Strange Encounters

District Game Warden Riley Gerding

One day during the deer hunting season I was patrolling dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, keeping an eye out for potential hunting violations. At this time of year, it’s pretty common to see trucks parked along section lines or tucked along field approaches as hunters head out on foot. Most of the time it’s nothing unusual, but occasionally something catches your attention.

As I drove down a gravel road, I noticed a pickup sitting in the middle of a field near a slough. That immediately stood out to me. There was one individual outside the vehicle wearing high-visibility orange, which at least told me he was aware of the hunting season.

I stopped for a moment and watched from a distance. At first, I figured he had shot a deer and was tracking it into the slough, which wouldn’t be uncommon as hunters sometimes have to follow a trail into thick cover to find their deer.

After a few minutes, though, I noticed he kept moving around in one specific area. From where I was sitting, it looked like he might be bent over working on something. My next thought was that maybe he had already recovered the deer and was gutting it out in the field.

What really caught my attention was that the back door of his pickup was open. Then, in one quick motion, I saw him hurry over and place something in the back seat. That’s when it started to look a little suspicious.

It wasn’t clear what he had just put in the vehicle, but the way he moved made me curious enough to go take a closer look.

When I pulled alongside his vehicle, I rolled down my window and introduced myself, and asked what he was doing out there.

He casually replied, “Getting my bird.”

For a second, I assumed he meant he had been pheasant hunting. That would have made sense for the area, and sometimes hunters will combine deer hunting with a little bird hunting if the opportunity comes up.

“What do you mean, your bird?”

He turned and pointed to the back seat of his pickup and said again, “I was getting my bird.”

At first, all I could see was a dark shape sitting there. For a moment, I thought maybe it was a big black dog.

Then it shifted a little. That’s when I realized it definitely wasn’t a dog. It was an emu.

The man went on to explain that the emu had gotten out of its pen earlier and had wandered off. He told me he had three emus at home that he kept as pets, and this one had decided to go exploring.

So, instead of a hunting violation or a deer being processed in the field, what I had actually come across was a man chasing down his runaway emu during the middle of deer season.

As a game warden, you never know what you’re going to run into while out on patrol. Some days it’s chasing poachers, and other days it’s watching someone round up a wandering emu in the middle of a field.

It’s just another reminder that no two days in this line of work are ever quite the same.