>> they can get that writing head start, you know, and not have to wait until retirement before they take it on. >> before i end, i i just want to say thank you for inviting us here and your meeting and thank you. >> and thank you. we're thrilled of you. >> we're standing on the sundown bridge, one of redding's main attractions, drawing thousands of visitors every year. continuing our coverage on redding's literary culture, we speak with author steve callen about his time as a game warden in the state of california. >> i group up as the son of a game warden, and so the first -- my teenage years i spent a lot of the time riding on patrol with my dad. so i had all these great adventures working with him as well, so that's where the name of the book came. and then later on i became a fish and game warden myself, and then i continued writing stories

about my generation of fish and wildlife officers. so the book is called "the game warden's son." being with my dad during those years when he was a game warden was like having a storybook childhood. i did things that most kids would dream of. he was, when he started out, he was on what they call marine patrol, and his duty was patrolling the channel, the california channel islands which are fantastic, ask they're anywhere from, like, 26 miles across the sea like the song says or clear out in, you know, way out in the ocean. so i got to go on these excursions or these patrols out into the, out into the channel islands and see things that most kids would only dream of. there was one particular chapter i wrote about in the book, i called it a trip to the islands where we went out and took these two national park scientists from washington, d.c. out to santa barbara island, and it had been declared by franklin

roosevelt -- president franklin roosevelt as a national monument years before. it was their job to turn this island back to its natural state because during the previous century all these ranchers had come in and brought in all these exotic animals. they brought in cats and goats and pigs, and they were literally destroying the island. so anyway, while we dropped these scientists off on this island, we went on an adventure of our own, and my dad made this great lobster poaching case while we were there. that was just the beginning. here i am peeking up out of the galley watching this whole thing take place, and he's got these guys yelling and screaming, you know, these lobster poachers. it was quite an experience. and then later on there was a case where i was with my dad when i was a teenager on a night patrol, there was these duck poachers down in the willows area which is south of here. a lot of rice fields and this kind of thing.

and what they call market hunters would go out at night, and they'd sneak up on these huge flocks of, you know, in the thousands of ducks and geese and then they'd just fire their shotguns into them and kill hundreds of them at the same time. so one night we're working that, and i ended up -- there were three or four wardens in the same, you know, working in the same place. so they all go in different directions, and one of the old-timer warpeddens said -- wardens said why don't you ride with me. so he parks and starts to get out of the car, and i get out of the car, and he says, oh, you're not going with me. you stay here and watch my car. i'm thinking, man, i don't want to do that. watch your car? i wanted to go out, you know? so about halfway through this night, you know, while he's out there on this levee, i thought, well heck with this, i'm going to walk back to my dad's car. it's just about a mile away. so i walk out to the road, and

i'm walking back down toward where my father's patrol car is, and i hear this, these voices. and coming across the field i hear these people slopping through the mud, and here comes these two duck poachers out of the field. so i'm ducking, i'm hiding behind the tooleys while these guys come slopping through the mud, over the road and then they disappear. and they ended up hiding all these gunny sacks full of these illegal ducks that hay had killed in -- they had killed in a culvert. so anyway, i ended up making this case later showing my dad and these two wardens where these guys had hidden their ducks, and the next day they catch 'em. so it was quite an adventure for me. that's just two examples, but i had all kinds of them, and the book's full of those kinds of investigations. watching my dad, learning the little tricks to being a good

wildlife officer, you know, like don't slam the door when you get out of the car, you know, that kind of thing, because they'll hear you and then it's over and all these little things. so i couldn't wait when i got old enough and i graduated from college, you know, i wanted to be a fish and game warden myself. so i had a head start whereas a lot of these wardens when they start the job, they had to go through a process, a learning process. well, i had already gone through all that on-the-job training for the last ten years of my life, you know, riding around with my dad. so being a fish and game warden is not an appointed position. it's just like any other civil service job, you have to take a test. you pass the written, then you take an oral. and then you're on a list, and if you're lucky and you do well enough, your name will come up on the list, and they'll do an investigation, and they'll background check and everything else. and if all that goes well, then they'll, you'll get a call and

say, hey, we decided to hire you, and your first position's going to be, in my case, my first position was in a place called earp down on the colorado river which was one of the hottest places in the world on the summertime. i didn't care. i was so excited, i couldn't believe it. so that's how it all started for me. at the same time, working down in the southern california area was a great learning experience, and i had a lot of fun down there and learned a whole lot. later on in my career i was, or, in fact, i was there on the colorado river for three and a half years, and then i got promoted to lieutenant and went to the san bernardino/riverside area and worked all kinds of interesting investigations there related to exotic animals and these reptile collectors and a lot of things you'd never do up here. so i worked a case for over a year involving a, there was a

bald eagle which is an endangered species was shot and left at the front gate of the fish and game office here in redding. and i, one day i showed up at work, and they told me about this, finding this eagle. and everybody thought, well, we'll throw it in the freezer. there's not much we can do. well, there was a note attached to this eagle, to the leg of the eagle, threatening the life of one of the wardens i supervised at the time. it was kind of like a message, you better leave us alone, or more than this was going to happen. so rather than give up, i started doing a lot of research, investigation and asking around, and i started getting little tips here and tips there, and i came up with two suspects and ended up giving these guys a handwriting exemplar exam where i tested their -- and then i sent off the handwriting to the fbi, you know, with this note. and the fbi confirmed that my

suspects were the ones that wrote the note. and i ended up sending the feathers of this bird to the smithsonian institute. we did a search warrant, search warrants on both of their houses and came up with a lot of different evidence, different feathers and everything. so we ended up sending them off to the smithsonian institute in washington, d.c., and they pinpointed one speezs these were, and this was another example of that was some of the evidence went to the san francisco homicide forensics unit. and here these guys only investigate murders, but they were thinking, this is great. i'm tired -- you know, this is -- i get to work an eagle case? so they ended up telling me the exact position that eagle was in when it was shot, and, you know, the angle that the bullet came into the eagle and whether it was a female or a male, the whole thing. and so anyway, after all that was done, i narrowed it down to these guys and convicted them, and one of them ended up going

to prison. the other one spent about six months in jail. the greatest issue is habitat loss. if we're going to have wildlife, we have to have habitat, places for wildlife to live. they need water, cover and space. and more of that space is being covered with houses and shopping centers and buildings and highways. and the longer we go, the more of it's being covered. and that's a huge issue. and for what little wildlife we have left, you have to have somebody to enforce those laws to keep people from going out and killing it illegally. the biggest problem is money. if there's a way to make money, somebody will kill it to get money. and the ocean is a huge problem. we've got, you know, there's 1100 miles of coastline in california where -- and along the coast there's all this, a lot of illegal commercial

fishing going on, and this is only just a few officers to go around and enforce the laws so that we'll always have fish and wildlife. they're setting up marine-protected areas where they're closed to certain activities to allow these overfished species to come back. and then there's a huge issue on the federal level with, well, an example of what's going on right now in washington, d.c. where a lot of the agencies are being defunded and environmental agencies are being defunded. you can't have your cake and eat it too. if you don't fund these agencies, don't count on there being much wildlife left in a few years. can't take that away and expect to have wildlife. california's fortunate because california has always been a state that values its resources. and so the policies have remained good. and one of the issues has always

been the fact that not being near enough wildlife officers to go around because there's -- i'm not sure right now what is there, like, almost 40 million people in california? the number of wildlife officers in the field is probably around 400. so that gives you a little example. but working with the legislature, california officers have done fairly well. they're pretty well supported. i wrote both books for three reasons. the first reason, i had all these great stories to tell, and i wanted people to enjoy, enjoy these great stories and understand. and the second run was for -- reason was for people to understand that the game warden's job is a lot more than checking fishing licenses and writing fishing tickets. there's a million things a game warden has to do. and the third and most important reason was i wanted to include a resource, a conservation message

in everything i write. so is that's what i want them to take away from it, is each one of those stories has a message about how valuable these resources are and what it takes to keep them, you know, to keep them there so people can, future generations can enjoy them. and that's what i would say. and everybody that's talked -- we've had hundreds of people tell us how much they enjoy the book, and it's not just hunters and fishermen, we've had a lot of people that say, man, i love your book because they're great stories, and i understand the message you're trying to convey by writing them. >> i'm standing in front of the redding library which is the main branch of the public libraries. come inside with us as we learn about the early history of shasta county. >> today we are here in redding, california, and we are at the redding library of the shasta public libraries, and we are on th