Passport to Texas

Care to ride along with a Texas Game Warden on one of these?

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Since the TV show Lone Star Law—which is about Texas Game Wardens—premiered in June on Animal Planet, interest in ride-a-longs has increased.

A ride along is when someone from the public that’s not a commissioned peace officer actually rides with a game warden during their patrol—either in a vessel or in a vehicle.

Listener Mason from Southeast Texas sent a question into Ask a Game Warden inquiring whether members of the public are permitted to tag along while they make their rounds. Chief of Special Operations for Texas Game Wardens, Grahame Jones, says the answer is a qualified “yes.”

What they would need to do is contact their local Game Warden; they can go to the sheriff’s office or local game warden office. And you can actually go to the Texas Parks and Wildlife website, and locate the find a game warden tab—you can actually get the phone number for your game warden that way—and then make contact with them. In general, the ride-a-long can take a while to get approved through the chain of command. So, they’re not always feasible. Ideally, we like to reserve the ride-a-long programs for college students, maybe an internship from a university, or someone from the media that wants a little bit closer look at what we do.

Send your question to Ask a Game Warden from the contact us page at passporttotexas.org. We may answer it on the radio.

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For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.