By
Chuck Echenique
As a Florida native, outdoorsmen and hunter for going on 34 years, it’s safe to say I have seen a tremendous amount of change in our state. Some has been good, some not, but all of it has affected my life in some way that has left a lasting impression. I have children of my own who are starting to hunt with me now and I find it harder and harder to be willing to subject them to public land hunts. Not like the ones I used to go on, because those don’t exist anymore. I take my daughters to private leases both in and out of state now. But there’s a part of me that misses showing my kids where I grew up hunting. Most of that land is gone or changed in ways I find too painful to mention. Suffice to say those parcels have been lost to development or snatched up by government agencies and private clubs. The woods of my youth are the urban sprawl of today, and it makes me sad.
Things were simpler in the early to mid 70′s. The current manifestation of the population boom had not begun. It was safe to leave your doors unlocked. Kids got up with the sun and played outside all day without parental supervision. We rode bikes, horses, played ball, and hunted and fished whenever we wanted within walking distance of our homes. I loved my childhood and vowed that when I became a parent, I would try to provide for my kids the same up-bringing my parents afforded me.
My brother and I grew up on an acre in Odessa, FL, back when rattle snakes and cotton mouths were everywhere and there were no posted signs or fences along US19. Our father took us hunting, fishing, camping, and hiking most weekends. We grew up in the oak hammocks, palmetto flats and pine forests of then great WMA’s like Aucilla, Hickory Mound, Buckeye Cellulose, Proctor & Gamble, Tide Swamp, Gulf Hammock and Citrus, just to name a few. We learned the woods intimately and shared our lives with one another in the hammocks bordering the Econfina and Aucilla Rivers.
Back then, the Aucilla WMA was a massive expanse of land that stretched on both side of US98 from CR14 to Newport. I spent the best parts of my youth hunting The Briar Patch, Bear Island, Snipe Island and The Pinhook Swamp. Check stations were manned all season and you knew the operators intimately. The woods were filled with familiar trucks and faces and there was a sense of community and courteousness. You didn’t worry about too many people walking in on your spot. If you got there first, it was yours to hunt. If the other hunters knew you, and most did, you made your way into the woods together and wished the other luck. Somewhere in the late 80′s, things started to change.
I remember when DNR closed my hallowed hunting grounds, The Briar Patch. It was a portion of what is now the Big Bend Snipe Island Unit to the west of CR14, south of US98. The land was fenced and the roads blocked from entry. It was the beginning of the end. Soon after, Hickory Mound was shrunken in size and 40,000 acres of it became what is now Camp Misery Hunt Club. Not long after that, Aucilla was broken up into more parcels and my second favorite area became part of a user-pay area known as Flint Rock. The Pinhook Swamp, Bear Island and several other favorite hunting holes were gone from open access.
I realize that I can’t expect things to remain the same forever. I know change is inevitable. The timber companies will always cut and clear different tracts, changing the landscape temporarily. But the land would always remain… or so I hoped. But as the parcels shrunk in size and access became more limited, I found myself frequenting the woods of my youth with less regularity. I began to wander outside of Florida in search of a better experience.
Skip ahead 30 plus years. I’m married 12 years now. I have two beautiful girls, Elizabeth and Emma, ages 9 and 5. We moved out of the suburban apartment in which my wife and I started our life together and purchased a home just north of Tampa, where we could have some land for the kids to play on, keep a dog, and house my growing stockpile of toys. We settled on a ½ acre between two county parks full of deer, turkey and hogs. Although we can’t hunt within walking distance, we can and do watch the deer and turkey from our yard. We fish and hike in the woods located within the parks. My local hunting property is only a 15 minute drive away from the house. It’s as close to what I had as a kid as I can muster. The girls are learning quickly and becoming excellent marksmen and outdoorsmen. I’m very pleased with their progress and enjoy their company afield more and more each year.
We bird hunt, small game hunt and turkey hunt in Florida near home, but deer hunting is getting more scarce as suburbia crowds us in and gobbles up the available land. We hunt deer in Georgia and Alabama now. And while I think I’m giving them good quality experiences in the woods that will hopefully be embedded into their life fabric, I can’t help but feel something is missing. Some sense of continuity or tradition is gone.
It is the Florida of my youth. The magic of a cool foggy morning in an oak and cabbage palm hammock, or the crispness of a frost covered pine and palmetto flat for which I long. Sitting on the ground with my back against a familiar tree, my daughter between my legs as I had done with my father before me, watching the faint silhouette of deer filter through the half light of dawns glow as they return to the safety of their bedding areas. I miss walking the same trails I walked countless times, the familiarity of smells in each distinctive place. I miss walking through those woods to the same trees I sat in over and over again. No longer do I know the owners of the trucks parked along the sides of the roads, or the name and phone number of the game warden working my woods. I miss that experience for my children. It makes me sad to think how much worse it will probably be for them when they are in my shoes. Loss is the motivation I use to build the legacy I hope to pass on to them. That sense of a deeper purpose, of family and communion we all grew up with. Are you committed enough to pass it on?
This season, as you frequent your favorite marsh, stand, or field, remember the importance of taking a child along so that they too can learn to love the outdoor traditions that make us part of the fraternity that is the hunting community. And remember too, to give thanks to God. After all, He’s the reason we’re fortunate enough to share in the wonder that is our beautiful and wild outdoors.
