Bernard Schaffer - Way of the Warrior: Collected Edition

BOOKS 1 and 2 of the

WAY OF THE WARRIOR

Join best-selling author and police officer Bernard Schaffer as he examines the philosophy of modern Law Enforcement. A decorated police veteran and second-generation cop, Schaffer possesses a keen insight into what it takes to successfully uphold the law and not lose your mind in the process.

Equal parts biography and instructional guide, the Way of the Warrior series focuses on the core of the individual officer: the warrior spirit.

Whether you 're a grunt working The Street or a white shirt who'd need a GPS to find it, this guide is designed to help you reconnect with why you took the oath to serve and protect. Behind the badge and the gun lies the heart of a warrior. Unleash your inner hero.

Law Enforcement Philosophy by

Bernard Schaffer

As a boy, I dreamt of belonging to a warrior society.

I was fascinated by knights, samurai, musketeers, Vikings, and Spartans. I spent long hours in the fields surrounding our family home with battery- operated toy machine guns and large plastic knives, playing war games. Later, when I was old enough to own a bb gun, I hunted small game like field mice with the fervor of a young Davey Crockett.

On the day I turned twelve years old , my father proudly informed me that it was time to attend "Hunter Safety Class."

Graduates of the safety class are presented with orange cards that officially license them as hunters in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It was permission to carry a gun and shoot things. My father had hunted since he was a little boy. My uncles hunted. Even my older cousin Kimberly hunted. She pulled her long ponytail through the back of her orange baseball cap to keep it out of the way when she shot.

The beginning of deer season was always a big event in our house. My dad would leave before the crack of dawn on the first day of deer season and we wouldn't see him again for several days. He'd come home with a scruffy beard, stinking of earth and game, but more times than not he was carrying freezer bags full of fresh meat.

My mother is Italian, and the only way she could tolerate venison was by using it as an ingredient with her regular dishes. She was used to making heaping bowls of ravioli and sausage spicy enough to make your eyes water, all of it covered with enough red gravy to drown a family of turtles. She detested deer meat, but she'd still cook up whatever my old man dragged home. To this day, if I eat venison, it's probably been turned into a meatball.

Voyages into the great outdoors with my father were always fraught with disaster. As a little kid he'd take me fishing with two pairs of clothes because invariably, I would fall in the water. We once went on a fishing trip with the guys from his police department for bluefish, my first time on a boat, and I spent the whole time bent over the side, chumming in my own special way.

As an outdoorsman, I was better by myself. I liked to go out into the woods with my pocket knife and whittle sticks, or practice walking through thick brush making as little noise as possible. It was always some kind of game. It was never just me practicing sneaking around in the woods. I was Sitting Bull, looking for a whiteman to scalp. It was never me putting a bb into the rear end of a squirrel. I was a safari hunter, taking out a predator.

Once I got my license, our first actual hunts were made in the large corn fields across from my house, searching for pheasant. Back in those days, the undeveloped areas of Montgomery County were a haven for pheasant. You 'd go outside for a walk and kick up at least a half dozen of them, easily.

Today, they 're all gone.

The combination of urban sprawl, pesticides, loss of wetlands, and increased farming practices , means there simply isn't much room for them anymore. If someone says they're going to hunt pheasant nowadays, it means they are going to a wildlife preserve out in New Jersey.

But back then, all you needed was an orange vest, a shotgun, and a good dog. Our springer spaniel would flush out birds all day and night. She'd stand there at the door when I was watching television, just staring at them in the fields, thinking, "Soon. Very, very soon."

My old man was a terrible hunting partner. The second the dog kicked one up, he'd shoot it. He'd stand there looking at me over the smoking barrel of his gun and say, "Why didn't you fire, slow poke?"

We cleaned the birds in the basement and I'd watch him pluck all the feathers off and start cutting them apart with his pocket knife. He'd make me hold various organs and say, "Do you know what that is?"

No pe. I just know I don't feel very hungry anymore.

" You better get hungry," he said. "It's a damn sin to shoot anything you don't intend on eating. We shot that bird, and we're gonna eat it."

After that, the field mice and squirrels around my house were pretty much given a permanent stay of execution. The only things I shot with my bb gun were empty beer cans, and if one thing is for certain, with my dad, there are always plenty of them around.

Still, it seemed a very primal thing to feed one's family with something you'd harvested from the Great Outdoors. The hunters return to provide for the gatherers. The men, along with my cousin Kimberly, would drag the bloody beef back into the caves for the women to cook. It connected me to my ancient ancestors. It was how I would become a man.

Unfortunately, becoming a man means getting up really, really early in the morning and freezing your ass off.

We were in Tinicum Township in Bucks County at my Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Kathy's place, and it was pitch black when the alarm went off. I think if you'd offered me a strange blood-letting rite or body scarification ritual in exchange for a few extra hours of sleep, I'd have taken you up on the offer.

That morning, my aunt cooked breakfast for all of us and even passed me one of the cups of coffee. I told her I didn't know if I was allowed to have any and she patted me on the head and said, "You're going to need it. It's cold as heck out there."

My Dad and I got dressed in long-johns and flannel shirts. We put on heavy coats and orange safety vests and hats and marched out into the cold woods. He told me to move quietly and look for signs of deer. "What kind of signs?" I said.

He pointed at a small clump of black pellets that looked like raisins and said, "Like that. Is it fresh?"

I looked at the deer shit and said, "Exactly how am I supposed to know that?"

He rolled his eyes and bent over and picked up a few of the pellets and said, "No, it's old. Keep moving."

We made our way into a tree stand and I sat there with my twelve-gauge pump at the ready. At the ready . At the"Dad, where are all the deer?"

"Nowhere if you don't stop talking," he whispered.

"We see deer all the time back home. You can't drive down the road and not see twenty of them. Maybe we need to get in our car and go look for them."

"Would you shut up before I throw you out of the tree stand? Your cousin Kimberly complains less than this, you big sissy."

After that, I sat there as quiet as I could, holding my gun, trying not to freeze to death. My Uncle Jimmy was somewhere else in the woods, trying to push the deer into the open. Eventually, my dad's walkie-talkie crackled, and Jimmy said, "Couple headed your way, Bern. I saw a big buck and a few doe."

The excitement in my dad 's voice was palpable when he put down the walkie-talkie and told me, "Get ready, buddy. Here they come."

After all that sitting and all that waiting, it was now time to go. Suddenly, three deer crashed through the brush, running and jumping so fast I couldn't tell which one had antlers. My Dad shouted, "Shoot it! Shoot it!"

I raised my gun and aimed at the biggest animal, hoping it was the right thing to shoot. My hands were surprisingly steady as I centered the shotgun's site on the buck's chest and squeezed the trigger. The stock recoiled into my shoulder and the deer folded in half like it had been punched in the stomach. Then, to my utter disbelief, it got up and kept running.