Blackwater NWR Tips

Doco Overboard said:

I hunted near and on that place my whole life. If your going to walk in, find a gut with a sandy bottom so it will support your weight. Learn the tides and be prepared for changes to your route so you can adjust. Don't rely on electronic gadgets to navigate. Im not saying they do not work just be prepared. Find the needle grass that can usually be walked. Post dawn and pre dusk during slow activity can be met with jump shooting which can be fun. Sika will get up on the lumps and lay up to any bushes you see and can often be found laid up in the hollies with low cover provided by them. Theyre usually not as flighty as WT so you can grass them pretty easy.
Remember anything you carry in will have to be returned to when you walk out, sometimes you wind up in a way having to go back to something you may not need but don't want to lose. If you get one, gut it when you drag it out, just float it if your in ankle or knee deep water or wind up in a shallow pond skimming right through there.
Phrag, that stuff will cut your eye if your not careful. You know, the kind that makes your eye water and makes you miserable like a paper cut. Be careful jumping across small guts, if your wearing hippers or chest waders they can fill up with water. When it's warm out, I don't even wear socks in them so they don't tear my feet ankles up.
Mosquitoes will absolutely ruin what your doing, I usually ditch therma cells and save the weight for a pump bottle of off. Knit gloves and buttoned down rolled up works for me especially when you need to soak your face to keep them off you. Ive seen this in January, you can swipe them off your hands/sleeves like bloody lint.
Look out for rotten tree stump holes, they can twist your foot up if your not careful, cut down a long sapling if you get turned around and carry it horizontally to help keep you walking in a straight line. Everything looks the same when its dark. Especially if your looking at a phone screen or using a light, your night vision is lost.
I usually walk in an hour or so early if Im on ground I can walk. Out in a big marsh I used to carry a small pack with frame. During firearms and when I cover a lot of ground I just stuff a shottie in the frame so I can use it for walk about during the day. Once you get in a nice spot in some pines just sit on it so you don't have to sit in the water.
Have a good sling with gun or bow, something you can get it across your back so you can use both hands when you need to. Have a road flare a whistle, piece of plastic and some cord and camera/ phone to capture some images, nothing like it.
When I pack in I carry a old cut down A5 for jump shooting or a beater 110 with 20" barrel for morning/night. That no5 in another thread is the perfect rifle if your beating around in there pretty far.
One other thing, if you go up a tree. Do it right, look for widow makers, shallow roots etc. and use a decent fall protection protection that you can get out of, nobody is going to find you for a while if you get messed up. Be aware of changes in the weather,high winds lightning heavy rain etc.
Most everything is bedded up in the phrag, look at the edge when you can, decent Wt's back in that mess too.

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Doco Overboard said:

We were out one morning for Sika and my oldest son wound up killing a hellish 8 point wt. Landowner said it was the first Wt he had seen in 25 or more years come off his land. A year or so later a spike or four point I cant remember, were taken back in the same hole. Up around Key Wallace you can spot a lot of wt coming across the road from right there near the corner over into the BW set aside.
Last year near Griffiths neck I humped it in way back to where the state starts at my buddies farm, hopped in a stand and had a few come out. All girls so I just let them go. You never know what your going to see. You get all excited thinking here we go and then it's just some does then you wait and don't see anything till your walking out. Sika, all stupid thinking your a big raccoon or something blundering through that mess then you almost have to shoo them out of the way. Ha ha it's fun hunting in and around there.
Wood ducks will get you going too, you hear the water movement, start looking around and then its some ducks or mergansers floating around. Even turkeys back in there from time to time.

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AlBeight said:

Funny things out there is right. Saw a flock of about 10 gobblers walk single file past me, and instead of flying over or hopping over a 6-8 ft wide drainage canal/flooded logging road, each and every one of them walked down into the water up to mid-neck and walked across the ditch mostly submerged until they emerged up dry on the other side. Looked like 10 little Loch Ness Monsters crossing a river in single file. Wish I had my camera out for that. I had no idea a turkey would do that.

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AlBeight said:

Weird story : MPT plays an old episode of Outdoors MD periodically with a segment about the Sika population in Blackwater, and specifically about the managed shotgun hunt there. I was in the episode, or at least my shoulder and one arm was, as they filmed the biologists at the check station taking the various biological info from 2 sikas two guys brought in. I was the first in that morning, with a 120-something(?) pound 6 point whitetail, shot in an area that should only be inhabited by sika and fish (so yeah, mainly sika but the random whitetail too). When I pulled in to the check station, MPT Outdoors MD camera guys jumped out of their SUV excitedly, grabbed their camera, and stopped me from getting my deer out of my truck bed until they could get setup and film it. As I dragged my buck out of the truck, the producer guy yelled “cut” and the camera guy lowered his camera. It was then I found out the show was about sika, not whitetail - Bummer. I checked my deer in then the two other guys showed up with the sika shortly thereafter, and I got to watch them film the episode, which still plays from time to time on MPT.

But yeah, don’t rule out a whitetail too. Make sure if you hunt elsewhere prior to the Blackwater hunt(s) that you leave an eligible whitetail tag (buck, doe, or either). You never know what might step out, splish-splashing by you.

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Doco Overboard said:

Bears are the next thing your going to start hearing about. Laugh now, but you can say you heard it here first. Might be a little while but somebody will be going on about it maybe in a year or two if they haven't already discussed it elsewhere.

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