Word: meeker
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...manage game populations and enforce hunting and fishing laws in a vast 1,200-sq.-mi. area, most of it in the White River National Forest of northwest Colorado. It is the home of the largest elk herd (about 18,000 in all) in North America. His base is Meeker (pop. 2,356), the sleepy seat of Rio Blanco County, a town without a traffic light or a movie theater. In winter deer wander through town and are sometimes killed by motorists on Main Street. The town's economy depends heavily on the elk and deer season in October...
...folks around Meeker, Madison's badge and uniform are considered a source of special, even secret knowledge that no one else has. Wherever he goes, he is asked how the elk survived the winter or what lure the trout are currently hitting on up at Trappers Lake. People stop Madison's wife Nancy on the street to solicit her for inside information on such matters...
...seems strange that Jeff and Nancy Madison are virtually social outcasts in Meeker. Rarely does anyone inquire after his family, or his health. Madison and his wife are both from Grand Junction, just 100 miles away, where Madison's father is a doctor. But in Meeker they are never invited to anyone's home, not even for Christmas parties, except occasionally by local police officers. "People are friendly on the surface, but we're somewhere below the dogcatcher on the social scale, and there's no dogcatcher in Meeker," says Madison. Nancy is concerned that their...
...reasons for this curious ostracism are ingrained in local tradition. It has been much the same for wildlife officers assigned to Meeker and some other rural areas in the past. For one thing, a big part of Madison's job is catching people who violate the fish and game laws. He hands out an average of 60 fines a year for offenses ranging from fishing without a license ($50) to illegal possession of an elk ($400). That riles Meekerites, who hate the thought of having their freedoms fenced in by government regulators...
...grazing on their cattle pastures. In winter they blame him when hungry elk and deer are busting their fences and devouring their haystacks. "It's not that folks don't like Jeff personally," says Herb Hughley, who operates the Valley Motel on Highway 13, which runs through Meeker. "But they don't like bureaucrats in Denver making laws about what they can and cannot do here...