The Game Warden's Son

A game warden's "dynamic and authoritative" memoir of protecting the wild, named Best Outdoor Book of 2016 by the Outdoor Writers Association of California (New York Daily News).

Retired game warden Steven T. Callan's love of nature and passion for protecting wildlife took root long before the adventures he describes in his acclaimed memoir, Badges, Bears, and Eagles. In this follow up, he intertwines more than a half-century of adventures and investigations with stories of his relationship with his father.

After an idyllic boyhood spent riding on patrol with his father in the canyons and beaches of California, Steven himself became a game warden in the early 1970s, joining the "desert rats" who patrolled the counties along the Colorado River. With wry humor, Callan tells how he and fellow officers outwitted perpetrators—most of them crafty, some of them hilariously foolish—who poached deer, lobsters, and abalone, baited bears, shot wild ducks to supply restaurants, and killed songbirds for epicurean dinner tables.

Their cases took them across the Channel Islands, through the back alleys of San Francisco, into the Sierras, and along California's pristine North Coast—all to protect California's natural resources for future generations.

"Callan's writing is dynamic and authoritative, with an episodic structure that will keep experts and novice readers turning the pages" (New York Daily News).