When a hairy ape jumped out of a bush and scrambled over a rocky outcrop before disappearing into a canyon with a dog and three cowboys in hot pursuit, Dee Scherich witnessed the opening act to one of the wildest escapades in agriculture and outdoor history.
What followed? A story straight out of the Wild West. Outlaws, cowboy posse, legendary ranchers, yucca hideout, cake feeder truck, honey in a hotel hookup, X marks the spot, and a head-knocking duo of old-school lawmen low on patience.
“I’ve seen crazy things in my life on the ranch, and dealt with poachers my whole career, but who expects to see a damn ape-man hightailing across their land?” Scherich remarks. “Didn’t matter how long it took, we’d catch him.”
Tough as Boot Leather
Rewind the clock to 2002.
“I hope all your f***ing hogs die.” Such were the profane, final words of Kansas game warden Tracy Galvin to a brazen Oklahoma desperado. Maybe not poetic; certainly plain and punctuated.
In the heart of southwest Kansas’ monster buck universe, Comanche County was plagued by outlaws intent on trespass, slaughter, and theft of magnificent antlers worthy of display at Bass Pro or Cabela’s.
Comanche County features open country, few people, and big horns—arguably nowhere more evident than the rugged and raw Merrill Ranch, a slice of Jayhawk heaven. Laced west to east by the sandy Salt Fork of the Arkansas River, the 17,500-acre operation (including 2,000 acres of row crops) was once part of the Comanche Pool—the largest livestock spread in Kansas history. Merrill Ranch’s topography, echoing a Hollywood movie set, is characterized by flat mesas, buttes, deep canyons, gypsum hills, brick-red shale or sandstone formations, deep caves, prickly pear, and yucca. (Adjacent to Merrill, in Barber County, sits the 42,479-acre Z Bar Ranch, owned by Ted Turner.)
In 2002, Merrill was helmed by Dee and Phyllis Scherich, a duo fit for central casting or a Western novel. (A neutral observer would be forgiven for assuming the couple stepped out of a time capsule from the 1800s.) Living legends later inducted into the Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame, the wedded pair herded cattle, mended fencelines, and managed the outfit for 40 years.
Tough as boot leather, Dee was raised on the Merrill, riding the range in the shadow of his father, Virgil, who first worked the land in the 1940s and later became manager. Like father, like son.
Warm, kindhearted, and remarkably humble, the Scherichs never met a stranger. They also held a special wrath for outlaws, and on the Merrill, tucked in the back of beyond, right was right, and wrong was wrong.
“Damn poachers,” says Dee, 85. “We had a big population of white-tailed deer—really fine bucks. Some evenings, we’d drive out, lights off, watching for vehicles. Sometimes we could catch people, even with their headlights out if it was a moonlit night. Most of the time, we’d race after them and they’d escape at a higher rate of speed than we wanted to chase, but it got the message out that we were always watching.”
“Poach at your own risk.”
Call the Law
On the crisp morning of Nov. 13, 2002, before the opening of deer firearms season, with temps in the 30s set to reach the 50s, Scherich spotted a truck cruising his neighbor’s land—a white, flatbed pickup.
Decked in spurs, boots, cowboy hat, chaps, and Wranglers, Scherich was moving cattle in a pasture on the north end of Merrill Ranch, alongside two hired cowboys, Chris Lawless and Jim Sheets. Finishing herding duties by 11 a.m., the threesome trailered their mounts, leaving saddles and bridles in place, and began driving south across the vast property toward another roundup. Bouncing in the truck bed, Scherich’s two dogs scanned the horizon: Tedrow, a German Shorthair-Weimaraner-Border Collie mix, and Brandy, a chocolate Lab.
Four miles later, easing along a dirt road with a hint of gravel, the quintet pulled over at a corner where crops met canyon, pausing to decide what part of the ranch to work next.
“We parked close to our crop fields,” Scherich describes. “We’d recently drilled 1,200 acres of wheat and it was prime for deer depredation. At night, the deer exited the canyon and fed on the wheat.”
As Scherich, Lawless, and Sheetz sat in the cab sorting priorities, Tedrow froze stiff as a statue, gazing out of the bed toward a yucca plant growing on the edge of the canyon roughly 75’ east. In a flash, Tedrow bailed from the truck.
A critter? “I thought Tedrow was going to chase a rabbit,” Scherich recalls. “Brandy, not nearly as aggressive, jumped out after him, following Tedrow.”
On a beeline, Tedrow closed on the dagger-leafed yucca, Brandy in his dust.
The yucca shifted. Literally.
“All of a sudden, a fuzzy and hairy man with a rifle stood up behind the yucca and took off running. He looked like an ape-man in camo, and he assumed he was about to get eaten alive. Of course, Tedrow and Brandy were no attack dogs, but he didn’t know that.”
The “ape-man” was a poacher garbed in a ghillie camo. In that instant, Scherich’s ranch roundup target changed from bovine to human.
The poacher retreated toward the canyon and skirted the rim, desperate to find enough slope to descend. Locating a traversable spot, he dropped over the lip into a gash roughly 100’ deep, 100’ wide extending to several hundred yards, and 1 mile long with multiple forks and a cedar thicket running along the bottom.
In tandem, Scherich and his hired men scrambled for their horses. Scherich had already made the connection: The poacher climbing down the canyon wall belonged to the flatbed pickup spotted earlier in the morning.
Pulling a two-way radio, Scherich barked a message: Another damn poacher. Call the law.
Twelve miles away, at Merrill headquarters, Phyllis was ready to pull the levers: “I called the sheriff immediately, and he promised to also alert the game wardens. Just so happened, everyone was far away or out of the county, but we had time on our side until they arrived.”
Next, Phyllis called neighbor Dave Brass and asked him to check on the odd pickup truck seen earlier. She knew the truck had to be the poacher’s only ride off the Merrill. Brass had also seen the pickup hours before, but he assumed it was the Scherich’s vehicle, because they drove a nearly identical setup.
Above the canyon, Scherich and his men road the rim, peering down for any sign of the outlaw. They had a rifle in the work truck, but carried no sidearms. “Looking into a canyon for an armed man, and not knowing if he’ll fire up at you is about as serious as things get,” Scherich emphasizes. “We wanted to keep him penned and be certain he didn’t escape.”
Scherich suspected the poacher was holed up somewhere in the bottom cedars. Brandy confirmed his suspicions. While Tedrow stayed alongside Scherich, Brandy frequently dropped into the canyon, tail wagging, and disappeared into the thicket. She knew.
“It turned into one of those days,” Phyllis describes. “You know? One of those days you never forget.”
Calls to law enforcement completed, Phyllis hopped in a Chevy S-10 and raced to the canyon. The waiting game was on.
Lust and Liaison
Bats out of hell. Kansas game wardens Tracy Galvin and B.J. Thurman, .45 caliber Glock 21’s on their hips, roared down US 400 from Dodge City, bound for Merrill Ranch roughly an hour-and-a-quarter distant. “At that point, all we really knew was there was a guy in a ghillie suit on foot, hiding in some cedars in a canyon. It already sounded damn crazy,” Galvin recalls.
Straight-shooting, plain-talking conservation veterans, the bulldog duo had physical presence. Galvin backed by a 300 lb. frame and Thurman solidly stacked over 6’1”, decked in boots and cowboy hat.
Fifteen miles outside Merrill, Galvin’s cellphone buzzed. A local deputy was on the scene and had located the curious white truck seen hours earlier on the periphery of the Merrill. “Tracy, you might want to stop here first. Something’s off. The driver is from Oklahoma and things seem really weird.”
Minutes later, kicking up a cloud of dust, Galvin and Thurman pulled alongside the deputy and walked up to the white flatbed with Oklahoma plates. The vehicle had a cake feeder on the bed, ostensibly a pellet-box to feed cows—or a potential means of antler concealment.
Inside the cab, the evidence was telltale. A roadmap of Kansas, an empty rifle scabbard, and a hunting magazine open to a feature on Kansas monster deer, with hand-drawn scrawls circled around Comanche County. X marks the spot. Bull’s-eye. Almost too farcical for reality.
Thirty-something Howard Storment out of Sweetwater, Oklahoma, was behind the wheel. However, the vehicle was registered to Billy Palmer.
Galvin laid the trap.
“Son, what in the hell are you doing out here?”
“Me and my buddy are looking to buy used farm equipment.”
“How do you find the equipment?”
“We drive around till we spot it.”
Galvin spooled out more line. “You come to the least populated county in the state and you roam around in the middle of nowhere until you find an old tractor in a field? Then you contact the landowner to buy it? That’s the story you’re going with?”
“Yessir.
Galvin tightened the screws. “The gun case. That belong to your buddy, Billy Palmer?”
“Yessir.”
“Well, where in the hell is he?”
Without skipping a beat, Storment claimed lust and liaison. “We’re staying in Medicine Lodge (40 miles east) and he got lucky with some Kansas woman last night. I ain’t seen him since he ran off with her.”
“And I suppose he took his rifle with him when he hooked up with the woman?”
Stumped, Storment paused, unsure of what rabbit trail to go down.
Galvin seized the pregnant moment. “Son, you should know we have a guy penned up the road in a canyon. You think that might just be your good buddy, Billy?”
“Lord, I hope not.”
“Let’s go,” Galvin added. “You’re coming with us.”
Lyin’ Eyes
The scene around the canyon conjured the ghost of John Wayne. A mounted posse of cattlemen, lariats at the ready, searching for an outlaw.
“I’ve never, never seen anything like it in my life,” Thurman exclaims. “We drove up to a group of cowboys looking like they were about to string somebody up, cow dogs running around, and a sunuvabitch cornered.”
Maintaining watch at various points around the lip of the canyon were Dee Scherich, Phyllis Scherich, Chris Lawless, Jim Sheets, Marti Sheets, Dave Brass, along with the county sheriff and his young deputy.
Phyllis chuckles at the memory. “Of all the places to poach and of all the plentiful spaces to hide in our part of the state, this guy, Palmer, picked the wrong spot. We owed it all to Tedrow. We’d have never known a thing and Palmer would have killed a monster. Instead, Palmer picked a yucca right where Dee stopped, and then got chased by Tedrow into the canyon—a trap. We were all congregated, waiting on the law, and there was no way he was escaping.”
“I remember the sheriff and deputy being nervous,” Phyllis continues, “but Tracy and B.J. weren’t even a little bit hesitant.”
Galvin and Thurman peered over the rim. “We watched one of the posse’s dogs go down into the thicket, tail wagging,” Thurman notes. “Clearly, Billy Palmer was in there.”
Thurman leaned over the canyon edge and bellowed: “Billlllly. Billlllly. Billlllly Palmer. We’ve got your buddy, Howard. Bring your ass out, now.”
The jig was up. Within minutes, Palmer emerged without a rifle and began climbing up the canyon. Galvin and Thurman moved down a slight slope to intercept.
As Palmer neared, Galvin snapped out a clear order, “Stop and show your hands.”
Palmer kept walking. Galvin repeated the order. Palmer walked on.
“We had no idea if he had a pistol, knife, or other weapon hid on him,” Galvin describes. “When he refused to stop, we had no choice. B.J. tackled him and laid him out, and I screwed a pistol into his ear.”
Palmer didn’t flinch.
“Whoahhh,” Galvin recalls. “That’s when we knew this wasn’t his first rodeo with law enforcement. He had no reaction to the handgun. Just another day for him. Of course, we found out later they had done this before in Iowa: Shoot a big deer, come back later, cut off the head, hide it in the cake feeder, and drive away. By all appearances, just a couple of honest farm workers hard at work.”
Thurman seized Palmer’s cell phone. Despite no reception, the cell told the canyon tale. “Palmer was taking a risk by poaching out where cell service is poor, but when he went in the canyon, his spotty service went to absolute zero,” Thurman says. “He was trying to communicate with Howard, but he couldn’t get a signal. When we got his phone, there were too many calls out—all unsuccessful—to count. When he entered the canyon, it was over.”
Standing in the midst of the posse and law enforcement, Palmer denied possession of a rifle. Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lyin’ eyes?
Scherich was incensed. “He lied about not having a rifle and was calling us liars for saying otherwise. This guy was wearing camo, hiding on a ranch with big deer, and then daring to claim he had no gun. It’s a low breed of a man who steals your time, tries to poach your deer, and then calls you a liar.”
Scherich hit the trail, rode into the canyon, and found the rifle. “Turns out, he’d hid it in some other trees before easing into the cedar thicket.
For Scherich and Phyllis, the cat-and-mouse game was over. They’d lost almost a whole day of ranch work to Palmer and Storment. It was time to go the barn and undress the horses.
“It was a done deal for us,” Phyllis says. “We have so many stories from our decades on the ranch, but that’s one of the wildest. Apparently, it wasn’t over for the game wardens.”
Time for a jailhouse confession?
Saccharine Grin
Judge Loren Cronin didn’t take kindly to poachers. Palmer and Storment were each hit with $10,000 cash bail. Several days later, growing restless behind bars, Palmer summoned Galvin, begging for a way out of lockup.
“He said he needed to go home really bad because he had a hog farm and he needed to feed the hogs. He said his wife was having to do all the work,” Galvin remembers.
Galvin threw Palmer a bone: Tell the whole truth and I’ll help kick you loose.
Palmer agreed. Camera equipment in tow to record the confession, Galvin visited the jailhouse the same night. However, just prior to Galvin’s arrival, Palmer received word that his wife was enroute with $10,000.
Galvin walked into the interrogation room, set up the audio equipment, and pressed record. “Okay, Billy, tell us how it all started and who was involved.”
“You tell me,” Palmer answered, wearing a saccharine grin. “You seem to know it all.”
Galvin shook his head in disgust and threw in the towel. “I’m done. Take your ass back to the cell.”
As Palmer exited the room, Galvin delivered a parting shot: “I hope all your f***ing hogs die.”
A Final Message
All told, Palmer and Storment each received $1,800 in fines for the 2002 poaching violation. Case closed. Almost.
Over a decade later, beyond Galvin’s retirement from the Kansas Department of Wildlife & Parks in 2009, he got a phone call from a conservation officer in northwest Arkansas.
“After all those years, my game warden friend close to Bentonville called me and said he’d caught Billy doing the same kind of poaching business. He just wanted me to know he was in custody.”
Before hanging up, Galvin asked his Arkansas counterpart to deliver a message.
“Tell Billy, the game warden in Kansas still hopes all his f***ing hogs die.”
For more from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
How the Deep State Tried, and Failed, to Crush an American Farmer
Game of Horns: Iowa Poacher’s Antler Addiction Leads to Historic Bust
Ghost Cattle: $650M Ponzi Rocks Livestock Industry, Money Still Missing
