Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm interested in hearing about any run-ins with the law this season. Are the LEOs harassing, or just doing their jobs? Are they making an effort to take a stand, or letting this thing kind of go?

There should be plenty of people out there doing what we enjoy this season. Just remember, the LEOs are hired to uphold the law regardless of how ridiculous we all KNOW this particular law is. So do not take it out on them, just be respectful and move on. At the same time, know your rights and be prepared to RESPECTFULLY decline illegal searches when they are not warranted.
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Brad Alexander

FullSpectrumHerps.com

Hey Brad,
We were out for 4 days and had no problems at all. The only people who stopped to talk to us were border patrol. Very few stopped, most just waved and kept going. We did go through a secondary search Friday night going through the checkpoint on 385 North of Black Gap but only because it was 2am and about an hour earlier they had something go down. All the guys were cool and spent time talking with us while others did the search. We had some stop Saturday night south of Alpine and it happened to be the same guy from the search. He and the other 3 or 4 guys looked at pics we had taken and talked a few minutes about snakes and they left. We did have a game warden stop to see what we pulled off the road for east of Alpine during the day. I just got out and grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler in the bed of the truck and kept going. He just watched from across the road and never said anything. Overall it was a great trip.
We followed the laws, got alot of great pics, saw some animals and had a good time.

Chris

I have liked 99% of border patrol agents I have encountered. The other 1% are the guys at the Black Gap station. They pulled me and my friend into secondary twice in two nights. They also refused to call AAA for us when we were broke down. He said they didn't have a "timeframe", whatever that means, and he had a big grin on his face that I will never forget. We had to wait 6 hours until a guy from the phone company just happened to stop and let us use his satellite phone. To top it off they even searched us when we finally did get though; our truck was on the bed of a towtruck too. The next day they had a BBQ going and there was a couple guys(off duty I hope) playing frisbee. We were headed south that time and they didn't stop us but I would have been curious about what kind of "timeframe" it was taking to play frisbee that day.
Oh yea, at the BP station north of Shafter while one occupied me with "friendly" conversation, the other opened the back of my camper shell(which has windows so everything is easily visible) without even asking permission and proceeded to bang on the walls with a flashlight. I would have given permission if he'd asked. Oh well, nothing but good experiences with them at Langtry, 277, Sanderson, etc.