April 18, 2023

E19 THE PEANUT MAN--UNDERCOVER FEDERAL WATERFOWL GAME BUST

39 minutes

windling populations of migratory waterfowl

during the late 1920s and early to mid-1930s aroused concerns of sportsmen

across the country. The President selected a special U.S. Senate Committee on

Conservation of Wildlife Resources which conducted hearings in Washington on

April 4-6, 1932. Witnesses blamed the decline on drought in the breeding

grounds, spring shooting, market hunting, baiting and live decoys.

Two years later, the U.S. Game Protectors, as

federal game wardens were called, received the new title of U.S. Game

Management Agent (USGMA). At the first conference of Game Management Agents of

the Biological Survey held in Chicago during September 1935, GMA John Perry

presented a program to his fellow agents entitled “Buying ducks in the Illinois

Valley Undercover.” Agents attending that meeting were convinced that

undercover operations had great potential in wildlife law enforcement.

In 1936, Larry Merovka, the agent-in-charge

of Louisiana’s GMA and who prior to being transferred to New Orleans was

stationed in Memphis, received a request for help from the Tri-State Game and

Fish Association, headquartered in Memphis. The request centered on the illegal

sale of wildfowl.

Merovka recommended to the Association that

the agency bring in an undercover operative to evaluate the situation, and if

after his initial evaluation an operation should be needed and undertaken the

USGMA assigned to the task would live in the Memphis area until the operations

ended. There was just one problem. At this time, the agency had no money to

conduct such an operation and the undercover operative would have to foot the

bill out of his own pocket, this at the time of the lingering effects of the Great

Depression. So, the Tri-State Game and Fish Association along with the American

Wildlife Institute agreed to pay his expenses and salary.For nearly two years, U.S. Biological Survey

Game Management Agents Pedifer and Perry, with the assistance of the Tri-State

Game and Fish Association, a group of interested Memphis sportsmen, bought

ducks, geese, woodcock and quail from 50 market hunters operating in the Mid-South.

During the final stages, state game wardens from Mississippi, Arkansas and

Tennessee assisted in gathering information on the traffic.

When the investigation ended in 1938, it was

described as one of the largest game sting busts ever, with numerous market hunters

arrested in the three states, and charged with violations of the Migratory Bird

Treaty Act and the Lacey Act.In 1939, a large undercover operation was

conducted by USGMAs along the eastern shores of Virginia, Maryland and

Delaware. Sixty-eight bootleggers were arrested for buying, selling and

trapping ducks: 25 in Maryland, 10 in Delaware and 33 in Virginia.

It would be several years before another

undercover operation occurred, with World War II having a lot to do with that.

In 1951, there was only one undercover operative. In 1952, the USFWS employed

only two full-time undercover operatives and for the first time called them

“criminal investigators.” Along with their wives and children, they were

required to live under assumed names while pretending to be salesmen,

photographers, and you name it.

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By HISTORIC DUCK HUNTING STORIES

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