Navigating Florida Public Land
Hayden Martin for SPLIT REED
Photos Courtesy of Tony Vogel
It is a brisk January morning in the inner coastal marsh. The cold front that moved in did not push any of the birds out, so you’re working with the birds that stuck around. An alligator surfaces in the water nearby as you’re clearing a lane through the hydrilla to set up your decoys and to retrieve downed birds later. Several minutes pass and the first birds begin to fly. A couple of ringnecks buzz the decoys and you let them pass. From the left, you see some fully plumed blue-winged teal make their way toward your decoys, so you get ready. After the first volley and a couple of birds are down in the water, you make your way through the hydrilla lane to retrieve your birds before the alligator swims over to have breakfast.
For Tristan and Tony Vogel of Zero Duck:30, this way of duck hunting in Florida has made it special to them. So much so that after spending ten years living there and then moving out of state, they return time and time again for a good portion of their hunting season. “Florida separates itself from other states by providing a different environment from your standard flooded timber or cut cornfield with inner coastal marsh hunting in brackish water. Another way Florida distinguishes itself from the rest of the states is what locals like to call a ‘cast and blast.’ Let's say that the season has been beating you down, the birds are not flying, and the weather has been miserable. Head down to Florida and hunt some ducks in the morning, then cast your rod out and fish in the afternoon.”
Waterfowl hunting in Florida is more about the quality of birds you’ll get chances at rather than the number of birds. “You will never have the rainouts or number of birds circling above your spread like you will see in the Midwest, but you will see some of the prettiest birds. In Florida, you have one of the best opportunities to kill a fully plumed blue-winged teal drake and watch the nonmigratory mallard drakes go through a complete plumage change over the course of the season. This plumage change causes the mallards to get easily mistaken for a black duck or a mottled duck, which we have plenty of here. There are also multiple flyways that feed into Florida so that by the end of the season, we will have seen just about every single species from the Mississippi and Atlantic flyways.”
The state of Florida provides some of the best public land management in the United States. Through this management plan, hunters and conservationists alike are able to view and record the duck harvests in the different regions. Unfortunately, the rest of the state that is waterfowl habitat is owned by a monopoly of corporations that will not allow the land to be hunted. However, there is also more available water to hunt when you factor in the miles of coastline, marshes, swamps, and any ponds or lakes the birds set their eyes on.
Florida provides waterfowl hunters with unique opportunities and good public land management. “If I had only five days of duck hunting out of the whole season, three of those five would be spent in Florida,” says Tony Vogel.
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