Linda Powell, the state's first female game warden, remains a rarity in the business
By Ed Godfrey
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Published: October 11, 2009
When Linda Powell became a game warden 19 years ago, many folks in Marshall County and around Lake Texoma couldn’t believe what they were seeing.
Game warden Linda Powell of Madill offers some encouragement to 10-year-old Michaela Pixley of Norman, who was learning how to cast a fly rod at the recent Oklahoma Wildlife Expo at the Lazy E Arena. Powell was the first female game warden in Oklahoma, and 2009 marks the 100th anniversary of the state’s first game wardens. Photo By Ed Godfrey, The Oklahoman
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"When I first went to work and I was driving my truck down the road, I would get a lot of double takes,” Powell said. "They would look back and look back again.”
Who could blame them. No one in
Oklahoma had ever seen a female game warden before. Powell was the first.
It would be 13 years before a second woman would be hired in Oklahoma as a game warden. Today, there are only three women among the 114 Oklahoma game wardens working in the field.
Texas has 533 game wardens, but only 27 are women.
Arkansas employs just four women among its 166 game wardens.
Kansas has one female game warden, a captain of investigations, among its 80 game wardens.
In addition, Kansas employs 42 land managers who are law enforcement certified. None are women.
Larry Manering, head of law enforcement for the
Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, thinks the erratic hours of game wardens – even more so than other law enforcement agencies – is the primary reason more women don’t apply.
"We work all weekends and a lot of nights. It makes it very tough, especially if you are a mom,” Manering said.
And many women don’t relish the idea of "being out there in the boonies by yourself at night,” Manering said. "It’s not easy to do our job.”
For Powell, however, being a game warden was her dream job. She had fished and hunted her entire life with her dad and four brothers.
"I loved the outdoors and was interested in law enforcement,” she said. "I didn’t care about being the first female game warden. I just wanted to be a game warden. It took me several years before I got on.”
If there were any skepticism at first among her law enforcement colleagues about whether a woman could handle the job, Powell said she never heard it. She’s always felt just like one of the guys.
"They seemed to accept me. I never looked at it as a man’s job,” she said. "It was easy for me to adjust to them. I was raised with my dad and four brothers. They had to get used to a female, I’m sure.”
Powell, 58, is entering one her busiest times of the year with archery deer season under way, gun season just weeks away and active fall fishing on Lake Texoma.
Being a woman has never been an issue with her colleagues or the culprits, she said.
The few instances where someone getting a ticket might have tried to intimidate her because she is a woman never escalated out of control, Powell said.
"I have to get serious, and they come around,” she said.
In the beginning, the hunters and anglers in Marshall County and around Lake Texoma were just surprised to encounter a female game warden, Powell said.
Nineteen years later, it’s no big deal.
"They got used to me,” she said.
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