Okay, I might as well make everybody angry!!!
Yes, the killing took place in Owyhee County. Sort of my area of the world except that Owyhee County, Idaho is the 4th largest county in the USA. We have a population density of well less than 1 person per square mile and it'll be LOWER, not higher in the next census. My place is 53 miles from the highway with one part year neighbor 17 miles away, during the summer.
This is as much a function of very very little deeded land. That place 17 miles away is the nearest deeded land to my 648 acres.
Now as to the bar crowd. Yes, the bar crowd at the Buckaroo Bar in Paradise Valley, Nevada were friends of Claudes and supported him. So did LOTS of the law abiding citizens of Owyhee County. I have as of yet met a single person that knew him or that he worked for that did not like him. I can not claim to having done anything other than say Hi, a time or two in passing.
The area where the incident happened was proably one of the most remote in the lower 48. The south side of the South Fork of the Owyhee River is just about as remote as you can get. I have never been there and I doudt seriously that there are 100 people alive that have, other than floaters that have floted through the area during the infrequent high water in the spring of some years. To add to how remote it is, it is now a MAJOR portion of the new Owyhee Canyonlands Wilderness Area just approved by congress.
Speaking of which the lower section including Jacks Creek, Wickahoney Creek and Big Jacks Creek are also part of the new wilderness area and once it is in place you nor anybody else will be able to drive to our ranch. We border the north end of that portion of the new wildernes area.
Luckily we were grandfathered and retain our "right" to drive into the ranch and use mechanized equipment. Yes, we gave up some of our BLM graze and consolidated other portions.
I also figure my property taxes will increase by at least ten fold.
Off subject, sorry. The general mind set in Owyhee County is that it's still the 1880s and the locals would prefer not to be messed with.
For you supporters of Law Enforcement, this is a county in which the Sheriff refused to "ALLOW" Federal officers to patrol in under the threat of arrest!!! At the time he did that I was working as a LEO out of state for the Feds and kept asking myself just how the Hell does a sheriff get away with this SH.. and why are the Feds kissing his behind. I can only say polotics and let it go at that.
Okay, Bill Poge and Conley Elms were the Idaho Fish& Game officers (Conservation Officers) assigned to Owyhee County. They were real police officers being sworn etc. However, at the time there were NO Felony Game violations.
Bill Poge had a long and very checkered LEO career and to say he was unliked and unloved by the residents of the county would be a vast understatement. He was one of those guys that was very very badge heavy and frankly a bully.
Con Elms a a good natured, big ole boy that got partnered with him and spent most of his time defusing stuff the Poge got them into. In a county as far right as you can get with as law abiding people as you can get, Poge was almost universally reviled.
I won't speak for others but can use a few of MY run ins as examples. One year my brother Roy and I decided to go Chukar hunting on opening day of upland bird season. For those of you that have actually done it, this is hard, dusty, dirty work and hardley deserves the definition of "hunting". ;-) After we got up to Jacks Creek we decided Chukar hunting sounded like a lot of work and instead we spent the morning shooting feral pigeons flying out of the canyon into the nearest ranches in Little Valley. By ten or so in the morning we had killed several hundred. Feral pigeons are considered vermin, can be shot year round, with any weapon, are not "game" animals and don't have to be retrieved or taken into possession.
Sort of like the idea of shooting flying rats!!
After shooting that many we decided that we could actually retrieve some and smoke them and we recovered 100 or so, breasted them out and threw the breast into a cooler with some ice and headed home.
When we got out to the highway, Poge and Elms were running a check station. I pulled in. When asked if we had been bird hunting I responded "NO" "We have been killing pigeons".
Poge demanded we open the cooler which we did, then the complete check of licenses, guns, tags, vehicle information etc. Now, you have to remember we are under no odligation to even pick up the dead birds or have a license for them.
After about 1/2 hour delay Poge advised he was going to sieze the vehicle and our guns and issue us tickets for wasting game and.............. I'd been civil right up till then. I explained that he was a damned fool and that we were under no odligation to retrieve pigeons. "Well, you should have left a wing attached". Show me where in the regs it requires that? Trust me it went down hill fast from there.
It ended with me telling him to take the truck and the guns and the birds and any other damned thing he wanted and we would see him in court in Murphy. By then Con Elms was trying his best to defuse the situation and "I" wasn't the problem!!! I pointed out to him that I intended to walk the mile to my cousins ranch, get another truck and retrieve the dead bird and show up in court with them. Besides I really wanted Poge to try and convince the judge that he honestly thought I'd killed 100+ chukars by 10am opening day!!! Elms at that point made up some story that they were bigger than chuckars and that we were free to go.
Skip forward a year or so. It's the middle of the night and Cousin David, Pike and I are in the upper hay field of the ranch at 2am shooting jackrabbits by spot light. This is NOT an activity illegal for the land owner. I noticed a pickup over on Shoo Fly Cut Off and then the lights went out. A few minutes later out across the hay field come Poge and Elms with the blue light on. Of course they don't know quite where they are so they are crushing 10" sprinkler mains every 40 yards as they bounce across OUR pasture.
Out come Bill, swearing per usual and informing us we are all going to jail etc etc.........
I thought I did quite well when I asked him just what regulation we had violated? At this point he pointed out that even if we were shooting jackrabbits it was illegal to spotlight them even on private land "without written permission of the landowner". This all delivered with as much venom and disrespect as good ole Bill could muster.
At that point I "politley" asked if he knew who the land owner was? David Somebody!!! Does he look anything like the driver of this pickup??
Oh SH...!! At which point David "suggested" he get the F off our property before he had him arrested for tresspassing and by the way be sure and inform the Director of F&G that we would be filing a damage claim for the sprinler mains!!! That was a little over $3000.
I personally had at least 3 or 4 more run ins with Poge. None were valid. None resulted in arrest. None resulted in a ticket. All were a bully trying to push his weight and his badge around. However, I was a LEO and knew the rules and regulations and more importantly my rights. The number of people he abused and arrested and ticketed for no valid reason was legondary!!!!
Why he was never fired was a mystery to nearly everybody.
Claude Dallas was off work for the season and was trapping bobcats on the south side of the Owyhee out of Paradise Valley, NV. He was poaching an occassional deer for food and cat bait. The pack in was over 30 miles by horse/mule. Most residents sort of knew where Claude was and what he was doing. Nobody complained.
Fish and Game got a formal complaint. Until 2 years ago it was never divulged, even at the trial who complained, "Due to fear of retribution". Poge and Elms brow beat the guy who had packed Claude in and went to his camp once a month with staples to take them to his camp by threatening to arrest him!! For what? A misdemeanor after the fact?? It was just emblematic.
When they got to the camp the guy that packed them in, the other person there, said that Poge braced Cluade and got verbally abusive and then Poge threaten Dallas, "You can either go out of here riding in a saddle or across one" Dallas construed that as a death threat and opened fire killing Poge and Elms in the intial gun fight.
At that point he went into his tent and got a 22 rifle and shot each officer once in the head. He dumped Con Elms body in the Owyhee River because he couldn't get him up on a saddle and he packed Poges body out a ways and then buried it. Rudy gave him 24 hours and then reported the shooting to the Humbolt County Sheriif in Nevada and then Tim Nettleton, the Owyhee County Sheriff.
The man hunt ensued. Tim called and asked if I'd help and I declined. Mostly because I was totally unfamilar with the search area and couldn't see where I would have been a lick of help.
Nettleton later built a reputation for catching Claude which couldn't be further from the truth.
The first time he was caught by the FBI in the mid west. This was after tapping most of the phones of friends and opening mail without a warrant. But lets not quibble.
At trail Claude told his story. He was convicted of Volutary Manslaughter. Had he not shot them in the head at the end of the shooting he would have walked. Nobody doudted for minute that Poge had made a death threat!!
The court refused to allow Poges prior history to come out at trial. So the fact he had many many complaints for excess violence against him was not brought out. The fact that he had been fired from 2 other agencies for excessive force did not come out etc.
Judge Lodge gave him a fixed 30 for Voluntary Manslaughter. There were many people that thought that was an abuse of his judicial power.
Claude was sent to the Idaho State Pen. He later escaped. It took the FBI a while to run him down again, this time in California. Again by tapping the telephones and monitoring the mail of nearly every person he knew.
At trial for escape it was proven that gaurds had threatened his life and had made repeated threats to have inmates kill him. He was found NOT GUILTY of escape.
He was sent to several out of state pens and till he was released some of his friends still had wire taps and opened mail.
He never applied for parole. He never attended a parole hearing. He topped his time and was discharged. He relocated to eastern Washington and was buckarooing. Idaho F&G found out where he was and issued a "Law Enorcement Warning" to all agencies in the area. Having read it, it was a blatant appeal in an off hand way to get some LEO to make a traffic stop and have a reason to shoot him. THe agency was taken to court. They were admonished by the judge and ordered to cease and desist.
In the last year or so they finally released the information that the "complainant" to the original poaching was the foreman of the 44 Ranch. This is a ranch owned and operated by the Nature Conservancy, to show all us stupid yokels that have been here since 1860 how to ranch in this country without destroying the enviroment. In other words by a stranger that was not a long time resident and who's values were certainly not the same as most people in the county. By the way, the information wasn't released till he retired and moved away, which was smart because I suspect somebody would have played pay back. I don't know his name but I sure as Hell wouldn't be him and be in rural Owyhee County.
Last I knew Claude was still buckarooing.
Bill Poge had no business carrying a badge or being in charge of anything and unforunately his threats and bullying finally caught up to him. As a retired LEO I can't condone his death. On the other hand if there was ever a guy that went out his way to pick a fight and end up dead, Bill Poge was that guy.
Conley Elms was an decent guy and a decent cop who unforttanetly had a great deal of loyalty and ended up partnered with a guy destined to get him in a jam, come Hell or High Water.
Cluade doesn't get discussed much any more simply because everybody had pretty much established their opinions and positions long ago.
Sorry this was long but it really wasn't as simple as many would like it to have been.
Ross W Thomas
Great Basin Ranch
Owyhee County, ID
