Backcountry Lawman

In the underbelly of Florida, hardened poachers operate in the dark, out of sight and away from residents who sleep soundly through the night. But poachers are not the only midnight hunters. In the state’s public wilderness tracts, cattle ranches, and water courses, wildlife thieves are stealthily and silently tracked.

Most people have never imagined the often dicey, comical, and sometimes bizarre job of a Florida game warden. Backcountry Lawman tells what it’s like to catch an armed poacher in the act—alone, at night, without backup or a decent radio to call for help. These stories describe the cat-and-mouse games often played between game wardens and poachers of ducks, turkeys, hogs, deer, gators, and other species. Few people realise that “monkey fishing”—electrocution of catfish—had the same outlaw mystique in the rivers of Florida as moonshining once did in the hills of Georgia and Tennessee.

With thirty years of backcountry patrol experience in Florida, Bob Lee has lived through incidents of legend, including one of the biggest environmental busts in Florida history. His fascinating memoir reveals the danger and the humour in the unsung exploits of game wardens.