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November 29, 2008

Dave Richey: Faces of a conservation officer

By DAVE RICHEY

'The duties of a state conservation officer are 50 percent public relations, 40 percent law enforcement and 10 percent other things, such as filing paper work."

That was Leelanau County conservation officer Mike Borkovich speaking. He is a great big walking contradiction to many people as he goes about enforcing the state's fish and game laws. One day last week was spent riding with the Department of Natural Resources longtime law enforcement officer, and it offered glimpses of two sides of the man and his personality.

First of all, understand this: Borkovich is big at 6-5. He is 53, married with two children, and runs or walks quickly through the snow-covered woods when on the track of someone who is breaking or has broken the law. He smiles easily, gets angry easy when people commit fish or wildlife violations, and he is a relentless seeker of the truth.

Make no mistake about it, he'd rather make friends than enemies, but a motto he lives by is: "Never lie to me."

Our first stop that day was in a piece of state-owned pines as his patrol truck busted through snow drifts down a two-track wooded trail. He told me a man had shot a big buck in the pines, and went to get his father to help field-dress the animal and drag it out to his car.

He was gone from the dead buck for 10-15 minutes when one or more thieves dragged the deer out to their vehicle, and drove off with the buck. Borkovich was intent on trying to figure out who stole the deer when we came across two illegal bait piles.

Baiting is illegal across the Lower Peninsula, as is feeding deer and turkeys as a result of a Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) case in Kent County. We began looking for the killing site, quickly found where the animal fell, and once we located the kill site, we began looking for the blinds. Two blinds were found in the pines but the available sign was a day or two old.

"This makes me sick to my stomach," he said, pointing to the corn on the bloody ground. "I don't know who was baiting and hunting here but we'll find out today. I've got a couple of ideas about who was involved, and I think I'm right. Anyone who baits will ruin the hunting for dozens of nearby law-abiding people."

We interviewed several people in connection with this illegal baiting and killing case during the day, made two visits to one residence, and he was right. It took almost 45 minutes of talking to the individual before he confessed to baiting. The guilty party was ticketed and will pay fines.

Ours was not a real busy day by his standards. He made the above arrest for illegal baiting, and other cases we worked included a pending arrest for the illegal killing of a doe fawn. There also is a pending arrest for trespass by an individual we interviewed, and a possible arrest for killing an illegal doe over bait. We worked from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and talked with many people while covering much of Leelanau County.

Some of the in-between times in the field or on the road produced many chats with locals, which in two cases, provided helpful information pertinent to one or more of the pending cases. His work days often are divided into daylight and evening work, depending on the time of year.

"Since early November, probationary conservation officer Mark Papineau and I have made 25 wildlife-related arrests during his training period with me," Borkovich said. "Those arrests range from the illegal killing of deer, hunting deer without a license, hunting deer over bait, and killing a sub-legal Leelanau County buck. It also included arrests for having a loaded firearm in a motorized vehicle to another for the possession of marijuana.

"I have no respect for people who would be intoxicated from alcohol or in possession of or using illegal narcotics while hunting.," he said. "We (the DNR) have a zero tolerance policy toward such behavior, and they are far from being regarded a hunter by me."

One of my pet peeves is the number of pages in each year's fishing and hunting-trapping digests. In some cases, the stilted language and unimaginative presentations are baffling. I asked Borkovich his thoughts on making these annual law digests more user-friendly and easier to understand.

"I'd like to see our hunting and fishing digests become easier to understand by resident and nonresident sportsmen," he said. "Managing wildlife resources is a very complicated and technical job staffed by DNR biologists and conservation officers who do their best to provide quality outdoor recreational opportunities for a wide variety of people.

"But sometimes in working with special interest groups, we tend to create laws, rules and directives that are difficult to understand. This often causes animosity toward the DNR ... and worse yet, causes sportsmen to be worried about breaking a law, often one they had no intention of breaking."

It's been said that one of the greatest problems in managing fisheries or wildlife is managing the people that utilize those resources. That could be more easily accomplished by better managing people so they understand the laws. The solution could be a more concise digest, and that can only come from having it written in a clearer and easier to understand format.

The night before we rode together Borkovich received a phone call from a young man who had just shot his first deer. He shot at a buck, missed the animal and killed a doe by mistake. The person called Borkovich to confess what had been an unintentional violation of the law.

"I told him to field-dress the animal, hang it in their barn, and we would come to get the animal," he said. "He also was told that because he had been honest, and phoned the officer with news of what had happened, that he would not be given a ticket although the deer would be confiscated and given to a needy person. I told him to be extra careful in the future, to know what was behind the target, and thanked him for his honesty."

We had no idea we would soon find someone who could use the deer. Our next stop before picking up the illegal doe was one Borkovich disliked.

"This stop," he told me, "is to check an individual who wants a permit to deer hunt from his stationary car. Such permits only go to people who are restricted to a wheel chair. I hate having to tell the applicant he would not get the permit."

We pulled up to the residence and the applicant, Joe Gumieny of Maple City, walked to the door, stepped outside while leaning on a cane to talk with us, and Borkovich painfully told the man his application had been denied -- and why.

The man has suffered 15 strokes, can't walk in the woods, and had tried to hunt on the firearm opener and fell five times. He said he wanted to hunt to get a deer for winter meat. He was told we would try to find him a deer to take that pressure off him.

We drove to the barn holding the doe that had been accidentally shot, loaded it into the patrol truck, and called Gumieny while on the road back to Maple City to put on a coat and hat and be outside. He was told that I wanted pictures of the officer, Gumieny and the deer.

"This is so great," the man told us in a choked-up voice before we dropped it off a venison processing shot for him. "You don't know how much this venison donation means to me."

We knew because it meant a great deal to us to see an illegally killed doe go to a needy individual who continues to undergo stroke therapy.

Borkovich loves being a conservation officer, and loves to fish and hunt although he admits he doesn't always have enough time to hunt as often as he'd like. When asked what his favorite game animal was and what he most liked to hunt, he paused before answering.

"My favorite is 'muliewhitetailelk'," he said, spelling it out. "I love hunting each one equally, and we try to make one hunt each year out west for elk and mule deer. And then we hunt near home for whitetails, and whenever I can get away during the season, I love to hunt ducks."

Conservation officers have what can be a dangerous job, but Borkovich tackles his with a passion. It keeps him outdoors where he likes to be, puts him into constant contact with the public, and he enjoys the public relations interaction with people in his county. Even those who get a ticket, and must pay a fine, have a great deal of respect for him.

He treats people fairly, and is up-front in his conversations with them, and advises them that he will be as fair as he can with them providing they don't lie to him. Some still try to con him, but those are the ones he delights in giving tickets to. For him, enforcing fishing and game laws is a life style he dearly loves.

"And just think," he said, "I get paid to have all this fun."

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