The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Game Warden and His Friend, Otto by Gary Ralston

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

The Game Warden and His Friend, Otto by Gary Ralston https://www.amazon.com/Game-Warden-His-Friend-Otto/dp/1662480946 The book is a collection of stories and situations a game warden will encounter in his work. The work can be difficult and very disheartening and at times very gratifying. Wardens do much more than enforcing fish and game law, and many of these activities are noted. I have offered a few tips about hunting and fishing, which I have learned during my seventy-five years of participation in these activities and observations gathered while spending countless hours in the great outdoors. The goal of this book is to inform the public about a warden’s life and the many things he is involved with in his work. I’m sure there will be some who will be critical of what I’ve put on paper, but I can assure you, what I’ve written ain’t fiction. I hope you purchase a copy of my book, read it with an open mind, enjoy a few laughs, learn some things you weren’t aware of, come away with a little more support, and hopefully respect for the work a game warden does for wildlife and benefits created for those who care about our great natural resources today and for generations to come.

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Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. See you're an amazing young man on the show with his book that he put out in April 11, 2024, called The Game Warden and his friend Otto by Gary Ralston. Gary, welcome the show.

How are you, sir? I'm really good. Good well. All right. Give us the dot com's websites, emails, social media, wherever you want people to find you on the inner web on the sky. I use Facebook. Okay.

Do you know your Facebook link or anything like that? No, not right offhand. All right. So give us a 30,000 overview, kind of in depth of what this book is about. It's a book about my journey as a game order. for 40 years and it has it's a combination of things i now would you say it's a novel or a memoir huh would you say it's a novel or is it a memoir a memoir probably all right all right and his friend auto now was that 40 years that you said you were a game warden i was 40 years wow wow that's

pretty awesome that's quite a good run yeah now who's this the game warden i guess is the antagonist in the story, the main character? Yeah. And then who is his friend Otto? Tell us about Otto. He was a rancher that when I went to work in the area, he didn't like the game commission. He didn't like game wardens.

He didn't like hatters. And everybody said that I would never be able to get acquainted with him. And I did. And it took me about three or four years to get acquainted with him. and once I got acquainted with him, we became best of friends. Wow. This is it interesting? That was, to me, quite a deal.

And what made you want to try and, you know, make him more amenal as a friend or is, you know, to the game warden business? To me, the only way you're going to be effective as a game warden is you're going to have to have a lot of cooperation for landowners and to get your job. done and you need their help and I always thought that the more of them you could get acquainted with and know personally the better off you were going to do the job was my thinking and it definitely worked it sounds smart you know Abraham Lincoln had this famous saying and I'm not sure if I quote it right here but I'll just pop it off the top of my head he had a famous saying say he said and this is kind of referring to I think a

politician's to other politicians and he's you know I don't like that man therefore I must get to know him better and it was a way of saying I don't like somebody but probably I don't understand them correctly so I should probably get

to know them so that I understand them maybe I might like them maybe I won't and so it's kind of opens that up I think and it sounds like you had kind of the same attitude of maybe, I mean, you're probably dealing with a lot of ranchers you had to maybe do that with. I did. Yeah.

A lot of rancher friends, farmers, and it gave me a lot of information that was very valuable to do my job, you know. Yeah. Tell us about your life. I see you're a U.S. veteran. Tell us about how you grew up and what to the journey you took through life. Well, I grew up. I was born in the Depression, 1935.

I was born in 1935. during the depression in Dust Bowl days. Wow. I grew up very poor. And as I recall, the first 10, 12 years of my life, everybody that seemed to be poor. And it wasn't until after the Second World War that things started picking up. And I went to college for a couple of years and didn't finish,

which was probably a mistake. But then I went into the service that served two years and the army overseas. And then I came back and applied for a job with the game department and waited three years before I got an answer and finally got a call one day and asked me if I wanted to go to work, still wanted to go to work for the game commission. And I told me, yes. What was the proponent behind that?

What made you choose that as your career or you're interested in? I always had a fantasy of being a game warden because I used to. my granddad who raised me the first 10 or 12 years of my life, he was like my dad, and he took me fishing and started me out fishing and hunting. And one time we were fishing and game warden coming along and was checking everybody in. I thought it was the neatest thing I'd ever saw, you know. So then I always thought I'd really like to be a game ward. I got the job. Well, that's a pretty cool way to come in contact with your future career. And 40 years, I mean, you must have really loved the work.

I loved the work. It got, it was a lot of fun and very interesting. And the first 30 years, I hated to take a day off. Oh, wow. It's like everything else, the politics got involved and all of the red tape and everything. kind of destroyed the joy of it, but nonetheless, it was a good career and I enjoyed it. You're out in the great outdoors is your office basically, fresh air, vitamin D from the sun. And, you know, if you like animals, there's plenty of animals in the forest and, you know, curating all our stuff.

But, yeah, Game Worn is a big business. I'm trying to remember, I think when we were kids and Boy Scouts, we'd go fishing. We, you know, hike up to lakes and stuff and fish. And I think, yeah, they would check you for the game war, and especially if you were out hunting with guns and, you know, deer season was always big here in Utah when I was a kid. And yeah, so you tell the story about your relationship with Otto and how many years, or decades maybe, did you guys know each other as best friends?

Probably 30 years, at least 30 years. Wow. And he passed away on me. Oh, that's unfortunate. Yeah. You built a great friend. He was a little older than I was, you know. Yeah.

He was a great old guy. I really liked him. And so with your book, what do you hope people come away with when they read your book? I would like them to think that I always thought that people didn't really understand all the things that we do, you know. Our primary job is to enforce fish and game law. we do an awful lot of things other than enforced the law. We have a lot of other things that we did in our job, you know. We did a lot of survey.

We took care of depredation problems. People had problems with certain things bothering them. We had to take care of those. Oh, yeah. Depredation problems in the wintertime with deer on haystacks causing damage. Oh, really? unhappy with it and so we we had to take care of all that kind of stuff and give programs we had better safety programs boating safety programs that we were conducted and gave talks to different

organizations at their request and there were just numerous things involved in introduction of animals into the area and trans moving animals around and birds around and stalking in areas, just a multitude of things we do besides enforced fish and game locks. And we were also in charge of the boating loss. We had to enforce voting loss. You guys are the ones out there if they're drunk on the boats, partying too hard. You guys are the ones that pull up with the police boat and go, hey, knock it off there. Yeah.

You know, and boating safety is really important. I was at a, when I was 10, 20 years ago or something, I was at a lake having some fun with my friends. And somebody had been putting their boat in the water. And their daughter was crawling up into the boat right by the propeller. And the lady turned the boat on. And it sliced open her legs severely. They had a life lighter out. And so, yeah, that's really important.

I had, when we had our boat, my buddy's idiot girlfriend, who's just dumb as rocks, are my dog jumped out of the boat and and then didn't you know my dog didn't realize that water you you can't walk across water as this first experience so she went right down in the water and immediately she came back to the boat she's oh crap I didn't realize here I thought it was going to be a husky and run off and so she was swimming back to the boat and she turned the boat on to try and turning around to go to the dog. And I was like, what are you doing? You idiot.

She's going to be eaten by the blade. So, yeah, boating safety is really important. Also not having idiots running your boat is important as well. She was sober. Every decision this woman would make that was my ex's girlfriend, I think wife now, is it was just, we would tell her, you know, whatever you think is a good idea is a bad idea. So don't just don't do it.

Anyway, but Bo's safety is important. I really felt for the girl. I mean, that haunts me to this day. I mean, she was laying there and they, and I mean, it was a gad. It was a huge gash. I mean, I saw some of that thing, you know, over the years. I saw drownings. Oh, drownings.

No, that would be horrible. Drowning accidents. Wow, you'd have to do that, huh? Yeah. That's unfortunate. I lost a good friend in high school, Moonlake, in the Uintas, and my friend was holding his hand as he let go, and they were both in the frozen water of Moon Lake, and my one friend survived and pulled him back in the boat, but the other

kid, the lake is glacier lake, so it's super cold. Yeah. Anyway, now, who do you think could benefit most from reading this book? Who does it target it to, you think? The response I've got from the public that, from people that have read the book, you know, and I've had a lot of people contact me after they bought the book. People that I didn't even know. And they contacted me and told me how much they enjoyed the book.

And I'm pretty well convinced that almost anybody that read that book would enjoy it and would get a little bit of education out of it, you know, things in there that they don't know about. And I kind of explained a lot of that stuff. And I believe they'd have a better idea. what a game warden does and probably or hopefully have a little more respect for the job that they do and the wardens you know uh and be more willing to and more understand a little bit better about why we do what we do you know yeah people have the attitude that oh this is wildlife and it belongs to me and I can do as I please and all that and that was the mentality when I went to work

a lot of people. Oh, really? And if you can convince them that they're wrong and that's not the way it is, I think you've accomplished quite a bit. Yeah, you can't just do anything you want, you know, I've seen lately. There were people that would, though. They thought they could do it. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. There's always the, there's always the dumb ones, you know. Yeah, we always got a few knotheads in there. As I've been seeing lately, they've been doing destruction. Like they've been graffeting, you know, national monuments and not national monuments, but, you know, I mean, technically, you know, a national forest is a monument, technically. And, you know, they're out paint graffiti or carving their name into some ancient tree or, you know, some, you know, Indian hieroglyphics in their painting or something.

And, I mean, there was one that they knocked over something. and that was like something that had been sitting there forever kind of balance and they knocked it over to be funny but it was like something people came to see and you're like holy shit i mean how do we get these people that are just so stupid but i mean welcome to 2026 it's hard to straighten out stupid sometimes you can't fix it that's for sure i've learned these these people are kind of locked to where they're at now with the book and all that stuff let me pull this here how do you force the law without letting emotion cloud your judgment. I think that is something you talk about the book. To me, as a law enforcement officer, it's your job to keep the peace. And you got people that are going to violate the law. And you're not always going to be successful in stopping it, you know. And you get awful upset and let your emotions get carried away.

but to me, I just took it as part of the job, you know, and figured I wasn't successful in stopping something that time, but maybe the next time I would, you know, be able to. So I never let it really bother me that much if I failed a job I was working on or something. And your emotions get involved in it because that, that to me would get you in real trouble. Yeah, emotions. You shouldn't do. Emotions can cloud judgment.

I know we've had a lot of people on and they talk about that. I mean, people who use emotion and stock training will go bankrupt. Yeah. It's not a good parameter. And I have people that live in emotion, they always tell me, they're like, you know, I have better awareness of my emotion than you do. Now you don't. Anyway, logic and reason triumphs emotion any day of the week. Let's see. What sort of routine did you use when you wrote this book? Are you, have you written other books before? No, I'm not an author, really. I just wrote this book after when you're awarding, you do a lot of work by yourself. You know, you're alone most of the time out in the country by yourself. Yeah. Driving around and you have time to do a lot of thinking while you're driving. Yeah, it is a lot of lone time, isn't it? Yeah, did you marry and have kids?

Huh? Did you get married and have kids? kids? Yeah, I'm married and have four kids. I know some people that work in the game warden business, they're just kind of nomads and do they enjoy the isolation piece of quiet. The worst thing about being a game warden is it's kind of hard on your family because we were required to work on all the holidays and stuff like that, you know, and weekends. Most people are taking the weekends off in the holidays and having a good time. I couldn't do that, you know. Wow. And you're probably probably out there for a long time, especially when there's like fires and stuff maybe.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's always something going on there in the old forest. But, you know, I mean, we've curated these national parks and the beauty of them. And, you know, they're sacred. And, you know, we've got to try and do our best to protect them because, you know, otherwise, you know, some guy flicks a cigarette out and, you know, burns everything down. I remember I finally had gotten a chance to get to, what was it, Yosemite National Park, Yellowstone. So it's Yelston. It was Yelston. And I finally got a chance to go up there. And a few months before, it had that huge Yellowstone fire.

I think it was the 90s or the 2000s, but it had been the 90s. And it was really disappointing that I finally got there. And I was just driving through pretty much just empty roads. And I think things are still. smoldering actually when I went through. But there was just empty roads and everything had been burned to the ground on the one side. We went up.

And it was really disappointed to see. But we saw lots of buffalo. There's always as idiots now that they get out of the car and they play with the buffalo and they end up getting impaled or killed by a buffalo or hit, which is just insane. Some of the things that call on. You see now, too, they're falling off cliffs. And they're falling off where they call them where the water goes down.

I can't think of it off the term. But, you know, people are doing all this stupid shit where they're trying to get a good selfie photo. You know, here's me in a selfie with the buffalo, you know. And meanwhile, the buffalo is going to go, I'm going to run this guy down, man. What the hell is they do? Yeah. And the funny thing is you would think people would go, you know, I saw the stories about the guys getting, you know, impaled by a hurricane buffalo, stomp by a buffalo. If they warn you all the time, don't mess with the buffalo.

Yeah, that's true. They do. You got signs up and everything else, and people don't pay any attention to it. Then they get hurt, and they blame somebody else for it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Then they sue, and it's, you know, the thing. But good luck suing to Buffalo. No, I'm just kidding. If this were to become a screenplay or movie, how would you imagine it, being in it, maybe your characters? Somebody what they were doing could put together a good movie or TV show.

a gay morden's life and used the things that i've written about in there that if they followed those they could they could write make a really good movie i think a very interesting movie one that people would really enjoy you know a lot of people like the game warden stories and stuff like that i know i hear people all the time watching they watch some of these tv shows they have on on now about game ordains and their job. And to me, those shows are really not all that good because they don't really get into the real action, you know, the real tough stuff, you know.

Yeah. I mean, we probably should do a movie for this because, you know, we need people to appreciate what's going on with game ordinance. I mean, I'm sure you've heard they're doing massive cuts to game wardens and people out in the field in the national parks for this presidency. and you're looking to cut more, evidently, from what the news is saying. So evidently there's huge long lines.

I've seen pictures of it. Now, you know, lined up to get into the, you know, you've got to pay the fee and go into the park. Huge long lines for that. It's just crazy to see. And it's unfortunate because you realize there's probably an understaffing, obviously, of people who should be caretaking are precious. what I hope or we feel

on our precious forest. Right? Yeah. Do you plan on writing any more books as you go? I probably won't

at my age I'm not sure I might you know, but it depends on my health and everything. It'll be good. I mean,

I'm sure you have a lot of stories over 40 years. Probably have a lot of stories of interesting Yeah, the book is just a few of the

encounters stuff that I had over the years and some of the things that I learned. And it was a learning process as well as doing a job, you know, that needs to be done. So as we go out, give people a final pitch out for people to pick up your book and where they can find it. Where they can find it? It's available on Amazon. The Noble has Reader House and then several other sites through Ingram. Uh-huh.

And I think there's other sources of where they can buy the book, you know. You get on the computer and you can find out where it's available at. And the big thing, for me, has been marketing on this book, you know. Marketing is the key to whether you're successful with the book. I've sold a lot of books and had really good luck selling them, but it's kind of slowed down. And I think I need a new audience, you know. I think anybody that bought the book and the only way that they're going to know anything about the book is that they buy the book and read the book, you know.

And I can guarantee you they'll enjoy the book. I'd say 99% of them would be, have a positive report on it, you know, because everybody I've talked to, I've had people call me that I didn't even know and told me what a great book they thought it was and how interesting it was and how they. enjoyed it and I've had people mail me the book and want me to sign it, you know. And they'd bought the book and they wanted me to sign it for them and they'd send it to me and I'd sign it and send it back to them. So people really enjoy the book. One instant, I remember a lady bought the book and took it home and her husband. She told me her husband never, ever read a book.

She's never seen him read a book. And he didn't even read the newspaper. The only thing you read in the newspaper was the sports results. Ah. And he was not a reader. And she said she bought that book, and he started reading it. And he read it in two days. Oh, wow.

I really liked it. And I got all kinds of compliments like that from people. So now people can order your book, read it, and all that good stuff. you very much, Gary, for coming the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks for us for tuning in.

Order up Gary's book. There'll be a link for it on the Chris Vosch show, and you can find it wherever refined books are found. The Game Warden and his friend Otto out April 11, 2024. Thanks for honest for tuning. Go to Goodrease.com. Go to Goodrease.com. It's Chris Foss.

LinkedIn.com. Forrests just Christfoss. Chris Foss won the TikTok and all those crazy places. The internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning.

Consuming too much of the Chris Walshow podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right there, Gary, great.