Photos provided to the Times Observer Retired Fish & Boat Commission law enforcement officer, Bob Steiner, has published a book - River Boots - about his experience on the state waterways, including the Allegheny River and Chapman Reservoir.

Twenty-five years as a law enforcement officer on Pennsylvania’s waterways is bound to bring one into some unique circumstances.

That was certainly the case for Bob Steiner, a retired Fish & Boat Commission officer, who recently published a new book on his career entitled “River Boots: A Fish Warden’s Tales of Pennsylvania Fish and Game Law Enforcement.”

Steiner was the PFBC officer in Venango and Luzerne counties and completed his career as a supervisor in the northwest division. His work both in Venango and as a supervisor brought him onto Warren County waterways.

He retired in 1999. The book had been in the works for years before that.

As assistant supervisor he would have “young officers come in (and) have one of those crushing problems they have when they first start.” He’d share a story that would “make them breathe a little easier” and then send them back to work.

He filed those stories away as they happened and those notes are the basis for the book, which he calls “a story of my career, but a funny story of my career.”

It’s 253 pages and includes 253 stories.

“The reason we are really pushing it in the camp country, it would make a great camp book,” he said. “It’s been a good experience for an old geezer.”

There are stories from Chapman Dam, the Allegheny River and from Warren County streams.

Towards the end of his career, he was tasked with patrolling the Allegheny River from Clarion County up to the Kinzua Dam.

Earlier in his career, he had been assigned to Chapman Dam “just paying attention to the lake and the trout streams.” One evening, he was two to three miles up into the state game lands when he came across a fisherman.

“I’m a young anxious officer,” he said. “Everything was fine.”

It wasn’t until after the exchange that the man told him he was a retired game protector who was part of the state’s first class of game wardens.

“Thankfully for me, I wasn’t overzealous,” Steiner said. “It was just a great experience for me.”

While he signed up as a fish warden, he also was able to jump to the game side when time allowed.

It was in the early days of ATVs when he contacted a group of male hunters who he had found in violation.

“I started asking a few questions,” he said, collecting licenses. One of the licenses was for a 13-year-old girl named Melanie. And the man carrying it? The man with the biggest beard.

While the stories are intended to be comical, Steiner says the book also is a training guide for current officers.

“It’s a history book,” he said. “You can learn lessons from a history book.”

And what are those lessons?

“You can have a lot of fun doing this job but you’re on your own,” he said, recalling those trips up the river alone which required some unique approaches, for example, running into a drunk boater and telling them to set up camp and he’d check the next morning because he didn’t have the means to arrest on the scene.

“You had to ad lib somewhat,” he said. “To some extent, that still exists. You are the loan ranger if you’re fisn and game.”

One of the biggest differences between then and now is the training — his training was nine weeks while training now is, in total, over a year long.

Another massive change to the field is the expansion of boating.

“It was the Pa. Fish Commission and we do boating too,” he said. The name change to the Fish & Boat Commission “started to reflect the fact we were dealing with boats. If you had an area with a lot of boats, that’s about what you get done in the summer.”

“It’s a conservation job by all means,” he stressed, “more of a conservation police officer (now) than you used to be.”

The book is available both on Amazon and locally at Pennwild Outdoors.