After nearly 18 years, there’s one thing Game Warden David Gregory can predict about his job in the Northeast Kingdom: It will remain unpredictable.

Still, he admits even he was sur­prised the day his office landed in a ditch.

By office we mean his green, 4-wheel drive 2006 Chevy three- quarter ton pickup, where many of his nine-hour days are spent.

The one with 156,000 miles on the odometer – hard, back-road miles. The one the warden counts on to haul dead moose and deer, re­spond to lost hunters or track down deer-jackers at any hour of the day or night. The one he takes good care of because that’s the way he is.

Which, turns out, wasn’t enough last September, when he was pa­trolling on Carter Road in Burke and tried to slow for an intersection when “the brake pedal goes to the floor and there’s nothing there.

“It was a big surprise. Luckily, where I was, I was the only one there,” he says.

Northeast Kingdom Game Warden David Gregory checks the waters of Lake Willoughby, where a moose fell through ice and drowned last Saturday. To stop, he went off-road, or as he puts it, “I just rode the ditch until it slowed down.”

Gregory tells this tale the way he does most every story, in a laconic just-the-facts style flavored with a wry sense of humor.

You want animation? Try Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Patrick Berry, whose department “has been living on a starvation diet” because of increasing costs and the slump in hunting and fishing license fees that fund his 27 field wardens. Berry was shocked at what he found when he came aboard a year ago with new governor Peter Shumlin.

“Some of them have trucks so beat up, it’s incredible,” he says. Berry snapped photographs of the trucks and their odometers with 160,000 miles or more. It got the at­tention of Shumlin, who has backed a $216,000 boost to buy eight new trucks this year and included money for 16 more in 2013.

“We’re just trying to catch up,” Berry says.

Gregory, 44, is one of those tar­geted for a new vehicle, which he’s happy about – well, except for the chore of cleaning out his old truck, which is crammed with the tools of his trade: two rifles and a shotgun, search and rescue gear, backpacks, extra clothes and boots, food, ra­dios, binoculars, first aid stuff, a ra­bies test kit and a batch of books on fish and game regulations.

Moose Through the Ice

Gregory discusses his job as he heads to Lake Willoughby for a call about a moose that has fallen through the ice. Stocky and about 5 feet 10 inches, Gregory is wearing his dark green uniform with thick vest, sport sunglasses tight on his face and a black watch cap over his close-cropped hair on this frigid day. At Willoughby, Mts. Pisgah and Hor hang over a lake that appears to be boiling. Steam rises off the wave- tossed open waters in the zero-de­gree air, creating a sticky fog that has coated the trees with a filigree of fine rime ice. It’s a surreal scene, both chillingly lovely and incredibly desolate.

“Not many folks on the nude beach today,” quips Gregory as he looks onto the lake.

Why on earth, he’s asked, would a moose walk onto the partially frozen lake. Gregory’s answer, dis­tilling years of experience with Ver­mont’s largest creature, is simple: Who knows why a moose does any­thing?

We head north along Route 5, where Gregory is hailed by a red Ford F150 that leads him to where the moose was spotted. He pulls over by an iced-in cove dotted with summer cottages, grabs his bin­oculars and surveys a sad scene. Far out in the lake a big dark lump floats, unmoving at the edge of the ice sheet, nature and merciless ther­mal logic already having taken their toll. There’s nothing Gregory can do.

It’s not the first time this son of nearby Newark has encountered a moose-ice fatality. Sometimes he can shoot the struggling animal and put it out of its misery. On this day, there’s nothing to do but wait until spring. That’s when he’ll go out in a boat and tow a “nasty” hairless carcass ravaged by ravens, crows, and coyote, bloated and stinking, to shore.

“It’ll be awful,” he says, “I got a pretty good stomach, stuff I’ve dealt with, but it’ll catch me sometimes.” On the other hand, he says he can joke to curious fishermen: “You want to catch big fish, you’ve got to use big bait.”

Loves the Job

Dead moose aside, most of the time David Gregory loves his job. “It’s really all I ever wanted to do,” he says.

His family tree includes rela­tives, among them his dad, who were game wardens or worked in the fish and wildlife field. He’s an avid hunter and a trapper: A coyote he caught, neatly skinned, lies frozen in the truck bed.

“Coyotes are kind of a hobby of mine,” he says, mentioning their vocalizations and how they can decimate deer yards in winter.

A game warden’s life is dictat­ed by seasonal rhythms and the state’s hunting and fishing rules. It’s ever subject to the daily un­expected, which arrives via calls to Gregory’s cell phone or state police dispatch.

He’s found himself spray­ing rambunctious bears with a garden hose to get them out of downtown Lyndonville (Young male bears are “like teenage boys – lots of energy misdirect­ed.”).

A few weeks ago he broke a bone in his wrist when he fell down a bank while checking some suspect trapping lines. A removable cast now encircles his left forearm.

He’s accumulated a host of stories and has sharpened both instincts and insights during his years of witnessing so many hu­man and animal misadventures.

“You see the best, and the worst,” he says. That includes fall-down drunk ice fishermen on a shantytown weekend bender to a shivering all-night stakeout in a Ryegate swamp waiting for a hunter to claim his poached deer. (He caught the surprised hunter just before dawn. “I remember what he was lugging for a rifle, but I don’t remember his face,” he says.)

After Willoughby, Gregory drives remote back roads to Newark Pond to see if any ice fishermen are out. Only a hardy Nordic skier is in sight. Later a souped-up jeep with Colorado plates, parked roadside, piques his curiosity. A break-in? He tramps into a snow-draped camp with smoke wafting from the chimney and knocks on the door.

A surprised college student in shorts appears. He explains it’s a friend’s vehicle and his dad’s camp, and he arrived to ski at Jay. He thanks Gregory for checking.

Back in the truck a fellow war­den calls in about a suspected violator of game laws. Gregory’s ears perk up. Recognizing the name, the two schedule a chat over lunch in Danville. Then it will be back to his mobile “of­fice.”

“This is my fourth truck in 18 years,” he says. “Every one of them has gone 155,000 miles.”

“It just is what it is,” he says.

“In This State” is a syndicated weekly column about Vermont’s innovators, people, ideas and places. Andrew Nemethy is a vet­eran journalist and writer from Calais. He can be reached at An­drewnemethy@gmail.com.