The Poacher's Nightmare: Stories of an Undercover Game Warden

by Kennie Prince, James L. Cummins (Editor)

Raccoons are not the only bandits wearing masks in the wilderness. Growing up, author Kennie Prince spent most of his time in the woods and creeks near his home in Rankin County, Mississippi. A highly skilled outdoorsman, Prince began his career with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Conservation in 1983 and dedicated his life to protecting Mississippi’s fish and wildlife resources in dangerous undercover work. The Poacher’s Stories of an Undercover Game Warden contains dozens of hair-raising accounts of covert wildlife operations, often spanning years, requiring ingenious planning, complicated secrecy, and deft coordination.

Prince infiltrated bloody-minded, wary criminal groups, winning their trust. When his traps were fully set, he involved other state and federal law enforcement officials to bring an abrupt halt to abominable thefts of vast fish and wildlife resources from the public trust. Smart, creative, knowledgeable, tenacious, disciplined, passionate, and a natural-born actor, Prince bore a unique skillset that made him an ideal fit for this perilous undertaking. This memoir details how Prince gained the confidence of tightly knit circles of loyal, leery poachers and put an end to their destructive evil.

Genres: Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

Published August 7, 2023

Reviews

[Lauren Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little too much about how God influences wildlife crimes...

[GS · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a plant-eating tree hugger, I was convinced until 5 years ago that I would never see eye to eye with any hunter. In July 2021, that conviction was seriously challenged while hiking off-trail in CO's Bruno Gulch - I met a man in my hiking group who was oozing love for the outdoors and we recognized kindred spirits in each other. We spent the whole hike yapping with each other about nature and the great outdoors, trading hard-earned wisdom about animal droppings and plant species and the like. Only as the hike was close to the end did I find out he was a hunter, and he found out I thought all non-subsistence killing was evil. By that point, we had earned mutual respect, so this mutual discovery was followed by some deep, respectful dialogue on our respective points of view. My view on hunting didn't change, but after that day I no longer thought all hunters were selfish jerks - I realized that among them are perhaps a few who respected nature and followed their own brand of ethics, those who are as disgusted as I am by the Cody Robertses of the world.

This is perhaps why I decided to go ahead with reading Kennie Prince's memoir. But let me momentarily backtrack. This book made my TBR because given the title, I thought I'd be hearing the stories of capture of ivory smugglers and tiger skin traders. A few minutes into the book, it was clear that wasn't the kind of poaching this book dealt with - being a Mississippi game warden, Prince dealt mostly with hunting and fishing of animals that were in fact allowed to be hunted by law, but poaching in this context meant hunting over the lawfully allowed limits, using illegal practices like headlighting of deer etc. Early on in the book, Kennie Prince mentions he is a hunter himself, but the concept of ethical chase is also discussed/ introduced. Primed by my previous encounter with the hiker-hunter with whom my Venn diagram of moral overlap was not null, I proceeded to read Kennie's memoir with great anticipation actually.

The book proved to be a most interesting read, and it was very heartening to note that there are people like Prince who enforce wildlife laws in the US - those who go to great lengths and put themselves in danger to make sure offenses against wildlife don't go unnoticed and the offenders face the maximum consequences allowed by law.

Two notes/ take-aways for me:
- When ethics is written into law, there will be officers like Kennie who will enforce them. I have generally found US relatively backward when it comes to animal ethics (wolf laws in Wyoming is very top-of-mind), so animal lovers must simply try hard to get the state laws to be ethical and strict.
- The punishments just didn't seem big enough! There were cases where Kennie worked almost for 2 years to bust illegal behavior, and the punishment was just a few thousand dollars fine and suspension of licenses for 3-5 years. What is to prevent these offenders from going right back into their previous activities? The reward from their illegal activity seems to far outweigh the risk. In fact, the book discusses a commercial fisherman who was repeatedly caught by Kennie, who just shrugged off the repeated fines as just a part of doing business. If Kennie Prince ever reads this review, I'd love to know what he thinks of this - do people go right back or are the punishments deterrent enough? How can the law discourage/ deter repeat offence?

Overall, a recommended read especially for nature lovers in the US.

PS: As the other reviews mention, there is quite a bit of God/ Christ popping into the memoir. I didn't find this diminishing my reading experience in any way (I am not a Christian, but believe people should be free to believe in whatever God or not-God they want, as long as they don't demand that everyone else in the world should conform to their beliefs). In fact, the occasional appearances of God just made the memoir read true to the author, and isn't that what we want from good memoirs?

[Adrianna Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This read so cozy- like listening to my grandpa tell hunting stories around a fire. 🔥

This guy has some STORIES: almost losing a hand to an alligator, finding kangaroos in rural Mississippi, and taking down large scale criminals. I had to laugh every time he called weed “a narcotic” though. Also this man LOVES to say that has every arrest happened around him it “felt like time slowed down”. He probably used this line ten+ times throughout the book.

This is VERY religion heavy, which none of the blurbs or anything I read let on. It’s a very common theme throughout. I get that it’s important to him but it felt super overplayed.

[Andrew Jaeger · Rating 3 out of 5]

The individual stories are interesting, but the structure was hard to follow as nothing felt chronological.