The December 21, 1938 issue of the McAllen Daily Press carried the sensational headline “Game Warden Slain By Hunters,” describing the incident in which Dawson R. Murchison was murdered in a confrontation with a group of poachers that he was investigating.
Dawson Richard Murchison was born February 11, 1887 in Bastrop County, Texas to Alexander Daniel Murchison and Laura E. White Murchison. Dawson was the eighth of nine children born to the couple. Around the time Dawson was born, his father was working as a farmer in the community of Cedar Creek.
Game Warden Murchison was on the trail of poachers on the Concho Game Preserve near Ben Bolt, Jim Wells County. The Concho Preserve was said to be about the size of the state of Rhode Island. Murchison had gone to a pasture about three miles from Ben Bolt with another Warden named J. L. Robinson out of Alice and possibly another man named Butler to search for “headlight hunters,” so named because bright lights, even a flashlight, temporarily can blind a deer making it easier for poachers to shoot the animal. Headlight hunting was not expressly prohibited by law until around 1975 but “hunting with light” for protected game has been prohibited and considered a violation for decades prior to the codification.
Wardens had received a tip about the violations and were searching for suspects on the King Ranch near the county line that divides Kleberg and Jim Wells counties. Around midnight, the officers noticed headlights being flashed. They maneuvered to a point near the suspects, close enough to hear them speaking Spanish. Murchison then shined his own flashlight on them and the officers ordered the suspects to halt. While this illuminated the suspects, it also made the warden a target. The exact sequence of events was not immediately reported, but the suspects fired on the officers. It is unknown whether the officers returned fire. The flashlight was knocked from Warden Murchison’s hand and soon afterward he received one or more gunshot wounds which proved to be fatal. None of the other individuals appear to have been wounded. Warden Murchison was carried to the automobile, but he died before more medical help could arrive.
All rangers in the lower valley were immediately sent to the scene, to help search for the suspects. However, the area was in the midst of drought conditions at the time. The dry surface and high winds made tracking difficult though two suspects were turned over to sheriff Charles Price and initially held in the jail at Alice. Search dogs, bloodhounds, were dispatched to the location.
Game commissioner Will J. Tucker reported that Warden Murchison was the first Texas game warden to be killed in the line of duty. Officials of the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission (predecessor name of the current Texas Parks and Wildlife Department) quickly reported the incident and investigation began under the leadership of Homer Garrison, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Another article a few days later noted that Warden Murchison had been exonerated several years earlier in a fatal officer involved shooting of a hunter caught butchering a deer. Murchison and other warden named Phillip Trammel had encountered the hunter who drew his gun on Trammel, causing Murchison to fire on the hunter in defense of his fellow warden. The hunter was killed. A grand jury investigated the killing but exonerated Murchison of any wrongdoing. The article advanced an unlikely theory that since the hunter in that case had also been Mexican, as the 1938 suspects were assumed to be, that the motive might have involved revenge.
In days following, articles mentioned that footprint comparisons with those of the detained suspects were “favorable” and although it was only a glimpse, Warden Robinson did briefly see the face of one assailant. A third man was detained two days later.
Warden Murchison was fifty-five years old and had been stationed in Kingsville, some fourteen miles away from the site of the 1938 shooting. He had been with the Game department for about ten years, according to W. W. Boyd, who served as coastal director for the commission. A brother, E. A. Murchison, was a probation officer and president of the school board in Austin. Warden Murchison was married in 1910 and was survived by his wife and five children, four brothers and a sister. A funeral was held two days later in Kingsville for Warden Murchison after which he was interred at Chamberlain Cemetery in the city.
No record can be found of any trial connected with the death of Warden Murchison. It is believed that the assailant or assailants fled across the border into Mexico and were never apprehended or extradited for the crime.
A lake near the incident site was named Murchison Lake in his honor. In 2020, Texas Parks and Wildlife named a patrol vessel for Warden Murchison. He is also one of thirteen wardens honored on a bronze life sized statue located at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Freshwater Fisheries in Athens, Texas. No sculptor is listed. The statue was erected in the mid 1990s to honor game wardens who had lost their lives in the line of duty. The decision to locate the statue there was due to the very large number of visitors who come to the facility each year. Around 2021, plans were announced to move this statue to the Texas State Capitol. Administrative and legal steps have been taken to do this, but as of this writing, the move has not been completed. A Texas Historical Marker was unveiled in Kingsville in 1968 honoring Warden Murchison.
© 2025, all rights reserved.
Texas History Notebook 