Glen Hinshaw’s first district assignment as a wildlife officer was in 1963 in Cortez. Thirty-four years later he retired from the Colorado Division of Wildlife. Recently he wrote a book about his career.
Echoes from the Mountains: The Life and Adventures of a Colorado Wildlife Officer, is an autobiographical account of Hinshaw’s life as a game warden from 1963 to 1997.
The book is about more than chasing poachers, Hinshaw said. It’s about working with schools, search and rescue, assisting other law enforcement officers and other aspects of public life.
“Some people get into the wildlife business thinking they’ll just be working with wild animals, but the success to managing wildlife is managing people and that is the biggest challenge,” Hinshaw said in a news release.
“This book isn’t just about me, but is about the people that were in my life. ... I hope the book will bring to mind the most influential people in the reader’s own lives for whom they owe a debt of gratitude.”
Hinshaw, 73, wanted to be a wildlife officer from his teen years.
The first chapter is about how he got into the wildife business, and the next several chapters talk about his years in the Cortez district.
While in Cortez he provided local wildlife stories to newspapers and had a regular radio program on KVFC-AM. Hinshaw spent 22 years in Creede.
The book’s 17 chapters are broken into short sections with enticing titles such as “They stole my elk” and “The sheriff is a racist” and “San Juan grizzlies?” and “Don’t ever tell the warden ‘we’re over the limit.’”
Many of the vignettes go a couple of pages; some are as short as three or four paragraphs.
Hinshaw was recognized for his service as the Wildlife Officer of the Year in 1968, Conservationist of the Year by the Colorado Chapter of Trout Unlimited in 1985, and the Enos Mills Lifetime Achievement Award for Environmental Education in 1997 by the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education.
He retired as the state Division of Wildlife’s education coordinator for the Western Slope in 1997. Hinshaw published Crusaders for Wildlife, A History of Wildlife Stewardship in Southwestern Colorado in 2000.
The book is available through Amazon.com. Contact Hinshaw at brushfuzz7@gmail.com.
johnp@durangoherald.com