Border Check Point

[Yul Lose]

7-8 years ago I guess it was my youngest son and I had been on a buffalo hunt north of Wheatland, Wyoming. We shot our buffalo on a Friday and had them to the processor in Casper in late afternoon. They skinned them and quartered them as they took them off of the trailer, they had been gutted out at the ranch. They processed, wrapped and froze the meat while my son and I hung around Casper for the weekend watching football and looking around. Sunday evening we went down to Walmart and bought 2 blocks of dry ice for each of my Icy Tek 300 quart ice chests so that they would cool down before we loaded the meat. Early the next morning we went back to Walmart and bought 3 more blocks of dry ice for each cooler to pack on top of the meat for the trip home. Next the processor and then we hit the road, spent the night in Cortez, Co. and dropped my son and his meat off in Lakesdie, Az. about noon on Tuesday. Drove down to Maricopa, Az. to visit a friend of mine and give him some buffalo meat and then head home to north San Diego County. I took Interstate 8 west to Yuma, Az., stopped for a bite to eat and headed west. At Ocatillo, Ca. you can head north through the Anza Borrego State Park and at that time of night desert big horn sheep are sometimes seen along the highway and that’s the route I take. It’s probably not as fast as I8 to San Diego and north but there is virtually no traffic, another reason to take the route that I did.

 

Just before you get into the park there’s a wide spot in the road and the Border Patrol sets up a surprise checkpoint on occasion and I had forgot about that, no big deal right? Well there were 5-6 rather young agents there and I pulled up to the stop sign, under the generator driven floodlights and one agent greeted me and asked me where I was coming from and where I was going. I told him that I was returning from Wyoming and on my way to my home in north county San Diego. All sorts of questions followed about what route I had taken and why such a southerly route, yada, yada, yada. Well the agent finally told me to pull into the secondary inspection lane because they didn’t like my answers. I asked which ones and he said most of them. They really didn’t believe me when I told them that one of the ice chests was packed with packages of frozen buffalo meat.

 

So here it is about 11:30 at night and I’m the center of attention. The guy asks for permission to search my vehicle and I told him “not without a warrant” and he said that they’d get a warrant but it might take all night. I told him I wanted to turn around and take the long way home and he said that wasn’t an option. So here I am with about 280lbs of buffalo meat packed on I don’t know how much dry ice, because the stuff melts. I had a decision to make because I didn’t want to risk losing the meat. Have you folks ever seen Clint Eastwood in The Mule? I think this is what those agents thought was going on and why I was using that lonely deserted road that time of night. So I told them to go ahead and search that I had nothing to hide. I always wrap the union of the lid and chest with a bunch of duct tape to help keep the cold in. They cut through all of that and finally got the lid open and there are a couple of hundred packages wrapped in white paper, I honestly thought that they thought that they had just made a major drug bust from their reaction.

 

They unloaded every package and opened a few just to see if I was telling the truth, even though every package was labeled buffalo and what cut was in it, they had to see for themselves. Once they were satisfied they packed it back up and as I got up in the pickup bed to redo the duct tape one of them says “I’ve never had buffalo meat before”. Well being the nice, generous guy that I am I asked them if they’d like some buffalo and they all said HELL YES. So I gave them each a package of hamburger and a package of steaks. I’ve got a long relationship with the BP from my early days in my 2-way radio career and I realized that they were just doing the job that we paid them to do and I wanted to get home. I got home at about 2:30 in the morning and instead of going in and waking up my wife I hit the sack in the RV for a few hours and then we unloaded the still frozen buffalo meat and stowed it in the chest freezer.

[JohnWesleyHardin]

Well, we made it to Tombstone and we have some friends outside our cabin.

[irish ike, SASS #43615]

21 hours ago, Abilene, SASS # 27489 said:

The first year they started checking traffic going over the dam, I was with Cimarron pulling the big trailer to Shot Show and when we got to the dam they said we would have to unpack the whole trailer.  No thanks.  Two hundred mile detour through Bullshead City!

When I stopped, he looked inside the trailer from the steps. I told him I could open the slides so he could walk around, no thanks was his answer. A couple next to us pulling a little utility trailer packed with everything they owned was told what they told you. Unpack it or go around!

[irish ike, SASS #43615]

15 hours ago, Matthew Duncan said:

I was asking Irish Ike.  He’s the one that posted they entered his home on wheels.

For us, all he did was step onto the trailer steps and look in. I opened the storage bay and he saw guns and ammo. We discussed how much ammo.

I knew before driving that route I had 2 choices. Take an alternate route and add 200 miles to my trip. Or go over the dam knowing that they would search my vehicle. Signs are clearly posted well in advance of the dam telling you that you will be searched. No warrant needed my choice of routes gave them consent.

[Constable Nelson #11784]

We were driving in southern AZ and came across a BP checkpoint.... if memory serves there was a bus off to one side with wired over windows so they clearly expected to catch some illegals......  It was a quick stop for us...as soon as they heard our accents we were on our way....