait 10 to 15 seconds to set the hook. With lures I’ll feel the tap, tap, tap of a flounder, wait a couple of seconds, then set the hook.”

Finding trout, drum

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explained. “I really had to work for them, though. It was a grind.”

On the Aransas Bay Complex, Capt. Sutton Schoonover said flooding spring tides have kept fish scattered.

“We are catching a lot of redfish, speckled trout and black drum in 2 to 3 feet of water along flats with plenty of grass beds and sand pockets,” Schoonover said. “Flats with more sand pockets rather than large, dense areas of seagrass have been producing more bites.”

The redfish have been aggressive when found, but Schoonover said they haven’t been hanging out in large schools.

“You’ll find a few here and two there, but the high water levels seem to be keeping them spread out,” he said. “That’s why driftfishing has been more productive lately, because it has allowed us to cover more water.”

Schoonover’s anglers have been catching and releasing speckled trout in all sizes, from 10-15 inches up to the 26-27 inch mark. He said the trout he’s been seeing are fat and full of eggs.

“There’s really no rhyme or reason to where certain sized fish are staging,” he said. “You can catch a 12-inch trout on one cast, and then catch a 5-pounder on the next. The fish just seem to be moving all over the place.”

Schoonover’s bait presentation of choice has been soft plastic paddle tails with a small profile.

“We’ve had a lot of success chunking D.O.A. 3-inch paddle tails in natural color patterns,” he said.

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