Right Place, Right Time
A Hardin County game warden was patrolling Village Creek by boat when he came across a woman in distress at just the right time. Two ladies had been paddling in two separate canoes when one of the women flipped over in deep water with a strong current and couldn’t get loose from the trees or get her belongings out of the canoe. The warden gave her his life jacket and instructed her to swim away from the canoe and move downstream to a sandbar. He then grabbed the canoe and pulled it in his patrol boat and met both ladies downstream at the sandbar to make sure they were ok. He retrieved the lifejacket that she lost and gave it back to her and they were on their way again.

Pinocchio and Pinocchietta
A Hardin County game warden wrapped an investigation that began when the warden was looking for information on social media about a possible stolen boat. It turned out that the boat wasn’t stolen, but one of the individuals he was investigating had posted a photo last November of his fiancé posing with a white-tailed doe she had harvested. The warden checked his records and saw that the woman had purchased her hunting license at a store near her home the same day as the post, but at 7 p.m. which was later than the social media post.

Further investigation revealed that the deer was killed on a ranch in Real County and the warden enlisted the help of a Real County game warden to check the logbooks at the ranch. When the Hardin County game warden interviewed the couple, they were adamant that they had purchased the hunting license before they had gone on their week-long trip to the Hill Country and denied buying when they returned. The warden explained to the couple that he had time and date stamped information about when the license had been purchased and they had posted the picture of a harvested deer in Real County the same day she purchased a license in Hardin County.

The couple still wasn’t convinced, so the warden went to the store where the license was purchased, and the loss prevention manager looked up the transaction. As expected, the video showed the couple together at the store at 7 p.m. purchasing the hunting license. After showing them the pictures of themselves from the video, they admitted to buying the license when they returned from their trip. Citations for taking a white-tailed deer without a hunting license and restitution are being filed. Case pending.