Audio: Game & Fish Director Says Department Still Hasn't Found All Their Guns

I interviewed North Dakota Game & Fish Director Terry Steinwand on the radio this morning regarding his office’s on-going efforts to rectify issues found in an audit report issued June 3rd.

The problem from that audit which has grabbed the most headlines is, obviously, the missing guns. Initially the audit discovered over 700 guns utilized in the hunter safety program weren’t accounted for. On July 16th we learned that the department had found all but 18 of them.

Today Steinwand told me they still have guns missing. He wasn’t sure how many, but he said it was less than the 18 number from a couple of weeks ago. Which is amazing.

To have 18 guns missing – still – nearly two months after the audit report was issued? And no doubt Game and Fish new about the missing guns before then.

Steinwand said many of the guns are with former instructors who have moved on, but how exactly does that happen? I wish I’d pressed him a bit more on this issue, but since when is the state in the habit of letting former employees just walk off with state equipment? Especially something posing as big a potential liability as a gun?

I don’t think the Game & Fish Department has sufficiently explained to the public how that happened.

The audio of the full interview is above.