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Cancelled hunt due to COVID? Staying home can has its advantages

I found myself one warm September afternoon seated at a table with Ian Hall, who had hands clasped, giving a short prayer before his wife Susan, my friend Bob, and I dug into a feast. Ian and Susan recently opened Florida Hunting Adventures in Okeechobee, Florida, a large ranch offering whitetail, turkey, exotics, dove, quail, and wild boar hunts. Lunch at the lodge was delectable, consisting of fresh stone crab, tossed salad, and lobster tail. We had little room left over for the cobbler dessert. Through the wood-framed window of the traditional cracker-style lodge, an American flag waved in the breeze as their son Hunter arrived by tractor late from clearing brush.

It’s unusual for me to be enjoying such a leisurely meal at a lodge so close to home at this time of year. I’ve been fixated on hunting Texas over the past decade, so this time of year typically is filled with pre-booking flights, rental cars, coordinating arrivals and departures, and all of the logistics required for group trips halfway across the country. Unfortunately, my 2020 plans fizzled with the arrival of Covid-19. My planned summer Hill Country blackbuck hunt was not going to happen. But a call from my buddy Bob, also a native Floridian, would brighten my hunting prospects considerably. He’d already hunted a nice axis bull with Ian, and he filled me in on this gem right under our noses.

The ease of hopping into my pickup for the short hour-and-a-half drive to the ranch from my home stood in stark contrast to the languishing I would be experiencing at Orlando International Airport’s dreaded security line, had my plans not fallen through. Arriving, sighting in my rifle, and climbing into the stand shortly after that to the sound of cabbage palm fronds rustling in the breeze was therapeutic in comparison to what my typical first-day travel experience had become. Hunter and I sat high in a well-constructed wood platform nestled at the edge of an oak hammock, watching scores of dove dart across a large sawgrass prairie en route to a fresh-sprouted field of browntop millet.

“Our dove hunts are insane,” Hunter joked.

His eyes fixated on the birds clouding the horizon. Below us, a small food plot green with aeschynomene buffered our location from a large meadow where a group of blackbuck does drew close. Through the tall stems of south Florida limpograss, their backs were barely visible as they fed.  A few hundred yards to the left, several young blackbuck males began to appear, so I grabbed my binoculars for a closer look.

“Little too young,” whispered Hunter.

Before long, a pair of dark spiral horns emerged from behind the does followed by the unmistakable black-and-white mask of a mature blackbuck.

“That’s a stud right there,” Hunter whispered again as the dominant buck began lekking for his harem. He was at least 500 yards away, so we waited for him to move closer. Unfortunately, the old buck maintained a safe distance until dark.

Next Morning

The following morning, Hunter and I drove back to the oak hammock and began a long sneak on foot through the woods to the same ladder stand so as not to expose ourselves to the food plot. My boots, crunching on dry palm fronds, presented a challenge to maintaining our silence as something that sounded like a deer tore out of the brush on my second step.

Eventually we made it to the blind and climbed up. As we waited, the pre-dawn silhouette of a giant, 200-pound axis bull with horns well north of 30 inches slowly lumbered across the clearing. It gave me pause for my desire to hunt a blackbuck, if only for the moment. Thankfully, as the sun began to rise, a lone mature blackbuck slowly made its way into the clearing. He stopped about a hundred yards from the blind.

“That’s a good one,” whispered Hunter. “Might be that dominant male from last night.”

Slowly, I raised my 6.5 Creedmoor and took aim, sliding my elbow to rest on the pine railing of the stand.

“Take your time,” Hunter whispered. “No rush.”

I barely noticed the light recoil as the antelope slumped in place. Hunter and I celebrated with a high five. After loading the antelope in the buggy, we drove the scenic 1,000+ acre ranch, slowing for several velvet whitetail bucks sprinting for cover followed by a group of Osceola gobblers feeding near the lodge. As we neared the skinning shed, a group of quail scurried across the dirt drive. We breathed in the aroma of fresh ground coffee mingled with frying eggs and ham, signaling daybreak at the lodge. In a few hours, the meat would be dropped off to the processor, and by afternoon I was already home unpacking my gear.

While this season has been unpredictable, to say the least, the discovery of this well-run Florida hunting lodge has been a silver lining to an otherwise cloudy start.

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