GRAND RAPIDS, Minn. — Tom Chapin was sure he had enough stories to tell after nearly 30 years as a Minnesota conservation officer, more than enough to fill a book, but he wasn’t as sure how many people would pay to read those stories.

Tens of thousands, it turns out.

Then-Minnesota conservation officer Tom Chapin with fishing spears confiscated from poachers in one week while he was on duty near Grand Rapids, Minn. Chapin published his first book of stories from his nearly 30 years as a Minnesota conservation officer, “Poachers Caught! Adventures of a Northwoods Game Warden,” in 2003. (Courtesy of Tom Chapin)

Twenty years ago, Chapin took out a second mortgage on his family cabin to raise the $35,000 needed for the first printing of his book, “Poachers Caught! Adventures of a Northwoods Game Warden.” Then he hit the road like a traveling salesman, dropping off books at every corner store and bait shop he could find across Minnesota.

He went to Elks Club and Kiwanis Club meetings to hawk his books. He went on every small-town radio station that would let him in the door, and every small-town newspaper, too.

“Everyone thought I was nuts — a retired guy putting up his own money like that to publish a book,” Chapin said. “But it’s something I really wanted to do. I thought it would sell if I could get the stories out there.”

After he retired as a game warden in 2001, Chapin’s first book came out in 2003.

“My wife (Sandy) and I spent the better part of five years traveling around the state selling these books,” added Chapin, now 77.

All that work paid off, and the first book sold well enough to convince Chapin to follow with a second book, “More Poachers Caught! Further Adventures of a Northwoods Game Warden,” in 2005.

Then they kept selling. The first book went into a second printing. Then a third. Then a fourth.

“The first book is now in its 11th printing. The second book is in the sixth,” Chapin told the News Tribune this month. “I’m skirting 80,000 copies now in total sales.”

Chapin seems simultaneously proud of and befuddled by the books’ success.

“I stopped at the Barnes & Noble in Duluth a few weeks ago and they had 13 copies of my books on the shelf 20 years after they first came out,” Chapin said with a tone that might sound like bragging if you didn’t know him better.

While that may not match Stephen King or even William Kent Krueger, for a small-town, self-published author from northern Minnesota, writing about a niche subject like the outdoors, those numbers are in the stratosphere, said Joe Keyes.

Tom Chapin published his first book of stories from his nearly 30 years as a Minnesota conservation officer, “Poachers Caught! Adventures of a Northwoods Game Warden,” in 2003. (Courtesy of Tom Chapin)

Keyes and his wife, Mary, are proprietors of Howard Street Booksellers in Hibbing, a former brick-and-mortar bookstore that now conducts only special-order book sales. Most self-published authors rarely sell enough books for a second printing, let alone six or 11, Keyes noted.

“I knew people would like Tom’s stories. But what really blows my mind about it is that Tom’s book is still selling very well 20 years after it was first published. That just doesn’t happen. Most books have a shelf life of three or four, maybe five years, then sales really drop off. But not with Tom’s,” Keyes said. “These are numbers for book (sales) that would be more like someone who was published by Random House or Simon & Schuster.”

Keyes said that many readers of Chapin’s books are women, who he said buy the majority of books in America.

“They are not just guys’ books, which broadens the appeal. They are really unique stories, things that very few other people could have experienced if they hadn’t had Tom’s job,” Keyes said.

Chapin eventually recovered the $35,000 he borrowed to get the first batch printed. Now, a small, out-of-state publishing house owns the right to print his books. But Chapin is not getting rich in his retirement gig as author — he says he makes about $1 per book sold.

Chapin, a Hibbing native, earned his bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1972 from the University of Minnesota-Duluth after a two-year tour in the U.S. Army. Most of his 29-year career as a natural resource conservation officer was in the Grand Rapids area, where he also served as area supervisor for seven years. He was the 1978 Itasca County Law Enforcement Officer of the Year and the 1985 Minnesota Conservation Officer of the Year. Chapin also served as adjunct faculty, teaching law enforcement courses at Itasca and Hibbing community colleges.

It was in his fieldwork across Itasca County and the Chippewa National Forest that Chapin realized there were more bad apples out there in the woods and on the lakes than most people realized.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Chapin made headlines by calling for much tougher laws on poachers who flaunted state fish and game regulations. These violators weren’t kids with a single crappie over the limit or a grandpa who forgot to sign his fishing license, but game and fish hogs, many from other states.

Chapin repeatedly caught anglers with dozens of fish over their limits — including one group with 300 crappies over their legal limit stuffed into their rented cabin’s freezer. He searched one out-of-state boat on a trailer and found 149 bass over their limit.

Most violators in those days got off with just a light fine because the law didn’t differentiate much between 10 or 100 fish over the limit.

His campaign was successful, and the 2002 Minnesota Legislature passed a “gross over-limits” law, which increased penalties, including losing their license privileges, for serious misdeeds.

Then many of the stories he used to press for tougher rules made it into his books.

Chapin says it was because his district was so big and so wild, with great fishing lakes like Winnibigoshish, that gave him so many great stories to tell about catching bad guys and gals — like the time he swam 60 yards out to a boat in an attempt to bust three men catching walleyes on the Mississippi River the day before the season opened (that’s in book No. 1).

Chapin says he still has dozens of stories that could easily fill a third book and maybe more, but he also insists that’s not going to happen.

“My spouse says there will be no third book,” Chapin said with a laugh.

Buy the books

If you don’t already own a copy you can buy both “Poachers Caught!” books ($16.95 for the first, $18.95 for the second because it has more photos) at just about any bookstore in Minnesota — many bait shops, too — but also at Amazon.

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