Last week I was in terlingua and saw State Trooper all over the place. At about 8:00 I was gasing up and saw 4 state troopers heading into the Park, two state troopers heading up the 118 towards the Christmas mountains..I asked the store owner what was up and she said they were in the area because they havent been down here in a while. I headed for the River Road and on the way passed another State Trooper in Lajitas and then passed two more as I drove down the River Road...At the windmill turn around point I was followed and pulled over by undercover officer who asked what I was doing because he said they never see any one out there late at night and when I told him that I was shooting pictures of snakes and wildlife, he said that I could be doing that in Califorinia.. He ran my drivers license then asked to see my pictures that I took because he was "into that kind of thing too" which I showed him and then he said be careful and I was on my way....
The next night I was crusing the River Road again and a State Trooper whipped around and starting following me....I suddenly saw an atrox and pulled over. The Trooper pulled in behind me and turned on his white over head lights and asked if I needed any help and i told him that I pulled over to take some pictures of the snake...He held his light on the atrox for me while i shot the pictures...We talked a while about snakes and he told me that the night before which had a little rain earlier in the afternoon, that his friend in another Trooper car had seen an alterna. He seemed pretty cool and asked me if he could go ahead of me since I was driving slow looking for snakes, which I said fine of course....Then about 150 yards from where we had just talked there was a freshly hit 3 foot atrox, still wiggling and then about a quarter of a mile down the road from that hit snake, we saw a 3 foot black tail freshly hit and wiggling....No one passed us at all so this State Trooper that i thought seemed cool, turned out to be not so nice and was purposely running over the snakes so we couldnt take any pictures of them.....This again, is showing us that the law enforcement doesnt care about the snakes or even this law!!
Bill
