Meet Conservation Officer Nick Masucci
By Gary Moore
New Hampshire Conservation Officer Nick Masucci has a patrol area consisting of Orford, Piermont, Warren, Haverhill, Benton, Bath, Easton, and Landaff. But like all COs, he has to cover bordering patrol areas when the resident CO is off duty and much further afield in emergencies such as last Thursday when he was involved in a carryout in Franconia Notch.
I met him for the first time when he was my guest on WYKR a couple of weeks ago. We got to talk about his background and the job he does serving the people of New Hampshire some of which I recount here.
Nick has lived in North Haverhill since 2023 when he transferred from the Hillsboro area. He stated he much prefers working and living in this area to southern New Hampshire.
A native of upstate New York, he graduated from Paul Smiths college with a wildlife management degree.
He joined Fish and Game in 2018 and spent the first year moving around the state to train with other COs gaining a variety of experiences as is standard at Fish and Game.
In addition to his regular duties, Nick is a member of the dive team and responds all over New Hampshire for recoveries and evidence searches.
As part of our chat, we talked about how much time Conservation Officers spend doing other than traditional fish and game enforcement. During the warm months significant amounts of time are spent answering complaints about illegal operation of atvs, utvs and dirt bikes. Once snow arrives snowmobile enforcement takes up a lot of time.
Much of the public thinks COs spend their time checking fishing and hunting licenses and chasing poachers. They do all that and help biologists and hatchery staff, but OHRV enforcement takes a big part of their average workday.
Add to that, search and rescue, nuisance animal complaints, rabies cases and mandated annual training and you can understand why they are seldom bored.
I was impressed with Nick’s enthusiasm for the job and his obvious dedication to serving the public and the resources. He is a welcome addition to area law enforcement.