It’s hard to believe, but the director of the Wyoming
Game and Fish Department was caught fishing without a license. Last
June a game warden stopped for a routine license check at a stream
near Rawlins, Wyo., and found director John Talbott didn’t have a
$9 license with him. Talbott told the warden his license existed
and that he’d mail in a copy. Talbott then went to the game and
fish office and, after rifling through license receipts, found one
that had been bought by a person whose weight matched his own,
according to the Casper Star-Tribune. He signed a photocopy and
turned it over to the game warden. A quick computer check revealed
it as a forgery.
The 42-year-old Talbott was slow
to admit his guilt. After the Carbon County Court fined him $400
and revoked his fishing privileges for a year, he told the Casper
Star-Tribune, “I was at the time certainly convinced that, given my
recollection of that, when I got a license, there was very little
doubt that was probably my license.”
Talbott,
who’d served as director for a year, ended a 17-year career with
the agency when he resigned Jan. 31 – after admitting he forged the
license.
– Dustin
Solberg
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A lie this big.
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