I'm Game! An Interview with a Game Warden - Information for Writers

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In this article we are speaking with Roger Guay and Kate Flora who collaborated on the book A Good Man with a Dog

Can you start Roger by telling me about your background

Roger - 
The book is about a Game Wardens life in the real world the good the bad and the ugly. Most people see this field of Law enforcement as the wander around and take care of baby animals stuff but its the furthest from the truth.

Fiona -
What is a Game Warden's job description? How did you decide this was the career for you?

Roger - 
Game Wardens or Conservation Officers duties vary from state to province; but here in Maine, we enforce hunting fishing and recreational vehicles and look for and recover all missing people missing in the fields and forest of the state. We have full police powers and duties.

Growing up I was trained to avoid wardens at all cost. But I grew older and saw what they stood for and protected.  I met a guy dying of cancer and spent time talking to him about what mattered in his life. Then when my father died in a drowning accident, a warden befriended me. That's when I understood what wardens were about.

My family background was guiding and working for the Canadian pacific rail. I worked as a forester scaler before getting hired.

Fiona - 
Would you be willing to share the insights you gleaned from the man who spoke with you about his end of life thoughts with you?

What moved you towards this kind of work from that interaction?

Roger - 

He began to reflect on his life as a mentor and wanted me to understand what was and was not important in life. His memories he had made with his family hunting and fishing and the adventures in the outdoors were the only thing that had value to him in his final months.

Fiona -
So you became a games warden - what personality traits do you think serve you best in your job?

Roger -
Hate the sin not the sinner best weird way to put it. A lot of poachers love the outdoor resources and were for the most part nice people, but their view of the glass was half full instead of half empty. To preserve our wildlife for future generations, we need the cup to filling up not emptying down. Make sense?

Fiona - 
Yes thank you. (To read more about WILDLIFE FORENSICS go HERE)

Fiona - 
When do you start your day? When does it end?

Roger - 
A wardens day is tied to the season not a clock. Its all about keeping an eye on vulnerable exposure to fish and critters. for example smelts are running here right now they run up small streams at night to lay eggs if no one protects them they will all be caught and the smelt run will be no more affecting all the fish in the lake. So you have no clock you work cycles of life.

So you may sit all night on a brook and chase illegal bear hunters the next day

Fiona - 
So based on the calendar you are guarding certain aspects of wildlife - and the help the people who are enjoying wildlife do so responsibly. Sometimes people go missing. Can you tell me how/when you are called in and what the procedures are?

Roger -
In the state of Maine, we would average about a search a day for a missing person. Wandering toddlers, to drug overdose, to suicide-suspicious disappearances etc. Game Wardens in Maine have the jurisdiction by law to run these operations if it is determined that the missing persons are likely in the field.We work with all the involved agencies to get the person back safe and sound. Calls usually will come thru 911 and will be dispatched from there.

Fiona - 

How successful are authorities in finding the people alive?

Roger -
There are a lot of variables that effect the outcome of a search and its success:

• Weather 
• Terrain 
• Physical health of victim 
• Experience 
• Clothing 
• Mental state ect. 

Most cases, say 90%, that are called in quickley are found with three hours. 

Alive 95% of the time.

Fiona - 
Can you tell me the requirements (educational etc) to become a game warden and what training included.

Roger - 
In Maine you are not required to have a degree to become a warden but reality is that without one or military time the chances of making the cut is very slim. You have to pass a written test a physical test a two oral boards and then full background and polygraph. If you make it through that, you go to the academy for 26 weeks, then you are on probation for a year. Its a long hard road.

Fiona -

This is writer Kate Flora who collaborated on the book with Roger.

How did the two of you meet and how did the idea for this project come about?

Kate - 
I've done two previous nonfiction books, Finding Amy and Death Dealer, and both of those books involved the Maine warden service and trained cadaver dogs. 

Roger was a K9 handler in both cases. In Finding Amy, his dog's behavior at the burial site both confirmed the presence of the body and also located the site where the body had lain for two days before being buried, which corroborated the suspect's confession to his mother about the details of the crime. I was working on the second case when Roger called and said he liked what I did in Finding Amy, and he'd just retired. People had always told him he had great stories and should write them down but he didn't know how, so I said, "Let's talk." We did..and A Good Man with Dog started to evolve.

Fiona - 
So what did you learn about his job that you found to be the most interesting? Did you get to follow him around?

Kate -
Actually, so many things about is job were fascinating. We did the initial interviews driving around one of his former patrol areas near Greenville, Maine in a pickup truck. I held the recorder, and every time we turned a corner, he'd say: I had a plane crash here, or a snowmobile accident there, or something. We were on a maze of dirt logging roads and everywhere, there was story. 

I started out thinking that this was going to be a collection of cute fish and game stories...bad fishermen, poachers, etc. But I learned a ton about the reasons for protecting these resources and how easily they can be wiped out. I realized we were talking about a world where everyone carried guns. And then, he started talking about recognizing the value of dogs to the work they did (the warden service was phasing out their K9 program at that time) and how he and his first dog bonded and the amazing things they could do.

Along the way, I trudged through the woods, went to warden K9 trainings, went to other K9 trainings, etc. Got lost in the woods, so I could be found by dogs.

As he told the story, it was kind of an evolution...from lost people to people who were deceased but the dogs didn't find them because they didn't have cadaver training, and then the discussion about how he would use the dogs to reconstruct shooting scenes.

And a little bit more: One thing that was fascinating was all the stories about how they used the dogs to find evidence--fish and game, but also spent shell casings, guns thrown away by fleeing criminals, finding where the shooter was standing, where the animal was when it was shot, and where it fell...a whole lot of what we call Canine CSI.

Fiona -
Very cool - how does that work?

Kate - 
The dogs are trained to find many things, depending on what command is given. There will be one command for finding live human scent, another for finding a cadaver. There may be special commands for finding fish or finding game; and then, for the evidence searches, the dogs may be training to find anything with a human scent, such a discarded cigarettes, trash, food wrappers, etc, but also to find anything with brass or gunpowder scents, so they can find shotgun wads, spent shells, or even a handgun that has been thrown away. He has one amazing story of searching for an unexpected tranquilizer dart that missed the moose and was somewhere in a huge playground. If a child had found it, it would have been lethal.

Fiona - 
Oh? What happened?

There was a sick moose hanging around the playground, so the state biologist came out with a tranquilizer gun loaded with enough stuff to put down a moose...he shot and missed and the dart landed somewhere in the grass. The humans couldn't find it, so they brought in Roger and his dog and they searched and found it.

Fiona - 
can you talk about Roger's dogs and evidence searches?

Kate - 
Okay. Evidence searches. Because of the many abilities that a search dog can acquire, they can become significant resources for helping to find evidence that may be scattered over a very large outdoors area. Roger's dog was trained to find live humans, cadavers, cadavers that are in water, as well as fish that were illegally poached and often hidden by fishermen in snowbanks or in their vehicles or near their fishing sites. Because of the dog's ability to find spent casings, they could be used to show where the shooter was standing, and locate spent shells which could link a particular gun to a particular shooting event.

Also, the dogs are good at scenting humans and animals and blood, so in recreating a crime, they can locate, via the human scent/spent shells, etc. where the shooter was standing, and then the place where the human or animal was struck by the bullet, and the place where the animal (this is game warden work, after all) fell.

Fiona - 
And he puts a GPS coordinate down? How does he map this information?

Kate - 
Searches are generally done with a hand-held GPS device which can locate all of these areas on a map. A lot of the mapping for major searches is done by a mapping expert with the warden service, particularly on a large area search where the search areas are assigned, cleared, and mapped so they can keep track of the areas that were searched.

Fiona - 

Are these the kinds of things one learns in the book A Good Man with a Dog?

Kate - 
Absolutely. The book is full of lore about the dog's training and expertise, but also about real crime scene reconstruction, both human and animal. Mostly animal. There is a lot of the training lore, as well, in Death Dealer: How cops and cadaver dogs brought a killer to justice.

www.roger.guay.com 

@RGAuthor 

www.kateclarkflora.com 

@kateflora

Fiona - 
Can you tell us one of Roger's harrowing stories?

Kate - 
Harrowing story? Well, how about this one: One day he's out on patrol and he sees a known poacher step into the road with a gun. This guy is also a known drug dealer and all around bad guy. Roger stops to check on him, thinking perhaps he's going to have his chance to nail him at last, but as they are talking, five or six the man's friends, also toting rifles, step out of the woods and surround him. And while they are not exactly aiming their guns at him, their guns are not pointing toward the ground and away, and it is clear that if he makes a wrong move, he's going to be shot. He has to deescalate the situation and walk away. Those events were not uncommon...the book is full of scary stories because this is a world of guns.

Fiona - 

Thank you so much Kate and Roger for this information.

If you'd like to stay in touch with them:

www.roger.guay.com 

@RGAuthor 

www.kateclarkflora.com 

@kateflora

And as always, a big thank you ThrillWriters and readers for stopping by. Thank you, too, for your support. When you buy my books, you make it possible for me to continue to bring you helpful articles and keep ThrillWriting free and accessible to all.

Cadaver Dogs: Information for Writers with Kate Flora

Today, I'd like to introduce you to Kate Flora. Award-winning

mystery and true crime writer Kate Flora is the author of 14 books, including the true crime story Death Dealer and the novel And Grant You Peace, both forthcoming in the fall of 2014. 

Her book Finding Amy (true crime), co-written with a Portland, Maine deputy police chief, was a 2007 Edgar Award nominee. Kate’s other titles include the Thea Kozak mysteries and the starred-review Joe Burgess police series, the third of which, Redemption, won the 2013 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction.

A former assistant attorney general in the areas of battered children, deadbeat dads, and employment discrimination, Kate is a founding member the New England Crime Bake conference, a founder of Level Best Books where she worked as an editor and publisher for seven years and has served as international president of Sisters in Crime. When she’s not riding an ATV through the Canadian woods or hiding in a tick-infested field waiting to be found by search and rescue dogs as research

for her books, she can be found teaching writing at Grub Street in Boston.

Fiona -
Kate, you have an interest in cadaver dogs and have included them in the plot line of a few of your books. Can you tell me about your background with working dogs?

Kate - 
To be absolutely clear, I have no working dog myself. I got into the realm of search and rescue and cadaver dogs when I was helping a friend, who was a police captain, write about a murder he investigated. He wanted to tell a story, and I knew how to write. In that case, the victim was buried in the woods and the police couldn't find her. She was ultimately found when a Maine game warden decided he had to help out, and organized a search with SAR (search and rescue) personnel and trained cadaver dogs.

In order to write that story, I needed to know more about how cadaver dogs and handlers worked, and that meant watching them train. 

Fiona -
Can you tell us about your experience?

Kate - 
I started out like many people, thinking the handlers just ran the dogs through the woods. I was so wrong. 

It's years of training bringing those dogs along and getting them certified for the various search expertises. The most important thing I learned by watching the training, is that these handlers and their dogs are a genuine team--it is important for the handler to be able to read his or her dog and become attuned to the nuances of the dog's messages. It is also critical to learn to trust the dog and not override the dog's messages.

It is almost balletic, watching the synchronized actions of a good dog team. The handler can tell from the dog's body language, speed of movement, and even from the dog's breathing what the dog is discovering, when the dog has a scent, and when the dog is close to a find. And those dogs will work all day for the reward to playing with a ball or playing tug of war with rope.

Fiona - 
In search and rescue events that I've participated in the dog is on a 30 foot lead - this was a search for live people. Can you tell us what the dog wears on a search, the equipment involved, and what the handler wears?

Kate - 

In general, the dogs I've observed are not on a lead, unless the conditions--adjacent highway or other dangers--calls for it. These are primarily air scent dogs and to do their job, they need to be able to range some distance in order to try and pick up that scent cone.

Equipment varies, but in general they wear a vest, which helps to signal to the dog that he or she is going to work, and often a bell, which is especially helpful in thick brush or woodlands or during nighttime searches so the handle can keep track of the dog's location. Handlers say that they can tell when a dog is on a scent, and often when the dog has made a find, by the increasingly excited ringing of the bell. 

The handler? Again, this depends on the weather and the organization. If they are a uniformed searcher, it will be a uniform. Many of the volunteers also wear a shirt or something that indicated their affiliation. The other gear depends on the search--weather, time of day, time of year, the search parameters and how long a search team may be out to clear a block of land, whether there is an expectation that the person may be found alive. And there is always the dog's favored play object or food treat.

Fiona - 
These are mainly air scent dogs, which means that they keep their nose in the air. There are also dogs who prefer by nature to do ground scent, they are great for following trails. But you have also worked with water scent dogs - dogs who can find cadavers in bodies of water can you talk about that experience?

Kate - 
I haven't actually worked on a case where they used water scent dogs. I spent a couple of years with a retired Maine game warden who trained and ran cadaver dogs, and he has told me a lot. In the book we've just finished, there are some stories of dogs who have found bodies in the water. 

One interesting thing that the wardens say is that dogs can scent bodies in the water within a few hours of death, which I found amazing, and that many other branches of law enforcement are unaware of this as a resource and usually fail to employ it in search situations. 

There was a case recently in New Hampshire where a young girl disappeared and was found days later in a river. A water scent dog could probably have found her days earlier. The scent molecules released by the body travel through the water and can be scented by the dogs from the shore or from a boat. 

I've heard discussions about whether a dog could work from a plane but they've been inconclusive. One thing that's often missing from these discussions is that first the dog has to go through all of those other cadaver scent training, and then also has to be trained to be comfortable in a boat. 

And an aside, one of the differences between tracking dogs and air scent dogs is that tracking dogs are generally working from a known scent following a known person, while air scent dogs are often working away from the scene (which is often contaminated by the many people their and by fear scent, which is very powerful) and trying to find the scent in the air.

Fiona - 
What would surprise us most to learn about using a cadaver dog and are there any cool details a writer might include in their plot line?

Kate - 

Well, gee. In the first true crime I wrote, Finding Amy, the dog came to the scene and didn't first hit on the grave site where the victim was buried, but about ten or twelve feet away under some trees. Later, when the suspect confessed the crime to his mother, what he told her was that he had killed Amy and left her lying under those trees for a few days, and then gone back and buried her. The dog was reacting to that first scent pool where the body had been lying, and the dog's reaction was corroboration of the confession at trial. 

Other cool details? Well, because cadaver scent can move through the ground and into growing plants, you can often find an old burial through the scent that has become embedded in trees or shrubs.

Sometimes bears or other predators have been at the bodies and the dogs can find small bone fragments that are sufficient to show that there was a body. 

Find the guy, get to play!

The dogs can find burials that are 50 to 100 years old. Other cool things? Not so much about cadaver dogs, but dogs can also be trained to find find shell casings, shotgun wads, cigarette butts, all kinds of evidence that might have been discarded by the killer that a human searcher would never find in the woods.

Fiona - 

They can indeed find very cool things. On a personal note, my daughter has Type 1 diabetes. She has a medical alert dog who tells her when her blood sugar number goes over 180 or under 100. Those are very specific parameters. He is both a ground scenting dog (I trained him to find our family members so, for example, in the library when I can't find my son, I just tell our pup to "Find the boy," and pup follows the trail until we land on him) and an air scent-er. When pup is checking my daughter's blood numbers his nose will go in the air. When he does it repeatedly over a span of time, I know he's just waiting for it to hit the number that will get him his treat. Then he comes to alert.

Kate, thank you so much for sharing your experiences. Any last thoughts?

Kate - 

One thing I would add is that many of these events take place at night…and if the body was dumped at night, the wardens are looking at the environments, decided where someone might hide a body. 

Fiona - 
Can you talk more about that last bit?

Kate - 
Well, that last really goes much more to suspect behavior than to cadaver dogs, but that's something else there's some writing and thinking on. 

This is really in my game warden/outdoor search realm which is practically another interview. We think that searches are just a bunch of folks going out and walking through the woods--whether for a dead person or a live person, but in reality they are far more complicated and planning intensive than that. In Finding Amy, one of the most interesting moments is when the wardens come to interview the cops, to plan a search operation. Of course, we know that cops are territorial and certain, but this was the woods, which is warden territory. Wardens read the woods like cops read the streets. Hey…now that is a great line. Must remember it. Anyway, when they're dealing with a situations where someone may be hidden in the woods, they're looking for a million different things that brick and mortar cops might never think of. On another note, I forgot to mention that dogs are extremely good at finding weapons, so if the writer's bad guy has dumped his gun in the woods, human eyes might never find it, but a dog's nose will.

Fiona - 

Amen. Kate, please tell us about your favorite scar or your most harrowing story.

Kate - 

Well, my most harrowing experience was a hot air balloon crash…but let's talk about scars. I've never been in a gun fight, a knife fight, or any other kind of fight outside a courtroom, but I have a scar from back surgery that represents a fight with myself. After emergency surgery for a ruptured disk and having to give up running and skiing, I also had to fight my way back from the throes of "I'll never do anything again" into a braver world of taking different kinds of chances--chances with my writing, with stories I didn't know how to write, and ultimately, with other people's stories--co-writing a true crime with a police captain and working on a memoir with a Maine game warden who worked with search and rescue and cadaver dogs. Those books have taken me to some pretty interesting places.

Fiona - 

And could you tell us about some of your writing?


Kate - 

About Death Dealer:
When Miramichi resident Maria Tanasichuk’s husband David reports her missing, the local police force is perplexed: they have had a close relationship with the Tanasichuks and know David as a loving and supportive husband, yet his account of Maria’s disappearance contains disturbing inconsistencies. Through conversations with Maria’s many friends and loved ones in Miramichi’s small, close-knit community, the police soon discover that David has been using drugs heavily and Maria’s efforts to stop him have frayed the marriage. Witnesses report he has been selling Maria’s belongings to support his drug use, has been involved with another woman, and has engaged in suspicious, nighttime comings-and-goings. Further disclosures suggest that he played a role not only in Maria’s disappearance, but also in several unsolved murders.
The fact that they cannot locate Maria’s body -- combined with David’s clever, deceptive ways -- make it impossible for the Miramichi police to prove their suspicions. As signs that David may in fact be a dangerous killer mount, the police officers tracking him fear, rightly, that at any moment he could unleash his vengeful violence on their families. Only when they look across the border into Maine and enlist the help of the Maine Warden Service and trained cadaver dogs and dedicated handlers are Miramichi’s police officers able to undertake the long and grueling search for the evidence they need: Maria’s body.
New Horizon Press Books ISBN: 978-0-88282-476-5

About And Grant You Peace:

This 4th book in the Joe Burgess mystery series finds the Maine detective pulled into a case rife with religious tensions after screams for help lead him to a woman and a baby locked in a closet inside a burning mosque. The baby dies. The very young mother survives, but suffers from traumatic muteness. She has no ID, and no one has reported her missing. When the autopsy shows the baby was gravely ill, and needed surgery to survive, Burgess suspects someone was trying to keep mother and baby away from hospitals that might have asked questions.

The mosque’s Somali Imam claims to have no knowledge of the girl, or of who was responsible for scrawling anti-Muslim graffiti on the mosque’s walls. Burgess learns that the “Iron Angels,” an outlaw motorcycle gang led by William “The Butcher” Flaherty has been harassing the mosque’s members. Then someone tries to steal the baby’s body. Burgess has been hoping to regain a semblance of “normal family life,” but there, too, things are complicated. First, by the threat that his son will be suspended from school. Then by the chilling knowledge that his family is being stalked.

As Burgess tries to sort out the tangle of a suspicious and uncooperative immigrant community, an outlaw gang, and a mysterious man who may be involved with both, clues lead to another body, a stash of stolen guns and ultimately, a tense confrontation in which the staggering extent of death and destruction that’s been sowed in the name of greed is revealed.
Five Star/Cengage ISBN 978-1432829391


If you need more information about cadaver dogs, Kate suggests these references:


* Andrew Rebmann, Edward David & Marcella H. Sorg, Cadaver Dog Handbook: Forensic Training and Tactics for the Recovery of Human Remains

* American Rescue Dog Association Search and Rescue Dogs: Training the K-9 Hero

* Susannah Charleson, Scent of the Missing

* Cat Warren, What the Dog Knows

Fiona - 

Thanks Kate!

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Thank you so much for stopping by. And thank you for your support. When you buy my books, you make it possible for me to continue to bring you helpful articles and keep ThrillWriting free and accessible to all.