Game Warden for Terry and Yoakum Counties Aaron Sims is not only the district PIO for Texas Parks and Wildlife, he will be one of the new faces of a new show, “Lone Star Law”, premiering on Animal Planet on June 2 at 9 p.m. Central Time.
The show, which will air on Thursdays at 9 p.m. on Animal Planet, will feature game wardens from across Texas and the responsibilities they face.
Sims said that while many people just associate Game Wardens with hunting laws and fishing licenses, their jobs entail much more. He’s glad that Lone Star Law will highlight many of the things the public doesn’t understand about the law enforcement and community work Game Wardens do.
“It’s exciting, but it’s also a responsibility,” Sims said of the new series. “There’s been game wardens since 1895 doing fabulous jobs for over 100 years, but no one’s really heard the story. You may know your local game warden, he may check you every now and then, but a lot of people don’t realize we’re also state police and [have authority within] 9 nautical miles out into the coast of Mexico, so we could run into drug smugglers or human smugglers.”
Animal Planet producers say the show began filming in April of 2015 and wrapped up filming in February of 2016, a process which involved over 125 game wardens from across the Lone Star State.
Sims and several other game wardens went to Austin last week to watch a preview of the season, an event with much more glitz than he sees in his day-to-day work.
“We had our first ever– who’d have thought– red carpet walk for Texas game wardens,” Sims laughed.
Lubbock District Lieutenant Game Warden Ryan Hall was filmed for Lone Star Law as well, but while he was filmed he was working for Texas Parks and Wildlife in East Texas. Hall said that the production crew didn’t try to script or stage anything, they just blended in to his daily responsibilities.
“It is reality TV, there is no prompting or scripting, or anything like that done they were just very quiet,” Hall explained.
Hall’s experiences with the TV crew were action packed, he encountered an 830 pound alligator on one of the days they were filming.
“We felt that it was a unique opportunity in the cooler weather where [the alligators are] not as active where I was able to capture the alligator and take it to a national wildlife refuge,” Hall explained.
Sims added that South Plains residents might recognize some of the locations on the show.
“We run into some interesting cases, I’m sure the viewers will enjoy, they may recognize some familiar places, we go into public places like Buffalo Springs Lake,” Sims said.
The production crew also appreciated Sims’ West Texas charm. Ben Shank at Engel Entertainment said of Sims:
“He often said there was daytime Aaron and nighttime. Day Aaron makes jokes and is a little more laid back and night Aaron is serious and on high alert. You don’t want to mess with night time Aaron.”
The South Plains game wardens think this new show will have an added bonus: brining in more out-of-town recruits and inspiring future Texas game wardens.
“I think most people will be surprised to see what we do for a living,” Hall said.
