A number of Lubbock area Texas Game Wardens were in Levelland Wednesday to take part in water training.
The training classes are done in groups of 20 at a time. Texas Game Warden instructors are making their way across the state, training other wardens.
The safety training was done in full uniform and gear to give game wardens an understanding of the kind of weight they will be dealing with when they go into the water.
“You’re adding roughly 15 pounds of gear anyway, but once you get that wet and fully saturated, you add an additional 15 pounds,” Texas Game Warden Jason Jones said. “So you’re carrying an additional 30 pounds of weight, which that limits your flexibility, limits your ability to get back out of the water, you don’t want to stay in the water the whole time.”
“We work around water, and we have that gear on while we’re working, so we’re trying to take that factor out, that surprise factor of us going in the water with full gear,” Jones said.
“It’s muscle memory, where you go into the water in full gear on and you’re saying, ‘I’ve been there, done that,’ so it takes that panic factor out of the situation, where you can focus on the task at hand,” Jones said.
This kind of training is important for game wardens because they are constantly dealing with water.
“Most people know that game wardens enforce hunting and fishing regulations,” Texas Game Warden Aaron Sims said. “A lot of people don’t know that we’re the primary law enforcement on Texas waters, whether it’s Lake Alan Henry, Buffalo Springs, rivers or the Gulf Coast.”
“This is critical training, even in our area coming from Lubbock, because we’re going to be out in force more on Lake Alan Henry and Buffalo Springs, and we have to be able to handle ourselves if we do, either intentionally go in the water after somebody, or unintentionally with a potential suspect trying to attack one of us,” Sims said.
The training in Levelland includes game wardens from Lubbock, Amarillo, Abilene, and Wichita Falls.