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St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge by David Tetzlaff Pelicans plunged and dolphins surfaced while I enjoyed the salt air and the warmth of the afternoon Florida sun. Then an acorn popped, a fawn bleated, and a pack of feral hogs fed in my direction, just out of recurve range. A group of does and yearlings circled beneath my stand and a six point tiptoed toward me, downwind. The buck busted me in a heartbeat, so I selected a dry doe and arrowed my first St. Vincent Island whitetail. Just another relaxing day at the beach. The sun set while I tracked and marked the doe, and I carefully picked my way through the dark along the beach. Although the evening game run was finished, refuge biologist Thom Lewis was still at the check station, and he was generous enough to drive me out for the deer retrieval, then ferried me, the doe, and my kayak across the channel to the campground. Nearby campers didn't seem to notice my hunting companions Ronnie Weatherman and Mark Normand help me skin and quarter my deer while they told their own stories of taking a feral hog and a doe respectively. This was our first day hunting on legendary St. Vincent Island. Ronnie and Mark had met on the Internet's Leatherwall and conspired to hunt the island by kayak and with traditional bows. I was happy to be invited but I had never heard of St. Vincent and I needed an atlas to begin making plans. To a south Florida resident, Florida's northern panhandle was a mystery requiring even more research. Early Indian tribes inhabited St. Vincent (named in the 1600's by Franciscan friars) as early as 240 A.D. and over time the island has been home to the Apalachee, Creek and Seminole tribes. As evidence of their presence, I have found pottery shards on the island, which are illegal to remove by the way. Of special interest to primitive hunters are the exotic species imported to St. Vincent by various private owners, first by Dr. Raymond V. Pierce in 1908 and then by the Loomis brothers in 1948. The island has been home to pheasant, jungle fowl, blackbuck, eland, zebra and sambar deer. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service purchased St. Vincent with duck stamp sales in 1968. With the island's new status as a National Wildlife Refuge the exotics were removed, save the sambar and feral hogs. An annual primitive weapons quota hunt is used to manage the sambar deer in order to maintain a population of 75-100 animals. A hunter from Alabama who recently took a sambar hind with a longbow is believed to be the only bowman in recent years to meet this challenge with traditional tackle, a remarkable achievement considering the half dozen sambar typically killed each hunt are taken with muzzleloaders. Sambar stags are impressive animals. Their sheds are considered to be stand-alone trophies by those who are lucky enough to find one. The largest stag taken on the island weighed over 700 lbs. Although these semi-aquatic elk relatives can often be found near the island's many sloughs on the eastern end, sambar have been seen in all of St. Vincent's habitats. St. Vincent is a large, triangular barrier island, nine miles in length and four miles across at is widest, eastern end. Largely unspoiled, the island has a minimal human footprint and is remarkably unchanged since Fred Bear and astronaut Walt Cunningham were filmed stalking its sloughs and cooking its oysters over an open fire three decades ago. A number of sand roads cover the island allowing for easy travel to hunting areas either by foot, or as some hunters prefer, by bicycle. North/south roads are numbered while east/west roads are lettered. West Pass, actually located on the eastern side of St. Vincent but so named as it is the west pass to and from Apalachicola Bay, is seven miles from the coastline and home to the staff cabins. St. Vincent's western side rests only a third of a mile from the mainland at Indian Pass. Check stations are located on both ends of the island. Entry for the sambar deer hunt is restricted to West Pass campsite. The island boasts many habitats, each interesting to the traveling bowhunter. Scrub oak ridges and gallberry flats offer spot and stalk opportunities, while cabbage palm, hardwood and slash pine habitats invite the treestand hunter. Freshwater lakes, streams and sloughs are located throughout the island creating excellent edges for stand sites. My hunting partner Chris Brodeur used it all, observing the mandatory stand hours of one half hour before daylight until 9 a.m. from his treestand, spending the remainder of the morning and early afternoon hours glassing and hunting the flats, dunes and firebreaks, then back to his stand for the evening hunt. With only nine days a year open to hunting on the refuge, the game is relatively unpressured. On day two of that first hunt Ronnie and I were only several hundred yards from Indian Pass on "B Road" when three does trotted across the road ahead of us and stopped 25 yards away on a low ridge. Having filled my deer quota, I had a ringside view of Ronnie slowly working the road, getting within bow range and sending a good arrow … but the quick reacting deer was not there to meet it. Sambar deer appear to have less tolerance to hunting pressure than the island's whitetails. Most sambar are taken on the first day of the hunt. Due to hunters being on foot or bicycle, refuge staff makes two game runs per day, one in late morning and the last at nightfall, along a marked route. Hunters are asked to move downed game as close to the game route as possible. Adding to the excitement of hunting a barrier island in the Gulf of Mexico is the rare opportunity to spot a wild red wolf. For the past seventeen years, St. Vincent has been home to either a pair or a family group of wolves and provides a breeding and pup training ground for this endangered canine. Surplus wolves are later released into their former range at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina as part of the red wolf recovery program. The refuge is also a vital nesting ground for loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles. Feral pigs and raccoons are notoriously destructive of turtle nests, hence the unlimited bag limits for both species. For some inexplicable reason (perhaps to discourage crowding on the hunt) St. Vincent has a nefarious reputation for its overabundance of venomous snakes. In seven trips to the island I have encountered only one eastern diamondback and several pigmy rattlesnakes. However, due to the relative isolation of island hunting and the fact that staff has observed snakes on the move in all seasons, I do carry the Sawyer Extractor â, a reverse syringe, in my pack. While not a complete substitute for professional medical care, any venom the body does not have to metabolize can buy one needed time in the event of a bite. And speaking of reptiles, hunters must use care while navigating around any water bodies on the island. This is Florida and alligators own the fresh water. Two on site camping options are available for the visiting bowhunter: A charter captain will take hunters and their gear from the dock at Apalachicola across the bay to West Pass. To hunt the western end, the St. Vincent shuttle will ferry hunters and equipment for the short trip across Indian Pass to the island. We have also taken a slightly more adventurous approach that requires setting camp at the Indian Pass campground and making the daily trip across and back by kayak. This method is not recommended, as it requires negotiating the pass in the dark while sorting out unpredictable tides and choppy seas. Our group eventually abandoned this tactic for obvious safety reasons. Hunters must pack in and pack out everything needed for their scout day and three day hunt. On my first few trips to the refuge I hunted by foot but most recently I have been taking my mountain bike in order to cover more ground on scouting days. Road conditions on the refuge are very weather dependent. Rainfall prior to a hunt will pack the sugar sand for easier bicycle travel. With lack of rain, bikes are pushed more than ridden. For easy movement of stand sites I prefer a climber. Lock on stands are used but remember that screw in steps are prohibited on the refuge. Long-time island hunters have devised some unique contraptions designed with the St. Vincent hunt in mind such as ladder stands with wheels attached that are towed behind their bicycles. This is not a difficult hunt by any means with the only complication being the logistics of getting to the island. St. Vincent has an almost addicting quality to it and I have yet to meet anyone who has hunted the island just once. Where else in the continental U.S. can a bowhunter pursue the usual fare of whitetails and hogs but also have the opportunity to hunt free ranging sambar deer or see a red wolf in the wild? Until I take a sambar stag with my recurve, I'll be coming back. David Tetzlaff
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