Clyde Bolin oral history transcript

              INTERVIEW WITH CLYDE BOLIN

BY THOMAS GOETTEL MAY 1, 2002

MR. GOETTEL: It’s May 1, 2002 and we’re sitting in a room at the Holiday Inn

Express in Hadley, Massachusetts. I was presently surprised today when Paul O’Neal

stuck his head in my office and said that Clyde Bolin and his wife were in town visiting.

So I asked Clyde if he would consent to do a quick oral interview and he said yes. Maybe

you could start out Clyde be telling us how you got started with your career with the

Fish and Wildlife Service.

MR. BOLIN: It was a long road. I had been trying to get on with the Service for about

three and a half years or four years. I didn’t have a degree in Wildlife Management or

such at that time, and they said I should go back and get an additional degree. I started to

do that, and while I was working on that degree I had an opportunity to go to work for

Kansas Fish and Game. At that time it was the Kansas Forestry Fish and Game

Commission. I already had a degree, so I took a job as a State Game Protector for Kansas.

I worked for them for two years. I was getting ready to; I had been accepted and taken

the physical and was getting ready to go into the Kansas Highway Patrol. They were

expanding their air division and I wanted to be involved in Law Enforcement flying. Two

weeks before the Academy for the Kansas Highway Patrol was to start, I was going to

leave Kansas Fish and Game; I got a call out of the clear blue from Flick Davis. I don’t

know if they were called ARDs at that time or not. He was the Regional Office head for

Law Enforcement in the Twin Cities. He wanted to interview me and wanted to know if I

was still interested in the job. So we agreed to meet in Kansas City. He came down from

the Twin Cities. I rented an airplane and wanted Nancy to come along. We met him up

at Kansas City downtown airport in our little rented airplane. He flew in commercial.

We met and spent the afternoon eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. I guess we got all

of his questions answered. He had a flight out; we met before lunch and he had a flight

out at about 3:00pm or so to get back to the Twin Cities. He said he would let me know.

He had to go and discuss this with the Regional Director. So we got in our little airplane

and flew back. At that time I was in Coffee County, Kansas which. is about fifteen or

twenty miles southeast of Emporia, Kansas. I got a call from the operator. She said she

had a telegram for me. She wanted to know if I wanted her to read it or mail it. I told her

to read it and mail me a copy. She did, and it was from Flick. I had been accepted for a

U. S. Game Management position. That’s what it was called at the time. The job was in

Port Clinton, Ohio.

MR. GOETTEL: What year was that?

MR. BOLIN: 1968. She [the operator] asked me if I wanted to reply. I told her I would

have to call her back. There were five positions open in the Region, and Flick said that I

could fill three of them. One of them was in Port Clinton. So we had to stop and so

some thinking. I was two weeks away from going to the Highway Patrol Academy with a

guaranteed flying job. They wanted me to work on the ground for a year. They were

expanding and wanted me to fly with their air units. I said that this was the job that I had

always wanted. I had been trying to get on with the Fish and Wildlife Service for over

three years. I even drove down to Albuquerque and I met with the RD down there,

because everybody in Law Enforcement was out of the office. That was back in 1965 or

1966. He was very cordial, a very nice gentleman. I had kind of given up on going to

work for the Fish and Wildlife Service. I told them, “Yes, we’ll take the position, where’s

Port Clinton, Ohio?” We had never really traveled east of the Mississippi, and very little

east of the Missouri.

MR. GOETTEL: So you were already a Pilot at that time?

MR. BOLIN: I had my private license. And I was building up hours any way I could. I

was also a rated Navigator in the Kansas Air National Guard. We were flying the old RB-

57 Canbarras. [Sic-a type of airplane] I was doing some flying as a Navigator. We ended

up moving to Ohio. We spent four years there. Everybody knew that I was wanting a

flying position. They told me that I kind had to wait my turn like everybody does. A

position opened in Rhode Island. Of course, I was in Region 3 at that time. I applied for

it and I guess there was, I heard that there were some ten or twelve people who had

applied for the position. I got it. We moved to Rhode Island after four years in Ohio.

While I was in Ohio, I worked and got my commercial pilot’s license on my own. I think

that kind of helped pave the way for the position out here. I came out here and we had a

little L-19 on straight floats, kept on Ohio Fish and Game property at the Great Swamp

in Rhode Island on the Warden’s pond. There was an agreement when Bill Snow was a

pilot there years before. The Service had built a hanger on State property, dug a canal in

to it, put in a formal concrete footing on it. You could taxi a plane off of Warden’s pond

in to this little short canal, which about 100 or 150 feet long. You could taxi the plane up

to the hanger, run an electric hoist out on a big beam, hoist the plane up, pull it in this

hanger, and close the hanger doors. It was a nice hanger for just a straight floatplane.

That’s what was there when we came to Rhode Island. I flew that plane for about four

years. I got to take that plane for two summers up to Labrador with Bill Snow and

Howard Brown. They went up to service amphibious Beaver out of Maine. We went up

and did Eider Duck work with the cooperation of the University of Maine out of Orono

with Dr. Howard Mendel. We did that for two summers. Bill Snow retired shortly after

that. That must have been in 1974 or 1975 or 1976. I think Bill retired in 1976. I think it

was mandatory. They put everybody on notice in 1972 and they were supposed to be

gone by…I got my instrument in 1977. Anyway, Bill retired and I inherited the Beaver.

They were going to put another pilot in up there. So the L-19 went to either North

Carolina or South Carolina State Forestry Department. They were going to use it for

forest fire spotting. We took it off of the floats and put it on wheels. They came out and

picked it up and now I had the Beaver. I flew it for about two and a half years and then

put in for a new aircraft and got it approved. So in 1978 we took delivery on a new

Cessna 185 “amphib” on Whip Line floats. Forney Air Service out of Lafayette,

Louisiana got the bid. They picked the new plane up at the factory in Wichita, flew it up

to the Twin Cities where Whip Line is. They landed on the river up there on wheels.

They put it on the floats and flew it back down to Lafayette, Louisiana and when it was

all ready to go I got on a commercial flight and flew down to Lafayette, Louisiana. Their

pilot got on board with us and got me all checked out on the plane and flew back with us.

I got some cross country [experience] and did some checking out on the plane. We had

one over-night on the way up from Louisiana. I came up and spent the next afternoon,

and day checking him out on the Beaver. He had a little time. Of course, he had quite a

bit of flip plane time. I checked him out in the Beaver and at about 3:30 or so in the

afternoon he’s going to head back to Louisiana. I asked him why didn’t he wait until in

the morning. He said that he wanted to go as far as he could. He took off for Lafayette,

Louisiana in the Beaver. It ended up, because there was getting to be fewer pilots,

particularly fewer LE pilots, and fewer LE pilot duty stations I ended up spending

seventeen years in Rhode Island, which was very unusual after only one duty station in

Port Clinton, Ohio. But I wanted to keep flying. I got inquires from a couple of different

duty stations. They tried to get me to go to King Salmon, Alaska. This was “no where”

Alaska. It is on the mainland just up above the Aleutian chain.

MR. GOETTEL: And the Peninsula.

MR. BOLIN: Right up there. For someone who wanted to hunt and fish and live off of

the land it would have been heaven. We still had a boy in school with college coming up

and I said no. I thought King Salmon was a little too…you know, if a family can’t hack

it, it’s not going to work.

MR. GOETTEL: I was up there a couple of years ago, and it is remote.

MR. BOLIN: It’s like a vacation thing. It’d be nice to go to for a few days, or a week or

two but year round, I couldn’t see that. We never really had any regrets. We did very

well in Rhode Island. With the Amphib we did quite a bit of Eagle transplanting work

from Canada down to here. I picked up birds from several different places in Canada and

brought them down for transplanting on Quavin [Sic] Reservoir, and down on the Virginia

shore down in the Chesapeake area where they went down there to the various States.

Some of that, we did with a rental plane. I could rent a 210, which is a pretty fast

retractable gear, high winged Cessna. In transporting Eagles, you kind of don’t want to

dilly-dally. My plane would only do about 120 knots, or about 128 mph. That 210 we

were leasing out of Providence would do about 150 or 155 knots, I don’t recall for sure,

which is getting up to around 165 or 170 mph. It was a lot faster than my plane. It had a

higher surface ceiling and retractable gear. It was pretty fast. It was a big jump up from

what I was flying.

MR. GOETTEL: What was it like working in Ohio with…I guess you were right around

the Lake Erie marshes?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah, Port Clinton is right on the Lake. In the marshes, the gun clubs were

all around Port Clinton. All around the Sandusky Bay, most of it’s…most of them are

pretty much from Sandusky well west of Cleveland from Sandusky and Sandusky Bay

and west, but east of Toledo. You’ve got about 25 or 35 miles of lakeshore there, were

most of the old, traditional clubs were. They were still pretty much in operation when I

was there. They’d gotten smart. Once Jacobson got that case through Federal Court, I

don’t remember when that was but I think it was in the 1950’s, it might have been early

1960’s but I think it was the 1950’s. I could be totally wrong. But the case got a guy

sent to prison for baiting. He had been caught several times before and he got before

Judge Clobe and he got sent to Federal Prison. That was the wake up call. There is so

much money there. You can fine those people forever. That was just like the old term,

“water off a duck’s back”. That didn’t have any influence with them. When they started

looking at prison time in a Federal Prison, that was a real wake up call. It didn’t totally

stop it, but it pretty well stopped it. There were still those who wanted to play the little

game. I don’t think they baited as much, and I don’t think they baited as long during the

season. I think most of it was pre-season, trying to get the ducks initially coming in. We

made a few baited cases, but they were sparse. You’re trying to cover so much area up

there with one Agent to get around and just check the hunting activity, and looking for

bait while you were there. But there were so many places. Some of the marshes were so

large. Even flying, it was difficult to come up with much on baiting in the years that I

was there. And just being there for four years, I was just beginning to know it pretty well

when this opportunity came up for this flying position. If you could put somebody in

there, and have them there a minimum of, I’d say six years or eight to ten years and have

them get intimately familiar with those marshes. Because there are locked gates, and there

are back ways in and this way and that way in. Sometimes when you get to know it well

enough, you can get from this marsh to that marsh without having to come back out and

come through the gate. You just follow the dikes. You could just go from one to the

other, to the other, to the other. Or, a couple of you could put a twelve-foot canoe in

there and you could just go from spot to spot to spot and be pretty effective. But it’s

extremely time consuming and takes a lot of work.

MR. GOETTEL: Did you work by yourself most of the time?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah, but I had real good cooperation from the State there in Ohio. They

were. Tommy Wharton who came on with the LE was with Fisheries Unit out of

Sandusky. He came on with the Service just a couple of years after I left Ohio to come

out here. He got hired. Our careers criss-crossed several time through the years. We

stayed pretty close friends. We’ve lost contact with one another pretty much since, but

…Some officers… it’s like that anywhere, didn’t care to work with the Federal officers.

They didn’t have a lot of interest in waterfowl or hunting waterfowl enforcement. It’s

the same way down in Rhode Island. You’ve got your coastal people, and if it’s not in a

shell or has fins and gills, they’re really not interested. They are just interested in

shellfish and fisheries and whatever. They’d get a little diving duck and coastal duck

work shoved down their throat but they would kind of swallow the bitter pill and go on

to what they wanted to do and what they were interested in doing. That’s the way it is

anywhere. Not all inland Wardens are even around salt-water coast or have any interest

in waterfowl. They’d rather work upland hunters or deer hunters or on night deer

poaching or something like that.

MR. GOETTEL: That’s the way it was when I was in Maine. After I left Great

Meadows, I was up in Maine for ten years. The Maine Wardens up there, there were

some that were good waterfowl workers, but most of them were into deer, bear and

moose. That was their bread and butter. The marine Wardens were into lobsters.

They’d work with you when you asked them, and they were good people. But they’re

just not interested in waterfowl.

MR. BOLIN: Yeah, that’s the way it was. The Maine people were always good. But

like I said, different people have different interests. Some people like to hunt waterfowl

and some don’t. They’d rather hunt Pheasants or Quail or big game. It’s the same way

with some of the Wardens. Usually their interest was kind of what their hunting interest

was. If you find people who like to hunt geese or hunt ducks, or coastal ducks, which is

kind of different in itself then you’d enjoy that type of Enforcement.

MR. GOETTEL: Where did you get your basic training to be an Agent?

MR. BOLIN: We were in the last school that was in Washington, D. C. We were the last

group to go through Washington, D.C. in 1973. I went down in the spring of 1973. And

they were cleaning out the walls, and cleaning out their desks and hauling the files off

when we finished up. Then they moved it down to Glencoe.

MR. GOETTEL: Where was it in Washington, D. C.? Was it in main Interior?

MR. BOLIN: We were up on Rhode Island Blvd. They only had us down to main

Interior for two weeks when we finished up with that. It was the basic school for

everyone except the FBI and the Secret Service. It was just like it is down at the Federal

Law Enforcement Training Center now. There was Coast Guard people there, and on and

on and on. Like I said, everyone except Secret Service and FBI.

MR. GOETTEL: How long was your training? Do you remember?

MR. BOLIN: At that time it was fourteen weeks. It was twelve weeks there, and I think

it was two weeks at main Interior when we finished up with that. It was kind of unique.

We stayed in a motel downtown. We had to walk about, because most of us didn’t have

cars there, those of us that were any distance away. And there was no place to park

anyway. You drive over to where the training facility it was but it was about six blocks.

It seems to me that we stayed in a hotel called the Rhode Islander, or what was that

hotel? Not that I am hung up on Rhode Island. It was on Rhode Island Blvd, and the

NRA Headquarters building was just down the block from us. We’d walk by that all of

the time. It was interesting. They would send us on assignments. We’d get photography

assignments and night photography assignments. We’d get out to where we were

supposed to be tracking these people. We were supposed to be conducting foot

surveillance of these people, walking around all over downtown D. C. We were supposed

to be discreet so that they would not know that we were following and watching them

and whatever. Most of us got by with it. I’d say half of us, or a third of us did. I didn’t

get found out. Because there were supposed to point out the people that they knew that

they had seen during the assignment. I was able to maintain my undercover role.

[Laughing] I was kind of distinctive at that time. I was still wearing a short crew cut flat

top hairstyle. A lot of people had “normal” haircuts. I thought, “Oh man, I’m sunk.

They’re going to pick this short crew cut out.” It wasn’t so much in style at that time. I

thought that they would know that they had seen me. But nobody picked me out. I was

kind of glad to have done that. It was kind of unique, and kind of fun to have gone

through that in D. C. And there is so much to see and do in D. C. I got to see a lot of the

Capitol that I would probably have never, ever gotten to see. I went to the White House.

Nancy and my son came down for 3-5 days when we were finishing up down on main

Interior. They came down and we got to see some of D. C. That was the only

opportunity that they ever had.

MR. GOETTEL: So you were the “old school” so to speak, where you were the Game

Management Agent when you started out?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah.

MR. GOETTEL: You did a lot of Management work too?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah, we did. At that time we were M and E, Management and

Enforcement.

MR. GOETTEL: So you did a lot of waterfowl flights?

MR. BOLIN: No, when I started out, of course they thought that everybody needed to

get out and do some banding and some this and some that. But when I started out, I felt

fortunate. I got to do nesting pair and nesting success surveys up in Canada with Jerry

Stout, he and I. He drove the car, and I walked the ponds.

MR. GOETTEL: Who is Jerry Stout? I don’t know that name.

MR. BOLIN: Jerry was the…Jerry had been working on the Canvasback. He was the

Fish and Wildlife Service Canvasback expert extraordinaire out of the Dakotas.

MR. GOETTEL: Was that Northern Prairie, Jamestown?

MR. BOLIN: Yes. Out of the Research Center out there. He’d been studying

Canvasbacks, secondarily Redheads but because of the precarious… he had known, and

he’d had these study areas up there. I know he’d been doing that for fifteen or twenty

years before I went up there with him. I was up there the summers of 1970, 71 and 72. I

came on with the Service in 1968. I didn’t have to go on banding assignments. The first

thing they’d do to break an Agent in was to send him off on an all-summer banding

assignment. That’s when the Agents would go up and pull a trailer. They gnats, and this

and had that. They would travel up there on the big lakes and some of them had airboats.

I really enjoyed my work with Jerry because it was oriented a little stronger towards

research rather than just banding. We did no banding. Ours was a nesting survey. We

did a nesting survey, and then a production survey. We’d go up in June, and stay gone a

month. We’d come home for two weeks and then go back up after mid July, I believe.

That was shorter because we’d mark nests and we had an inventory on each, on all of

these ponds. Some of these ponds with the rare ones, we wouldn’t find anything on.

But we’d kind of go by them and take a second look anyway because we felt that there

might be a late nesting, like an over water nester like a Ruddy Duck or a Canvasback,

Redheads, so we’d always take another look. Some of the nests had gotten predated and

things had happened. But it was all good data. It was all extremely accurate data. For

the survey areas that we covered it was very intensive coverage. He had data for years

and years and years of these. We covered Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. We

pretty well stayed on the move. You wore your hip boots down to breakfast, and after

breakfast you went out and got in the car.

MR. GOETTEL: You said you started in 1968, but you didn’t go to Washington until

1973.

MR. BOLIN: They were hiring only, preferably State Conservation officers that had

some wildlife law enforcement background, preferably the more years the better

depending on the person’s age. Then they decided that everyone…they started sending

people through in 1970 or something. And as many people as they could get through,

they decided that all of the Agents needed to go through this Special Agents Basic

Training, which all Federal Officers were going through. It was kind of grit your teeth and

think, ‘wait a minute, I’ve been working for so many years, and I’ve been doing this and

that’. It was good training. I think that for many of us it was the leaving home, and being

gone from home so long. It’s hard on families. A week is one thing. A couple of weeks

is another thing. But months, and months, that’s…

MR. GOETTEL: You were saying earlier today that you flew a lot up in the Maritimes,

Labrador.

MR. BOLIN: Yeah, we spent two summers up there working off the coast. We took

two aircraft up for safety, and to haul all of our gear. There were three of us in two

aircraft. We would use the Beaver, because it used so much fuel as the transport up and

back, and to carry the tent and all of this. We stayed in the big lake off from Cartwright.

Cartwright is up on the coast up there. It’s back in a bay. We would use the L-19. We

found out that we could put three people in the L-19 if we wanted to. It was a two-place

tandem. But the back seat went clear across the back of the fuselage. We had the folding

nest traps that we put over the nests for the Eider Ducks in behind, stacked up about two

and a half feet high. Jerry came and strapped on the floats for extra fuel. The plane was

probably grossly overloaded! But it was a military plane. It had a lot of power for that

sized aircraft. I had about sixty-five or eighty more horsepower than an equivalent thing

in a Super Cub. Of course, a Super Cub had fabric wings. I believe it was fabric. The L-

19 was all-metal, built by Cessna. We had a little trouble when we’d load it that way. It

wanted to porpoise trying to get up on step. Like when you get a boat up on a plain. It

would try to get up on step and it would start trying to porpoise. It was trying to get up

on step and the wing hasn’t got any lift yet. It’s in that in between, trying to get some

wing lift and trying to get up on step and it would start doing this…[demonstrating with

hands]. And you can’t try and fight it. Because if it gets to porpoiseing too bad, you

could put the nose of the floats in the water. So you’ve got to hold backpressure. And

when it starts wanting to do that you can’t let it go all the way forward. You’ve got to

try and cushion it out. Then we found out that by getting everybody to either lean

forward or backwards, I forget which, we found out that we could get. I think what we

were doing was leaning backwards, and when we found that it was starting to porpoise,

we would all lean forward to shift the CG [center of gravity?] a little bit so we could get it

up on step. If you could get it up on step you could get it airborne. It might be hanging

right there on a stall, but if you could if get the floats off of the water, then it would start

accelerating. And then you could go on. And of course, after you had flown an hour or

so, you’d burn out quite a bit of fuel. That was just enough that it would perform quite

normally then. Everybody that has worked Alaska, and worked in those areas like that

knows you do things with aircraft that you wouldn’t normally do down in the States.

It’s that ‘adapt and persevere’ and whatever. You never do anything that you know is

blatantly dangerous. Like when we were doing this, Bill said that we should go out and

experiment with it, and see out it was going to fly. We did, and he was afraid it might

porpoise. He said that if nothing else, we could fly around with it acting like that and

we’d burn off ten or fifteen minutes of fuel and maybe that would be enough to just get

airborne.

MR. GOETTEL: You could go look for Polar Bears or something, huh?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah. There was a lot of ice up there. We almost got caught out on the

island on time. We all went out. We wanted to use the L-19 so we took two trips. Well,

Howard stayed in Cartwright with some Forestry people, in their home. So he had it

pretty luxurious. We were staying in a pretty nice wall tent, in a pretty nice campsite on

a big freshwater lake about twenty-five miles inland. One afternoon, Bill said, “You take

Howard in.” We were fairly close to Cartwright. “You take Howard in, and you get back

out here and get us.” The afternoon was starting to get short. I took Howard in and got

him off of the dock. I discharged him and everything and told him that weather permitting

I’d see him the next day. I took off, and I was getting back to where I knew they were,

and man, I was looking off to the north at a white wall as far as I could see. There was no

top to it or anything; I’ve just got a white wall. I get there, and find out where they are.

They are over on this nice little sandy beachhead. You had to watch those islands

because a lot of them were just real rocky. Sometimes you had to circle around these

islands to see if there was any beach. I get down there, and I am taxiing in and they’re

down at the edge of the water. They jumped on the floats, and shoved the plane back and

get the plane turned around. Of course when you go in, the first thing you do is to get the

plane turned around. We didn’t have anything fancy like a reversible prop on those

planes. You couldn’t back up. They got the plane turned around and jumped on. And

Bill says, “Let’s go, let’s go!” And man, I looked up and it was starting to get foggy. I

mean this stuff was moving down, and I swear, you can’t see fifty feet! I mean, as it

moves in it’s kind of like a horror movie. Everything was just disappearing. We were

taking off, and he says, “Watch that Whale out their!” I told him, “I saw it!” and he said,

“Well, watch where it’s going to come up!” I could kind of tell where it was going to I

gave it another ten degrees off this way because we didn’t have any wind right at that

time. So it was just choose your path. We get off down there and burn off enough fuel

and got the plane right up on step. We got airborne and away we went. When we got

down there are four or five miles and kind of got back in the open. This wall was coming

in. Bill said, “I’m glad you weren’t five minutes sooner!” I reminded him that he had told

me not to dilly-dally. I had put Mendel on the dock, and here I came. He said, “Boy, I

thought we were going to be spending the night!” We ended up getting to camp in the

inland. Bill really wanted to get to camp because he didn’t know what was coming down

inland. We got to camp and we were fogged in for two days! You could see maybe fifty

feet! You didn’t want to wander very far from the campsite or else tie a line on your

waist. It was kind of like being in a blizzard! It was foggy! It was really foggy! That

was in August when we were up there. When that wind shifts, and that comes down

from up north and that cold air meets that warm air and everything, and there’s just

enough wind to mix it, and push it. I had never seen anything like that before. As far as

you could see, it was just like… I really can’t explain it. As far as you could see there

was this white wall coming down. And it just disappeared into space. We’d have been

stuck out there on that.

MR. GOETTEL: And you were trapping Eiders you said?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah. I had these little nests, and Eiders are kind of like Deer, they have a

path. And they come and go from their nest on this path. You put the trap over the nest

and you open the door over the path and they’re going to come back to that nest. She

comes in and trips the door, and that’s it. We had to keep a very close inventory of how

many traps on each island. We didn’t want some poor hen getting trapped on her nest

and couldn’t get away to fed and die of starvation. After they had banded that bird and

looked over everything, Howard was taking…

MR. GOETTEL: Dr. Howard Mendel?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah. Howard was taking all kinds of measurements. He’d look as these

birds and then note characteristics around the bill and where the feathers come down onto

the bill and feet and everything. I think he pretty well made his case for northern and

southern sub-species. I don’t think I ever got his final paper so I don’t know how it was

accepted or what happened. But I believe that he made his case without any problem.

I’m not sure how many years he did that. I know we went up too. But anyway, that

bird was looked at and banded and everything. Then they were through with that nest

and that bird. So they’d move. He did a lot of work up there. It was very hands-on,

very detailed and meticulous. There was weighing and measuring and on and on and on. I

was pretty much a taxi driver. Bill and Harv [name unintelligible] had been working more

with him on that, and they were more involved in helping him with the data; keeping and

recording what he was looking for and everything. I usually tended the airplanes. We

were in a place where you could beach the plane, and you had to watch the beach because

you didn’t want to get stranded. So kind of had to know what the tide was doing. There

were some places where we simply had no beach. So we’d bring the plane up to a rock

and down-tide, or down wind so that the airplane would stay off of, or wasn’t sitting

there bouncing into the rocks. You certainly want to puncture a float or have something

happen. We’d tie the plane off with a double line. Then I would stay and tend the main

line. I always took lots of cigars up with me.

MR. GOETTEL: Keeps the bugs away.

MR BOLIN: Once you got out on the coast, there are no bugs. You are surrounded by

salt water, and unless there is a little pool of rainwater or something in a rock. But boy,

when you get inland, it’s a nightmare. Really! That is like a horror movie, because

you’ve got black flies all day and you’ve got mosquitoes all night. [End of tape #1]

MR. BOLIN: …but he’d let in sink in first. He did it smooth, oh he did it smooth. I

mean, they thought they were “gonzo”. They thought they were going to Federal Prison.

Because this was the chance that they had done it before, about twenty-some years

before, for baiting! And he said, “However, you will both be on one year active

probation. That means every week, to the probation officer. You will present yourselves

over to Probation, here in Toledo. Unless you are ill and in the hospital or near death, do

not miss one of these probation appointments, because I will want to know why. After

this one year of active probation you will each have three years of continued probation.

During this period of probation, you may not hunt, fish, or trap in the United States.”

Not just in the State of Ohio. And he said, “I probably can’t do a whole lot about it if

you go up to Canada,” but he said, “Don’t bring anything back from Canada”. You know

Detroit was just right there.

MR. GOETTEL: The border, yeah.

MR. BOLIN: Canada isn’t that far. He said, “If you two are caught with a minnow,

oversized or undersized, you didn’t properly sign your duck stamp, which you’re not

going to have any use for anyway, any fish and game violation on your part in the United

States during this period of probation will result in you serving your pending sentence”. I

had heard that they went up to Canada. They packed up and …nobody saw them. The

word spread like wildfire across Ohio. “Watch for Arnold and Boucher…” They’d road

hunt pheasants, and they’d hunt on Sundays. The only thing that was legal to hunt on

Sunday in Ohio at that time was fox. You could legally fox hunt on Sunday, but that was

it. They would give people an out, to be out! They were shooting out the windows,

they’re driving the roads, they’re doing this, and they’re doing that. But if you stop

them, and they’ve got a firearm in the car, they were fox hunting! That was a good case.

[Quoting Judge] “Also, the .22 rifle involved in this case will be forfeited. The rifle, I

understand, it has a telescopic site on it. Is that correct Council”? “Yes, Your Honor, my

clients have…” I had it there as evidence. It had a telescoping site on it. “Well, with that

telescoping site and rifle, was there ammunition that you seized, Agent Bolin, of off their

persons?” “Yes, Your Honor.” I had found boxes of ammunition that I had seen them

loading out of. I had seen them place that in their pockets and stuff, so I had a couple of

partial boxes of .22 ammunition. He said, “The ammunition, the telescopic site, and the

.22 rifle, describe that rifle Agent Bolin”. ‘Well Your Honor, it a Western Field, what ever

and so and so, .22 semi-automatic rifle with a Tasco four power hunting rifle scope’. He

said, “Fine, that’s on the record. That will all be forfeited to the Port Clinton office of the

Law Enforcement Division of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Department of

the Interior. And that will become the permanent property of the government, and of

that duty station. Council, do you have any questions?” “No, Your Honor.” “Do your

clients understand everything I have said concerning probation, no hunting, no fishing, no

trapping and whatever in the United States for four years? In fact, they’d better not spit

on the sidewalk! If it’s on a Federal Refuge or a State hunting management area.”

[Laughing] “Mr. Arnold, Mr. Boucher, do you have any questions?” “No.” So he says,

“Does the government have anything further?” “No, Your Honor.” So Court was

adjourned and we didn’t see Arnold or Boucher. We heard they were though and around

and whatever, but they… boy, we had put the fear in them. It was a good case. The U.

S. Attorney’s office was tickled pink. They said that they hadn’t had anything like that

in years, and years and years. That was one good case while I was over there. I made a

good Tundra Swan case. They migrate through on the lake over there and we had some go

into marsh, on one of the smaller, private hunting clubs over there, and the guys next to

them. I got a phone call. Unfortunately that morning I was worn out. It was pretty well

into the beginning of the waterfowl season. I was getting a late start. The phone rang.

There was a reason that God had me stay home that morning. ‘This is so and so out at

the Marsh.’ This was one of those not too far out from Port Clinton. It was a nice little

private hunting marsh. ‘Over here next door’… Of course they didn’t always get along.

They were always complaining that the other clubs were shooting all of the birds before

they had a chance to circle around and come into their marshes. Of course, they were all

that way. And when they abut one another… this one’s north of this one, and that one is

south of that one. They were just like postage stamps or tiles. The guy on the phone

said, “By God, I know three Swans went in there, and none came out! What’s-his-name

said that four went in and three didn’t come out. We saw one come out, back over the

other side.” I said, “O. K.” Fortunately, I had been around long enough. I knew where

the marsh was. I go zooming out. I get dressed, with no breakfast or anything. It’s like

nine o’clock. And I’m [hurrying sound]. It’s the first one, right off of the highway. I

drive in there, and everybody is sitting in the gun club drinking coffee and everything, and

they shouldn’t be in the gun club. Just like nothing’s going on, just as happy as could be.

I said, “I got a call that some Swans were flying around over here, and they went in out in

here somewhere, and they didn’t all come out. You guys see any Swans this morning?”

“Noooo, I wonder who was calling about that?” I said, “Well, I suppose there’d been

shooting all up and down through here.” “Oh yeah, there’s been quite a bit of shooting

this morning.” I asked, “How come you guys are in so early?” “Oh, it’s slowed down,

we just decided to come in.” There were five or six guys there at the club. They had the

bacon, and stuff going. It was another one of those kind of nice days. I said, “Well, I’m

doing to be in the dikes out here. I’m going to work my way back around out here and see

if I get around and check who’s over there.” “Oh yeah, go ahead, no problem!” I said,

“Well, it’s not like I’m out here sneaking around like I do some times. You guys are here,

you know I’m here and I’ll be out there stomping around.” “We know you can go out

there, so go ahead, not a problem.” So I go out, and I get out there, and I’m thinking ‘I got

to be looking for white feathers.’ First I went down to the hunting boats. I’m not coming

up with anything. Supposedly, three and least two Tundra Swans get mowed down, and

there ain’t no white feathers nowhere? I get on to the upper end of this hunting marsh. I

don’t have any idea how many acres, but it was pretty far around it on a square. I get

kind of up to the north end, and it’s shallower up there and there’s this higher ground, it’s

not an island but it’s higher ground and a nice little tree sits out there in it. It’s probably

ten or twelve feet high, just a little bushy tree, just sitting there all by itself. I thought,

‘well heck, I think I’ll go around to that side. I’m going to walk on out toward that tree

and see what I can see.’ I’m going along and bending down, looking in drain pipes that go

through the dikes and everything. I am looking in through the gates, and I’m not coming

up with a feather. I walked down to this tree. I am walking along and I could see that

there had been a lot of footprints, but there wasn’t anything. I’m walking along and it’s

all spongy anyway. I just happened to look down, and it looked like a…kind down

through the mud, down about that far in the ground or something. It looked like a Wrigley

gum wrapper or something. Kind of like a white wrapper, not with any tin foil or

anything. It just struck me that it was like a Wrigley gum wrapper down there, and I

could see this white. So I push my binoculars back over my shoulder so I can bend over,

and there were a couple of dead limbs and things lying around. I pick up one of these

dead limbs about yeah big. I get over there and flick that Wrigley gum wrapper up. I dig

in there and my Wrigley gum wrapper is getting bigger and bigger. Finally, I got down

there and I got feathers. I’m digging deeper, flipping further, and next thing I know I got

me a spot about yeah big, and finally I’ve got a leg, and then I’ve got a wing. And I’m

getting stuff coming out, and here comes the neck. They just didn’t get one little spot

covered up good. They had smoothed that all up, the way the vegetation and stuff was

there. I couldn’t tell that they had buried anything there. But there was just this little

crack, this little opening in the mud, in the ground there. My impression was that there

was just this little Wrigley gum wrapper there. It was soggy, soft, wet, sloppy mud. It

was just muddy and it wasn’t running together. And it left this gap. Walking on around

the dike, I found a few; a half a dozen white feathers. They had gone on the water,

apparently with that boat, and picked up every piece of down, every piece of white

feather, everything. Because they had had a good half hour by the time I got the word,

finished dressing and ran out and jumped in the car. I had to go across Port Clinton, out

the west side. They had probably had forty-five minutes. They took advantage of it.

When I got back up to the club, I go back to the trash barrels. I start digging around, and I

don’t find anything. So I go inside. All of the time, I am carrying this heavy swan. I

guess, when I got there, I opened the trunk. I had a gunnysack. I always carry a

gunnysack. I put the swan in the gunnysack and closed it up and locked it in the trunk. I

go in the gun club, and go around to the trash baskets. The trash basket in the kitchen and

I’m digging around in that. Of course, they’re all kind of watching. It’s getting very

quiet. I was just kind pushing stuff around in there. “What are you looking for”? I said,

“Somebody has picked up all of the feathers that would have been out there on the water

out there in the marsh from that dead Tundra swan I’ve got in my trunk, that you guys

saw me carry off the dike and drag up here for the last two or three city blocks.” And I

said, “Somebody picked up all of the feathers that would have been on the water. You

know, it’s funny, a bird gets shot, a big bird like that. There’s supposed to be at least one

if not two more, and maybe one of those is dead and or the other one is wounded and

crawling around somewhere. It probably can’t fly. There’s not a white feather

anywhere. Somebody spent a lot of time. A lot of people spent a lot of time picking up

white feathers.” Those boys didn’t want to dance either. I made them a deal because

could get a pretty good fine in State Court. They were really pretty good guys. They

just really goofed up. Why they would shoot those swans, I don’t know. I mean, what

do you mistake them for, giant snow geese? They don’t even have black wing tips,

excuse me? They’ve got the guide with them. They’ve got the guy who takes care of the

Club. He was probably screaming to high heaven. Too late! I did find another swan. It

was over on a dike. I never found a third one. I don’t know whether they had killed it

and buried it somewhere differently, but I had enough. They admitted what happened.

They got excited. The bird came in. The guide was not with them where they were. He

was back on the dike. And when he heard them shooting, by the time he heard them

shooting, he looked up and realized what was going on. He was screaming and whatever.

By then it was too late. They all admitted it. For their admission, I agreed to take them

to State Court and they could just forfeit a plenty with no trial. They were pretty good

guys. A couple of them were banker down south of Port Clinton. I can’t say the name of

the town. It’s twenty-five or thirty miles south of Port Clinton. I think one was a local

Attorney or something. They sure didn’t want to go to Federal Court. But anyway, that

was one of the stories.

MR. GOETTEL: That was a good case.

MR. BOLIN: There was another one in Ohio.

MR. GOETTEL: What happened to seven-six-seven? That was your plane wasn’t it?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah. When I left, it went down to Maryland. Their pilot there, he had

both planes for a while.

MR. GOETTEL: Skip?

MR. BOLIN: Yeah. My understanding is that OAS moved 767 some place. He

preferred to keep the 180. And I don’t know where it went or where it is today.

MR. GOETTEL: Well you were a good pilot. I know you helped us out a lot and we

appreciated it.

MR. BOLIN: Oh. Well thanks.

MR. GOETTEL: I know I always felt safe flying with you that’s for sure.

MR. BOLIN: Well that’s what was important. I liked to have fun. And I enjoyed low-level

flying. And what I mean by low-level, is ground level! [Laughing] Not tree top

level. But yeah, the most important thing and what was your primary concern, like the

Captain of a ship, literally, was that everybody went home at night; that everybody got

back safe and they all went home. I never intentionally tried to make somebody sick or

really scare them. Usually, I’d say, ‘we’re going to do this, or we’re going to do that.’

Or, ‘how would you guys like to do this, or that?’ If we were going to do something

unusual, or get down really low or something. I have frightened people who have gone to

sleep on me at high altitudes by chopping the power or doing some other things. But no

foolish or dangerous, or you know, things. Yeah, I had a little fun with people. I figured

that if I had to stay awake, I’d put in just as long a day as they had. I realize that they’re

bored, and I’ve got to fly the airplane. They’ve got nothing to do many times when we

were headed back. Yeah, I’ve startled some people out of an afternoon nap because I had

to stay awake. [Laughing] When it came right down to the flying, and the low-level and

survey work, yeah safety was always number one. You could have some fun when the

work was done if there was some time left.

MR. GOETTEL: Hey, thanks for your time. I know it’s getting late, and you’ve got a

long drive ahead of you. I appreciate it. Maybe it won’t be so long next time, and you

can continue where we left off here tonight.

MR. BOLIN: Yeah. I think any of the Agents you know. And gosh, seventeen years in

Rhode Island and then of course all over New England, and the trips up to Canada. We

could go on for some more time. We covered quite a bit of that. It was my pleasure!

MR. GOETTEL: Thanks!