Great stories by a female game warden

Kim Camery Millick’s novel of stories, Rookie Warden, about a female game warden are great. But that’s not surprising, because Kim was a game warden in Wisconsin before she moved to Maine and worked in the north woods as a forester.

Although the book is a novel, published by Maine Authors Publising, and the central character is a female game warden named Cat, the stories are based on Kim’s real experiences. As you might expect, there are stories about lots of poachers, including a farmer who shoots every deer on his farm. Cat catches everyone including anglers and trappers.

She’s a remarkable warden in her first year when she’s not allowed to carry a gun. So she goes after the bad guys with a knife. Yes, she was very brave, challenging lots of bad guys with guns.

You’ll find a lot of these stories about poachers remarkable, but I also enjoyed the stories of Cat’s life as a single woman working in a man’s world. There’s plenty of adventures, tragedies, and humor.

Two of her stories I’ll never forget. One was about an elderly angler who refused Cat’s suggestion that it was time to move his ice fishing shack to shore because the ice had gotten very thin. And he dies when his shack sinks to the bottom of the lake with him inside. The other story is about one of Cat’s best female friends who dies in a snowmobile accident.

But please know that most of Kim’s stories are about good things.

I wrote this for the back cover of Kim’s book: Kim does a super job of describing Cat’s experiences as a female game warden. And you won’t forget many of those stories. You’ll also come away with a better understanding of how difficult it can be to serve as a female game warden.

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and if you hunt or fish you will especially enjoy it, but even if you don’t hunt or fish, you will enjoy Kim’s remarkable stories.

George Smith

About George Smith

George stepped down at the end of 2010 after 18 years as the executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine to write full time. He writes a weekly editorial page column in the Kennebec Journal and Waterville Morning Sentinel, a weekly travel column in those same newspapers (with his wife Linda), monthly columns in The Maine Sportsman magazine, two outdoor news blogs (one on his website, georgesmithmaine.com, and one on the website of the Bangor Daily News), and special columns for many publications and newsletters. Islandport Press published a book of George's favorite columns, "A Life Lived Outdoors" in 2014. In 2014, George also won a Maine Press Association award for writing the state's bet sports blog. In 2016, Down East Books published George's book, Maine Sporting Camps, and Islandport Press published George and his wife Linda's travel book, Take It From ME, about their favorite Maine inns and restaurants.