My first exposure to this was about one year after South Viet Nam fell. I belonged to the American Sportsman Club and they had a beautiful ranch access on the ocean up by Rockport. My sons and I loved to go for coastal deer season. Not many deer, but it was cool in August, and the area was loaded with Abalone and mussels. We would go down a rope, wade just a little and get a big Abalone each day and take a bucket down to get mussels. One boy would catch a couple of rock fish. So each night we would have abalone, steamed mussels and a fresh rockfish!
Well, about a year after South Viet Nam fell, we went to this site for our annual August trek. When we got there, we went to our site for abalone, mussels and rock fish.
When we got down the rope, we were stunned. There were zero abalone, not even a baby abalone and not even a single mussel of any size. When the tide got really low, we couldn't find a single mussel or abalone. My son was unable to even get a strike even with a small rockfish.
So we ate soup that evening. The ranch hand came by and I went over to talk to him about the lack of shell fish and fish. I thought that there had been an enviro disaster. He said no. He told me to walk down from our camp site at 10 pm to where he would be in his pickup. He told me to bring a pistol, loaded and ready if needed!
At 10 pm I walked down to where he had his truck parked with no lights and no KGO on his radio that normally would be on. He told me to get in the back of the pick and be quiet with no doors to be opened or slammed. He had a bunch of old sacks on the bed of the truck to deaden any sound.
He drove down to the site where we had gone down the rope to get to the abalone beds. He got out and the interior light had been fixed so not to come on. He put his fingers to his lips to be quiet! He had an AR15 with him and a clip in it. We walked down in the dark to the edge of the little cliff.
When we got there and looked down. I could lights that indicated 3 small boats out about 100 yards. They were fishing, and trying to find abalone and mussels. We watched for about 30 minutes, and he signalled it was time to leave.
We went back to the truck and returned to our camp site. On the way, he said that they were Vietnamese. His son who had served two tours in Nam, went down with him one night and listened to them yelling at each other. He told his dad that they Vietnamese. They had been doing this since March of that month.
I asked if he had notified Fish and Game and the local law enforcement people. He just laughed and said that he came close to getting into trouble by reporting them!
We saw zero deer that trip. On the way out I asked him about that, and he grinned and said that their marines had taken care of the deer at night! We never went back!
Is this a good example of political correctness?