Deer Plans & Scouting - Lake Panasoffkee WMA Special Opportunity Hunt

I stood at the gate staring down into the swamp. I wouldn’t be able to drive my truck any further. The road into the dark was steep – a rough ride back up on bike. Bikes didn’t matter, though. I didn’t have one with me. Middle of July, I wasn’t about to walk into that skeeter pit.

This is going to be a tough hunt, I thought.

I pulled a Lake Panasoffkee Special Opportunity Archery permit for 12/1-12/4. With twins on the way in September, my chances of driving far and wide for deer appeared awfully grim, so I made a desperate tag grab for anything close to home. Luckily, it all panned out, and I may salvage part of this season.

The FWC markets Special Opportunity Hunts as the opportunity to hunt “large areas with lots of game and low hunter quotas and (that) provide excellent opportunities to bag trophy deer, wild hogs, quail, wild turkeys or doves.”

Much of this is done in conjunction with other agencies, in this case the Southwest Florida Water Management District commonly known as “SwiftMud.” You pay for the privilege to hunt here. Pay to apply, pay if you are successfully drawn and want the hunt. It is difficult to draw a tag. This is the first time I have been successful. You can apply for as many hunts as you want to help up your odds. I applied for three. Drew Lake P; am currently on the waiting list for two Green Swamp West deer hunts. One hunt I’m 353rd in line. The other, 435th. So I’m feeling pretty lucky about what I did get, especially since this hunt has a limit of 20 hunters.

But, wow, now the work starts. Lake Panasoffkee WMA is nearly 9000 acres of floodplain forest. From Google Earth you can see the land is mostly swamp and wetlands with scrub and flatwood habitat on the northern end of the property. With a large equestrian camp on the premises and being part of the Great Florida Bird Trail, I am assuming the roads and paths – 26 miles total - will be easy to travel.

The greatest trouble with hunting swamp like this is figuring where to set up. For starters, there’s no telling how much water will be standing come December. I betting not as much as there is now – and that makes scouting difficult, as well. All it takes, though, is a hurricane or tropical storm to fill up those bottoms through most of the season. Next, swamps – at least those from my experience – lack many of the funnels and edge territory that one would normally queue on when setting up a stand. Scouting from the sky doesn’t help a whole lot. Also, I’ve not found much in my research about the property.

And to top it off, it’s an archery hunt with a four-point on an antler rule. Really limiting my odds, people.

Ideally, in a swamp like this, I’d find a promising locale, hang a lock-on, and pour corn 'til it shined through the canopy. Of course, I’d probably end up with a whole lot of hogs and not many deer. And it's illegal on public land anyhow.

Hunting in the swamp is much different than hunting broken and mixed terrain. I could sit and percolate on this hunt for a while and makes desperate guesses and assumptions of how it’ll play out, but it’s just going to take shoe leather. Look for some oaks, old rub lines and trails. It's standard issue scouting, just much more difficult to know where to start.

I’ve signed up for a tough hunt, no doubt.

Deer Plans & Scouting - Half Moon WMA

Whoever checks the sign-in sheets at Half Moon WMA and Lake Panasoffkee WMA probably wondered what kind of lunatic this Nance fellow is who claimed to be scouting at noon in the middle of July. I pulled deer quota tags for both of these lands, and I’d never set a toe on either. This was going to be a project.

Scouting Florida’s WMA’s is challenging, especially those open only to quota hunts. State hunters are lucky to have access to so much land, but if all you have are the rules and regulations yet no real kind of plan, you could be in for a trying time. Most quota hunts last only a handful of days, and the best lands are difficult to pull. So, consistently drawing a hunt from one year to the next is tough and doesn’t exactly help with any sort of institutional knowledge.

And I use the term “access” very loosely. To prevent damage to environmentally sensitive lands, the FWC keeps vehicle traffic on most public lands to a minimum during the offseason. While I’d much rather scout from the comfort of the A/C, that wasn’t going to happen. These places allow scouting days – but they are a day prior to the hunt. I need more time than that.

So, a plan. I drew the tags; that was the hard part. I drew general gun quota for Half Moon in November and a Special Opportunity Archery Hunt for Lake P in December (talk about more in the next post). I had a general sense of where the properties were, but was absolutely delighted to discover their entrances just a few miles apart. While scouting, I can kill two birds with one stone.

The next step was to explore Google Earth and other aerial sources. Immediately, one can tell there’s a major difference in terrain between the two. The solid dark green of Lake P meant swamp. The patchy landscape of Half Moon revealed more edge territory – and I suspected at first glance, more deer.

So I was in Homosassa this last weekend and decided to take a little detour on the way home and put my eyes on these places, get a feel for how far they were from the house, and get a better feel for the place itself. I probably should have taken a bike with me, but I needed to be back in Lakeland for a party.

I loved Half Moon on sight. I’d long heard it to be a popular WMA with a successful deer program. From what I understand, this property is one reason the FWC switched to non-transferable permits. People in the area would have family and friends apply for tags each year then transfer them to hunters. The FWC got suspicious when the same folks kept showing up year after year to hunt what would otherwise be a difficult draw.

I’d never been too keen on general gun hunts, mostly because I don’t want a bullet hole in me. Still, word had gotten around that this was a fantastic place to hunt. I felt remiss that I had yet to see or hunt the property. So when the time came to apply for tags, I decided to go the rifle route. One, because the hunt I applied for was right in the middle of the rut. Two, I already knew where I wanted to hunt for primitive seasons. If I didn’t score on Half Moon, so be it. Turns out it was my lucky year.

The property is 9,480 acres of the most ecologically varied landscape I’ve set foot on. There are 20 different natural communities on this property, from marshes and swamps to scrub, flatwoods, and beautiful mesic hammocks, hosting quite the diversity of wild life. The Withlacoochee River runs its western border and improved pastures of bahia grass hearken back to the old days of cattle ranching.

Now, I didn’t walk too far in, but my initial impression about there being a lot of deer seemed correct. I found a pile of tracks near the equestrian trails by the entrance. The place just felt whitetail-ish. And the good folks from the FWC had the harvest report on the kiosk. Over 5 weekend hunts last year – 2 general gun, 2 archery, 1 muzzleloader - hunters took 66 deer, 37 of which were antlered bucks that had to have at least 3 points on one antler. Not shabby.

Then Dad ran across the Recreation Master Plan for Half Moon that excited me even more. They have estimated the deer density to be around 60 animals per square mile. That’s a high number. In addition, the plan claims that “Hunting is consistent across the property with no ‘hot spots.’”

I’ve almost made it sound too easy. I’d be a real nincompoop if I couldn’t kill a buck here, huh! I’ll probably opt for the ground blind option in the white oaks – it is important to have a couple back up plans, too, if fellow hunters get too friendly.

The edge territory from the varying ecosystems is probably the reason for the high deer population. With the variety of browse, it’s easy to grow and hold more deer than a location with a widespread, consistent ecosystem. It’s always a handy thing to keep in mind when you are looking for a new lease or place to hunt. If the land appears broken and patchy, odds are there are plenty of deer. Add a major river to the mix and you have a right fine piece of deer land.

So, Half Moon, rifle season, November 11-13. I’m jacked. Much more so than I thought I’d be. But there is still a ton of work to be done. I’m going back in a couple of weeks with the bike but even then it’ll be a haul. Heck, the check station is a mile deep into the property. Gonna have to put the pedal to the metal. An opportunity like this deserves a little extra sweat, though.

If anyone has any advice on hunting here, let a brother know!