The Case of a County-Run Hunting Program

I attended Duette Park's mandatory hunting orientation last Saturday morning. Manatee County runs the show and, to my knowledge, Duette is the only tract of public land in Florida where the county designs the hunting program, within the guidelines of state law. Over 21,000 acres, the land is home to the headwaters of the Manatee River which favors healthy populations of deer, hogs, turkey and other game animals. Duette shows scars of human use from a couple generations ago and is still surrounded by agriculture and phosphate ventures. Today, it's managed with a plan to restore it to its native, natural condition - with shell roads, power boxes and fences, of course.

Part of their management plan includes this unique hunting program to keep the deer and hog herds in check. Several weekend hunts are sold through a random-draw system. The added income helps fund conservation projects such as longleaf pine restoration, and land management tools like prescribed burns. These hunts have been held every year for nearly 20 years and enjoy a loyal following. In a section of the state where public land is limited, it's valuable real estate.

And it's a lot to ask for in these days of shrinking local government budgets. These hunts aren't overflowing the coffers considering labor costs, machinery, etc. A few seasons ago the hunt program was very much in doubt as the entire state buckled under the recession. So take a tough economic climate and add the wishes of sportsmen, and the challenge for the county comes down to satisfying paying customers while keeping management plans in check with the limited resources available.

I remember the first orientation I attended. The park biologists and managers stood in front of the drawn hunters and read through the rules. Then they were verbally accosted for all manner of  supposed transgressions. Quite a few in the mob – many of whom couldn't even spell "diploma" – queried the biologists on their qualifications to enact management policy. It was known that a lot of the staff were non-hunters, though they worked closely with FWC to draw up management goals from season to season. It was as close to a public flogging as I'd ever seen, and honestly made me worried sharing the woods with these folks.

Duette Park 8-pt

I left that year thinking, "Why do they put up with this? No way can this last." 

But, to their credit, the show’s gone on. 

Since then these annual meetings have been pretty tame, and I'm recognizing the same outdoorsmen from year to year; the majority of the loudmouth malcontents have since packed sand. This year, though, I thought would attract scorn. One, there were no hunts in November, the prime rut period in this section of the state. Two, it didn't appear there'd be any doe tags this season. Three, they raised the antler restriction to 3-points on one side, up from 2.

I figured the antler rule would rile up the most derision. It was front and center in the debate 6 years back. Then, they proposed a modest increase from spike to forkie to improve the age structure and trophy potential, and Holy Jesus, you’d thought they’d been restricted to shooting fictional creatures.

It passed without a peep this year. People will surprise you. It was explained that, yes, they’d still like to improve the age structure. Not a murmur dripped from the crowd. But that’s not the most shocking point to this lack of aggression. See, it's not a free-for-all deer slaying; they work on a quota system. Usually the number of bucks that can be taken on a weekend is 4 – 6. If that is met or exceeded on Saturday, bucks are off-limits on Sunday, allowing only the harvest of pigs or does – if one possesses an antlerless tag (be there in a second). For a 100 hunters paying $80-$90 a hunt sharing a bag of 6 bucks, it's tough to swallow expectations of a whole weekend and only getting a day for that Big Buck. And Big Bucks are tough to do in a day.

Again, not an eyebrow raised, and I believe the rangers relaxed enough to uncross their legs.

As for the doe situation, the guy running the orientation this year, now confident in the calm, claimed he’d prefer no doe tags for the next five years. Nighttime surveys convinced them they’d been a little too liberal doling out these special permits in the past. Bowhunters were welcome to pop a flathead, but the rifle crowds were out.

A striking silence with hunting opportunity shrinking by the paragraph.

The final issue was a lack of hunting weekends during the rut in November, save for one Youth Hunt – youth recruitment was also a big topic this year, happily. One guy stepped forward to challenge this decision, maybe having concluded we were getting chumped out of the best time to hunt. The Man in Charge flatly told him they didn’t have the staff. The limited crew was spread out between here and several other parks throughout the county. With the holidays and influx of Snowbirds flocking south, they just didn’t have the manpower or budget to accommodate November hunts. The gentleman ghosted back into the corn.

All in all, I was impressed with the crowd. Though the added money is critical, hunting is not a priority on this property and this group seemed to understand. Or maybe it was hot and they were lazy, who knows? The County certainly doesn’t need the hassle but has put together about as fine of a quality deer hunting program as you could expect, given the variables. 

The major attribute I see in this success is the communication. The park employees ask hunters to volunteer input on season dates, recommendations for the park, and ways to improve the program. And they appear to be listened to, in some form. A few years back it was suggested to open up the park in the summer for hog and predator hunts. The hogs are rampant here and need serious thinning, a point on which the biologists and hunters always agree. This year they obliged, and it was a superb hunt. As an added bonus, the proceeds of the weekend went to the United Way.

One last remarkable part of this program that other state agencies would do well to notice – the place gets quite a bit of traffic from equestrians, hikers, birdwatchers, butterfly gazers, etc., and there appears to be little conflict, though the park is closed to outsiders during hunt weekends. Beyond the game animals, Duette is also home to endangered scrub jays and indigo snakes and other special species such as gopher tortoises all living in delicate ecological environs. If in nearly twenty years the sanctity of the park’s mission to protect and restore this vestige of native Florida landscape was threatened or conflicts arose with other user groups, I think us hunters would be shown the door in hurry.

Thankfully that’s not happened. It’s a rare piece of property in this state and a fine example of not only assimilating hunters and sound land management practices, but also allowing various populations of outdoor enthusiasts to enjoy the land. We need it in Florida. 

Think folks understand that, too.

To Catch a Coon - Trapping for Land Management

So, I’ve become a trapper - at least the furbearers permit claims as much. Not the kind of woodsman extraordinaire who snares beaver to trade downstream for supplies and women to keep him warm during the winter. Or one who runs a line to make an extra dime on coyote or bobcat pelts. It’s a straight-up management attempt to rid our small Central Florida lease of a few raccoons.

Throughout turkey season I noted hen tracks in the sugar sand trailing from the adjoining property to the west into ours. With a lack of tall trees, they almost certainly do not roost on our land with any regularity. What occurred to me was the hens were visiting our weedy, brushy, scrubby land to nest. It is an ideal locale to do so with an abundance of sedge and palmetto and gallberry that offers not only nesting shelter but plenty of bugs for the precocious poults.

Ideal albeit one caveat: The Raccoons.

A couple months ago I wrote about the booming coon population on our lease, their thirst for destruction, and our feeble attempts to dim their flames. The property is surrounded by orange groves and a swamp bottom, a veritable raccoon Nirvana. Since that post we have implemented a serious trapping program. 

Well, let’s start from the beginning. I’ve never cared too much about trapping largely because there’s never been a real call to arms. Sure, most properties I’ve hunted host large numbers of egg-stealing predators, but either trapping was not allowed, such as on WMA’s, the properties were too far away to ethically run traps, or the situation just didn’t call for it. The first two elements are easy to explain – the last is the sticky wicket.

You have to decide whether trapping for management is worth your time, and I mean this in a couple of different ways. One, will your property benefit from trapping coons? Large tracts of land with an already-healthy turkey population will probably only realize minimal results unless you can dedicate many, many years to a trapping program. Which brings us to another point – do you have the time and resources to be consistent with the routine of keeping traps baited and dispatching the caught week in and week out? If not, you’re probably just spinning your wheels.

But back to our place. It’s a mere 140-acres, and there is a no-question surplus of ringtails. The turkey population is only starting to creep back into this part of Florida having been pushed out years back by mining, citrus and other factors. There are birds around; with a little help, there could be more in the coming years.

Now, again, it’s tough to predict if our efforts will pan out. Our neighbors aren’t trapping and coons breed rather quickly. On the plus side, coons will travel good distances seeking food and mates; there should be plenty of targets. The trick is to stay with it.

To begin, we used live traps near the corn feeders and baited them with tuna fish and dog food. This promptly wiped out 10, but the survivors soon grew wary of the cages. We needed a foothold or snare of some kind. The only problem with this – especially in Florida – is the possibility of catching an endangered something or another. Like a fox. Gray fox are protected here, and last thing I want is to find one in a foot-hold and have the man ready to write me a ticket. The cruelest thing he could do – to me and the fox - is have me release the creature. Hard to say who’d come out on top.

To remedy this, I purchased a pair of Duke’s Dog Proof Coon Traps and deployed them by a spinner feeder that had not had a live trap near it yet. The trap is a hollow tube with a trigger in the back. Its opening is just big enough for a raccoon’s or possum’s thieving paw, but if a coyote stuck its muzzle in there, it wouldn’t be able to set off the trigger. Same if they happened to step in it. The prey must reach past the trigger and pull it forward to spring it. It looks and sounds a tad gimmicky but nothing machined from steel tends to be. Same here. Neat design.

You’ll want to rig the trap with cable and secure to a tree. To set the trap, squeeze down on the spring-lock mechanism. Have a wooden dowel handy and stick in the trap to keep it open while you set the trigger. The instructions suggest marshmallows for lure, but I suspected the Florida heat and fire ants would ruin this, so I baited them with dry cat food and leftover fish-fry grease to sweeten the pot.

With people checking them every couple days, the first week we caught a possum and a large boar coon that probably should have ended up in my trophy room. The second week found two more coons. I’ll give the Dukes a few more days to dine and relocate them to other pieces of the property. They are efficient. I’ve been using my North American Arms .22 Mag derringer for the loud work – which is the highest employment I can justify for even owning that pistol.

The reality is I’m picking off the easy ones; the time is fast coming when trapping becomes more of an art form and strategy of woodsmanship. I’ve done research on both setting traps and trapping coons and feel I own a plan. I’ll look to place one trap near the swamp along trails coon sign and rotate the other between crossings from the orange grove with corresponding spoor. Sounds like a plan, at least. Let you know.

It’s too early to tell with turkey, but I will testify that it’s helped with the deer. Over the last few months I’ve struggled to capture whitetails on the Covert Camera by my bump feeder despite keeping the barrel slap-full of corn and dumping bags around it to chum up the area. All this produced were thousands of pictures of raccoons.

Within a week of removing the traps – and a half-dozen pests – I have the raccoons running scared and the deer happily grazing. I’d long heard that coons would keep deer from the feeders, but it was amazing to witness how quickly it worked.

So think about it. Trapping is not for everyone – personally and functionally on a piece of land. But in the right setting it can be an effective land management tool to improve turkey populations and deer hunting.