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DFG warden Robert Pelzman and partner Nigel keep their eyes open for possible hunting and fishing violations while on patrol near Iowa Hill, northeast of Auburn.
If you're Foresthill game warden Robert Pelzman, you get clues to a solid case against a Sacramento-area man for illegally baiting bears in a national forest.
It started a couple years back when Pelzman heard the sound of a cordless drill in the forest while on a routine patrol with a trainee, and after extensive surveillance, ended with a bust that also uncovered illegal possession of taxidermied mountain lions and ring-tailed cats.
The case exemplifies some of traits that recently earned Pelzman officer of the year honors from his employer, the California Department of Fish and Game.
"He goes the extra mile to watch and see what's going on," said his boss, Lt. Richard Vincent.
That Pelzman became a game warden and excelled at it comes as no surprise to his father, Ronald Pelzman, a retired fisheries biologist who also worked for the DFG.
As a child, the elder Pelzman said, "Robert picked up on wildlife and wanted to know as much as he could about it. If he hadn't gone into enforcement, he probably would've been a biologist."
What made his son perfect for law enforcement, he added, was his observation skills: "He doesn't say a lot; he's quiet. He picks up things other people might not pick up on. He studies things before he acts – even when he was very little he was that way."
Robert Pelzman's athletic performance, particularly in football at Folsom High School, was a tipoff that he'd make a good warden. Ronald Pelzman has two binders full of news clippings detailing his son's accomplishments, but he recalls one game in particular when Robert was supposed to kick a field goal, but the center snapped the ball over his head.
Robert scrambled after the ball.
"I thought he was going to kick it," Ronald Pelzman said, but instead his son grabbed the ball, spotted an eligible receiver and threw it to him, turning a disaster into a touchdown.
"Those are the things that suggest he's thinking ahead, putting two and two together pretty quickly," Ronald Pelzman said. "That's the kind of thing you need to do in enforcement, because typically you're on your own. You don't have a partner, so you have to rely on your judgment."
Strength, agility tools too
The athletic prowess didn't hurt either.
"He was the academy's superstar when it came to physical agility," said Jesse Keiser, a Vallejo game warden who went through training with Pelzman. "He got an award for getting one of the highest scores in the physicals for the academy."
Pelzman, now 37, had entertained the notion of playing college football, but ended up majoring in wildlife management at Humboldt State University after spending two years at American River College. Before long, he'd decided he wanted to be a warden, so he put himself through the training academy "self sponsored" – on his own dime, with no promise of a job at the end.
Whatever it takes
Since becoming a DFG warden, Pelzman has stood out in part because of his propensity for volunteering. He's volunteered to train new wardens (13 to date). When wardens in other areas need help, he's on it. He teaches hunter-education classes, too.
"All these ancillary responsibilities he takes on should be detracting from his ability to perform his normal warden duties, but they don't," said Vincent, his boss.
When the department decided to start a canine program, Pelzman was one of the first to volunteer, even though it meant signing over ownership of his new black Labrador retriever, Nigel, to the department.
Nigel was a year old when he was tested for the program, and "he was crazy enough to be trained for detection," Pelzman said. "They like dogs with a really high toy drive."
They went through training together for six weeks, and now Nigel is a detection dog, able to sniff out everything from guns and spent cartridges to abalone, deer and elk meat. It comes in handy. Nigel, who rides behind the driver's seat, his chin often resting on Pelzman's shoulder, has already alerted Pelzman to the presence of meat left out in the forest to lure bears.
Which brings us back to the bear-baiting story.
Bust now, or bust later?
Pelzman and trainee Jake Nicholas were patrolling forest roads near Auburn in 2008 when they saw a parked truck and heard a cordless drill in the distance. Pelzman asked Nicholas what he wanted to do.
Nicholas answered well: Stash their DFG truck, wait, watch, see what's going on. So they hid behind a manzanita bush just 10 feet behind the parked truck and watched as a father and son made trips back and forth. When they left the area, Pelzman and the trainee went into the forest and found what they'd been working on: a platform between trees.
That in itself wasn't legal in a national forest, Pelzman said, but it wasn't much of a bust. Pelzman opted to visit the tree stand from time to time to see what would develop.
Pelzman's trainee eventually moved on and another one took his place, and one day they found there had been activity near the platform. A big stack of doughnuts and pastries had been left out, and there were jars full of fermented meat, with holes in the lids, hanging from trees – classic bear bait, illegal in California. And wood had been stacked on the ground in a way that would funnel a bear into position to be shot from the platform.
This was a much better case, but Pelzman wanted more – he wanted to catch the guy in the act of hunting over the bait. So he borrowed three surveillance cameras from the U.S. Forest Service and set up a sensor that would alert him to the presence of vehicles going by (which he heard one night at 1 a.m., sending him out to the forest, only to find nothing).
Later, he checked in and found two of the cameras missing, and the third loaded with pictures of the man examining the cameras he'd taken down. The jig was up.
Pelzman couldn't afford to wait to catch him hunting over bait, so he got a search warrant and served it two days later. The man ended up pleading guilty to hunting over bait, forfeiting four stuffed ring-tailed cats (possession of which is illegal) and paying restitution for a camera he had damaged. The man's son was not charged.
"It takes a fair amount of work to be able to catch somebody doing something like this," Pelzman said. "I try to focus in on people who need to be caught."
With that case resolved, he's moved on.
He's got his eye on other poachers, and he's biding his time.
Pelzman, himself an avid hunter and fisherman, checks the licenses of anglers Steve Hubbard, left, and Dave Beach of Newcastle at Lake Theodore. (The fisherman were legal.)
Warden Robert Pelzman talks with Mark Menicutch – who had a fishing license – at Lake Theodore.
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