BIO

After serving in the Army with the 1st Ranger Battalion and then with the Special Forces as a Weapons Sergeant, I got "shanghaied" by my wife, Dana, who was a Michigan State student, now alumni, that I met on a hunting trip to Michigan. She wanted a more stable lifestyle, a husband in the United States for more than a few months of the year, and to have a little farm. So, I finished college getting a B.S. from Slippery Rock. While in school I worked in habitat management with the PA Game Commission and did an internship stint with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 1995, the PA Fish and Boat Commission took a chance and hired me as a Conservation Officer along with seventeen other hardy souls from a large pool of applicants.

Upon graduating the Conservation Officer School in 1996, much to Dana's and our brand new baby girl's delight, I was assigned to work undercover, out of state, from our small, special investigations shop, again spending a good portion of the year not at home but living a bit of a double life. While that experience is one I would not trade back, I stuck to my goal of being around family. In 1998, I was able to get assigned a field district. Almost immediately, in March, I was struck by a twenty-seven pound metal leg that came off of a commercial glass oven which was poorly strapped to an oncoming semi-truck. The piece of metal struck me in the head and severely fractured the right side of my skull and face and put me into intensive care. In June of 1998, I resumed my duties as the Waterways Conservation Officer in Forest County and transferred to the Cameron County District in 2000, where I have served ever since.

Since then I have been fortunate to be involved with many types of crimes and violations, as well as touchstone cases and have investigated some of the largest environmental cases in the Commonwealth involving timber (Seneca Tract), natural gas (Spring 27) and the largest case overall in the Norfolk Southern train derailment case, with the venerable "Pete" Mader. I've also been involved, along with several of my peers at the time such as Vance Dunbar and Tom Nunamacher, with venomous snake hunting and enforcement, habitat and biological studies and projects as well as implementing better regulations to protect those species; including the writing of the snake tagging regulations and procedures used today. I've also managed to implement new ways here and there to catch poachers, document sites, and work with warrant service.

Sharing wilderness and man tracking skills learned from the military and teaching that skill for many cycles at the PA Game Commission School has resulted in me being tagged as "the grandfather" of Pennsylvania man tracking skills for Law Enforcement.

I have been lucky enough to have survived several serious incidents, been able to save a few people, and help a few more. It has been a satisfying career where I've been able to find more excitement than I hoped. I've also been able to share my experiences as a firearms instructor and field training officer, while achieving the goal of that little farm. I've been blessed to be able to raise a family of three amazing children; Rowan, Shannon and Nicholas with my wife who has stuck it out and herself works in conservation as a DCNR assistant regional manager.

There's so much that's happened with so many great people between these lines over the last thirty years. I've been very lucky in having been able to have great deputy crews. I've also been able to work and or know some of the best Wardens and most interesting characters to ever serve the Commonwealth.

Over the past couple decades, with my wife Dana as my editor, I have been producing articles for an outdoor column in the local paper, The Cameron County Echo and other public and professional periodicals. As we wind down to the end of our careers and get ready to get on with our life's work; this site is a place to collect and share our favorites from those articles as well as some photos.

See you along the stream.

Bill