Occupation / job
Fish and Game Wardens
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A midpoint of $74,060 against $50,020 means Fish and Game Wardens pays $2,003 a month more than the typical American job. At that distance the entry requirement is the real subject, because it is what the premium is buying.
With 5,770 employed nationally, Fish and Game Wardens is a small occupation. Small occupations are quiet: few postings, slow turnover, and a real chance that the person you would replace is not going anywhere.
Law enforcement suits people who can be the visible authority in a hostile moment and then write it up accurately afterwards, knowing the record will be read adversarially.
No verified preparation time is on file for Fish and Game Wardens. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
Between $61,430 and $89,110 there is $27,680, a ratio of 1.5x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
Even the bottom quarter of Fish and Game Wardens earns $61,430 — $29.53 an hour and $11,410 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you could not accept that your worst thirty seconds may be reviewed for years afterwards.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 5,770 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
The quarters are $61,430 and $89,110, a ratio of 1.5x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Fish and Game Wardens is the cost of living where you do it.
In cash terms the middle half of Fish and Game Wardens runs $61,430 to $89,110 — $27,680 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $74,060.
Between $61,430 and $89,110 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $74,060. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $15,050; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $27,680.
The climb from $74,060 to $89,110 is $15,050; the drop to $61,430 is $12,630. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Fish and Game Wardens and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $35.60 at the midpoint for Fish and Game Wardens, $29.53 at the 25th percentile and $42.84 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $74,060 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $74,060 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else