I've ridden on patrol with game wardens to try and get it right.

Their districts can encompass 5,000 square miles of rough country filled with wildlife, history, schemes, and secrets. Often, they’re too far from town to call backup in an emergency so they’re forced to deal with situations with their experience, weapons, and wits. They're trained and armed law enforcement officers, and nearly every human they encounter in the field is armed, which is unique. Game wardens are unique because they can legitimately be involved in just about every major event or situation that involves the outdoors and the rough edges of the rural new west. He's human, and real, which means he sometimes screws up. He works hard and tries, sincerely, to 'do the right thing.' He doesn't talk much. He doesn't arrive with excess emotional baggage, or a dark past that haunts him. He's happily married with a growing family of daughters.

The character of Joe Pickett is, in a way, the antithesis of many modern literary protagonists. I’ve been surprised and gratified how the character of Joe Pickett has resonated with readers across the country and around the world. Pickett isn't especially remarkable except for his honesty and for a quality that Harold Bloom attributes to Shakespeare - the ability to think everything through for himself.” I still like that.

And even when he knows that pursuing justice will bring the community, state, and his superiors down on his head, well… he just can’t help it.Ībout Joe, the New York Times once wrote, “…Box introduced us to his unlikely hero, a game warden named Joe Pickett, a decent man who lives paycheck to paycheck and who is deeply fond of his wife and his three daughters. But through it all, he has remained true to himself and his family. Joe has matured, lost some of his innocence and naïveté, and committed acts that continue to haunt him. Over that time, he’s taken on environmental terrorists, rogue federal land managers, animal mutilators, crazed cowboy hitmen, corrupt bureaucrats, homicidal animal rights advocates, and violent dysfunctional families. Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett has now been the protagonist in more than twenty novels, starting with Open Season in 2001.

Joe pickett open season