Gentlemen, I appreciate those of you who have spoken against the behavior of Claude Dallas. I am new to this forum. I just left a forum where I was a very active member for the past three years. I left because of some of the attitudes concerning this very same post. As a rancher and journalist I was very interested in the Claude Dallas case when it first broke and I read as much about it as I good. A friend of mine cowboyed with Dallas on a Nevada crew and another friend of mine photographed him while doing a book for National Geographic. If you want to know more about the situation I would recommend Jack Olsen's book "Give a Boy a Gun." I live in a state where we see a killing every few years as a result of would-be "mountain men" thinking they can take their weapons, go into the hills, and act however they want. Dallas was a delusional criminal, nothing else. While Bill Pogue had a reputation for being a "by-the-book" game warden he was not known to be vindictive or abusive. Conley Elms, the other slain warden, was known to be a very fine man. Almost every young person who pins on a star and straps on a handgun is idealistic and ambitious in the beginning. Most mellow quickly. We have to remember that without our State Fish and Game Departments there would be no wildlife in America. In fact, the commercial hunting of wildlife had nearly eradicated most species by the 1920s. The first state game warden -- then called "duck cops" was murdered in that decade. In my experience as a landowner who allows public hunting, I have discovered that hunters who have a bad attitude toward authority usually show bad traits in the field, too. The local captain of game wardens hunts on our property. When I first met him some 15 years ago he was a little cocky and full of himself, but he has since become a close friend and I know the long hours, abuse from the public, and short pay that he contends with. During those times when he would like to be hunting he is probably working 18-hour days trying to enforce the laws that maintain our wildlife heritage. Phonies like Dallas, on the other hand, are only interested in killing what they want to kill when they want to do it.