Puerto Rico hunting trip (1 French Guy and his Son in Puerto Rico) Part 1,
We were lucky enough to have been able to stay and hunt in Puerto Rico as it is an amazing place even with all the scars present on its surface from the hurricane Maria. You cannot ignore the devastating power and effect of that hurricane. Some small villages are now ghost towns, power is still a luxury for some, water is mostly available but not drinkable for most. In many places, roads are damaged, or are just closed.
You could be driving in the mountains, and the road goes to one lane, no warning, just a concrete barrier and a missing lane. That is when you slow down to a stop, stay quiet, listen well for any incoming traffic, take a breath and hope that your car launches fast and can clear that before someone comes ahead. A few times we thought we were going to get a flat tire or lose a wheel going through potholes. Before you decide to travel on a side road instead of the main motorway, do some recon. Our 1.5h Google trip ended up being 3 hours, it resulted in a beautiful trip though.
The Puerto Ricans are full of warmth, welcomed us and were always ready to find a way to help. My son and I don’t speak much Spanish. Between hand gestures, a mix of English, French and Spanish there was not a place where we couldn’t get what we needed and always with some good smiles and laugh.
Cultures are different: on our last day, someone finally explained to us that when you go to a restaurant, you do not add the tips on the CC receipt, but you pay the tip in cash. They don’t do tips on CC receipts there. We went to one restaurant called Echo en Casa, four times in eight days, we put the tip on the receipt and left with a big smile on our faces and no one told us. The waitresses and waiters that served us all those days welcomed us and were so helpful, even though we accidentally didn’t tip them.
For the google map users out there, don’t rely on it when you are in Puerto Rico. Waze was a lot better due to the public updates. Also, a lot of the touristy things that are shown on google map are closed or just gone. Go around, visit and ask.
If you like meat, you are going to be in heaven. From the conventional restaurants to the food trucks you will eat amazing food. Nothing too fancy, but good food nonetheless. Every time I would talk to our guide about what we had and how good it was, he almost always added “That isn’t even the best. You should go there…”. Guess what!? We did.
We were so lucky to find and hire Iguana Hunters outfitters for our hunts. On the first day we had a perfect hunt. They were an excellent fit for my son and his handicap. Abner and Rafael set us up for three days of successful hunts. Abner had told me that there would be “an abundance of life time memories for my son”. He didn’t lie, and we received loads of them. Now, you have to remember that the iguanas were introduced 20-25 years ago and do not have any natural predators. They looked at different options to control them like:
Poison but it is too risky for the other carnivores. Introducing a predator, they already tried that for another pest issue and now they have the original and the added population issues. Trapping was too dangerous for the local fauna. So, they decided to do an open hunt all year around, no bag limit, no need to bag your kills in an attempt to lower the population. In some publication they are saying that the human population is ~3.6M habitants for 5-6M iguanas. It is said that the hunt will hold the number and will not remove the iguana population.
Day one, Drive to Guayamas: We drove from Carolina (JSU airport), through San Juan, down to Caguas then we could have driven south on the highway to get to Guayamas, but we decided to go over the mountains via the PR-184. When exiting the motorway, we went to our first lunch at Lechonera Los Amigos, that was our first introduction to “Oh Wow The Meat…”. The drive was eye opening, there were no straight roads there unlike the main land. I decided to set the car in sports mode and warm the tires up
. The drive was mostly in the forest with not much to see, except the lush green of the trees and few houses or what is left of them until you get to the top. That is when the south side of the island appeared to our eyes and we saw where the hurricane Maria had landed and hit the hardest. Through-out the drive, we saw damaged places, and totally abandoned villages. We kept on driving following “The Google Map”, go left go right go follow the road for 5 miles and that is where the road stopped a mile later with a 22 yards (20 m) wide hole.
We attempted all the tiny roads around to go across without off-roading. We decided to go around and take the next closest way around and that was a 60 minutes extension! The impressive thing is that in some places, the forest has almost retaken its place and covers every pieces of concrete. The closer we got to the coast the more damage was visible. On the coast we saw concrete houses pulled out of the ground with their foundations and moved on a nearby monticule of dirt. We were told that a lot of houses had water issues, mainly because the house had moved, and the pipes got disconnected from underneath. Occasionally, you would look at a perfect, un-touched house, with the trees and surroundings barely damaged. 3.5 hours into our drive, we made it to our studio, a nice, colorful and comfortable place. We were finally there, our own place for 7 days.
Day 2 and 3, Recon and discovery of Guayamas’ area: Man driving on the coast is beautiful.
From Guayamas, we drove north east and west. So many beautiful views and places. It reminded me of the Croatian coast during my tour in 1993, damaged, but still so wonderful and attractive.
That is when we discovered our first green beast,we finally saw an iguana!
We got so excited, so ready to pull the trigger. From then, we kind of knew what to look for, and sort of where. We saw many, all bigger than the previous ones, dark green, black, orange, yellow legged or crested. So many variations, is that it? Is this what we will be encountering tomorrow?
Day 4, The Hunt: Our first day was with my son Luca, the guide and me. Everything was available to us, from targets to sight our Air Guns, to air to fill our tanks, along with many drinks and snacks. We started to walk away from the cars, not even 15 yards and already the fun had started. Abner called Luca and he shot his first pellet did a head shot, but not a killer one though.
https://youtu.be/LFYaxLQdONo
Result of the first encounter
Those darn iguanas will die of lead poisoning before anything else if you don’t hit the spot that goes to the brain. For Example: Seven .25 caliber rounds of Hunter extreme in the head and the neck and that sucker was still hanging 50m away from us. The eighth shot finally turn the light off. From that first tree we started at, we never moved more than 45-50 meters and spent 2.5 hours shooting at them.
My biggest that day 5'5" and from the same trees
That was crazy ridiculous. We would be shooting for a while, no longer see any tails or movement, go around two trees and there they were.
Just some of the big ones that could be accessed from the 2 trees
After that we started walking and guess what!? We couldn’t put our AG on our sides for more than 5 minutes without having one of us sighting some and then lead was flying again. That first day was our most epic day as it was just us three. After 5 hours of shooting, we finally went back to our place, with empty bellies ready for a late lunch but full of memories. We got home, enjoyed some food, a good nap and a relaxing time talking and re-living our highly eventful first day hunting.
Luca did the longest kill shot, with an 95 yards (87 m) with his Bullboss .25cal, he shot twice the first was too low the second hit the light switch.
He also shot our biggest iguana at 5’9”.
Partial result of the day, probably only a 1/3 of the total shot that day.
To be continued
Edit: Puerto Rico Part 2
We were lucky enough to have been able to stay and hunt in Puerto Rico as it is an amazing place even with all the scars present on its surface from the hurricane Maria. You cannot ignore the devastating power and effect of that hurricane. Some small villages are now ghost towns, power is still a luxury for some, water is mostly available but not drinkable for most. In many places, roads are damaged, or are just closed.
You could be driving in the mountains, and the road goes to one lane, no warning, just a concrete barrier and a missing lane. That is when you slow down to a stop, stay quiet, listen well for any incoming traffic, take a breath and hope that your car launches fast and can clear that before someone comes ahead. A few times we thought we were going to get a flat tire or lose a wheel going through potholes. Before you decide to travel on a side road instead of the main motorway, do some recon. Our 1.5h Google trip ended up being 3 hours, it resulted in a beautiful trip though.
The Puerto Ricans are full of warmth, welcomed us and were always ready to find a way to help. My son and I don’t speak much Spanish. Between hand gestures, a mix of English, French and Spanish there was not a place where we couldn’t get what we needed and always with some good smiles and laugh.
Cultures are different: on our last day, someone finally explained to us that when you go to a restaurant, you do not add the tips on the CC receipt, but you pay the tip in cash. They don’t do tips on CC receipts there. We went to one restaurant called Echo en Casa, four times in eight days, we put the tip on the receipt and left with a big smile on our faces and no one told us. The waitresses and waiters that served us all those days welcomed us and were so helpful, even though we accidentally didn’t tip them.
For the google map users out there, don’t rely on it when you are in Puerto Rico. Waze was a lot better due to the public updates. Also, a lot of the touristy things that are shown on google map are closed or just gone. Go around, visit and ask.
If you like meat, you are going to be in heaven. From the conventional restaurants to the food trucks you will eat amazing food. Nothing too fancy, but good food nonetheless. Every time I would talk to our guide about what we had and how good it was, he almost always added “That isn’t even the best. You should go there…”. Guess what!? We did.
We were so lucky to find and hire Iguana Hunters outfitters for our hunts. On the first day we had a perfect hunt. They were an excellent fit for my son and his handicap. Abner and Rafael set us up for three days of successful hunts. Abner had told me that there would be “an abundance of life time memories for my son”. He didn’t lie, and we received loads of them. Now, you have to remember that the iguanas were introduced 20-25 years ago and do not have any natural predators. They looked at different options to control them like:
Poison but it is too risky for the other carnivores. Introducing a predator, they already tried that for another pest issue and now they have the original and the added population issues. Trapping was too dangerous for the local fauna. So, they decided to do an open hunt all year around, no bag limit, no need to bag your kills in an attempt to lower the population. In some publication they are saying that the human population is ~3.6M habitants for 5-6M iguanas. It is said that the hunt will hold the number and will not remove the iguana population.
Day one, Drive to Guayamas: We drove from Carolina (JSU airport), through San Juan, down to Caguas then we could have driven south on the highway to get to Guayamas, but we decided to go over the mountains via the PR-184. When exiting the motorway, we went to our first lunch at Lechonera Los Amigos, that was our first introduction to “Oh Wow The Meat…”. The drive was eye opening, there were no straight roads there unlike the main land. I decided to set the car in sports mode and warm the tires up
. The drive was mostly in the forest with not much to see, except the lush green of the trees and few houses or what is left of them until you get to the top. That is when the south side of the island appeared to our eyes and we saw where the hurricane Maria had landed and hit the hardest. Through-out the drive, we saw damaged places, and totally abandoned villages. We kept on driving following “The Google Map”, go left go right go follow the road for 5 miles and that is where the road stopped a mile later with a 22 yards (20 m) wide hole.We attempted all the tiny roads around to go across without off-roading. We decided to go around and take the next closest way around and that was a 60 minutes extension! The impressive thing is that in some places, the forest has almost retaken its place and covers every pieces of concrete. The closer we got to the coast the more damage was visible. On the coast we saw concrete houses pulled out of the ground with their foundations and moved on a nearby monticule of dirt. We were told that a lot of houses had water issues, mainly because the house had moved, and the pipes got disconnected from underneath. Occasionally, you would look at a perfect, un-touched house, with the trees and surroundings barely damaged. 3.5 hours into our drive, we made it to our studio, a nice, colorful and comfortable place. We were finally there, our own place for 7 days.
Day 2 and 3, Recon and discovery of Guayamas’ area: Man driving on the coast is beautiful.
From Guayamas, we drove north east and west. So many beautiful views and places. It reminded me of the Croatian coast during my tour in 1993, damaged, but still so wonderful and attractive.
That is when we discovered our first green beast,we finally saw an iguana!
We got so excited, so ready to pull the trigger. From then, we kind of knew what to look for, and sort of where. We saw many, all bigger than the previous ones, dark green, black, orange, yellow legged or crested. So many variations, is that it? Is this what we will be encountering tomorrow?
Day 4, The Hunt: Our first day was with my son Luca, the guide and me. Everything was available to us, from targets to sight our Air Guns, to air to fill our tanks, along with many drinks and snacks. We started to walk away from the cars, not even 15 yards and already the fun had started. Abner called Luca and he shot his first pellet did a head shot, but not a killer one though.
https://youtu.be/LFYaxLQdONo
Result of the first encounter
Those darn iguanas will die of lead poisoning before anything else if you don’t hit the spot that goes to the brain. For Example: Seven .25 caliber rounds of Hunter extreme in the head and the neck and that sucker was still hanging 50m away from us. The eighth shot finally turn the light off. From that first tree we started at, we never moved more than 45-50 meters and spent 2.5 hours shooting at them.
My biggest that day 5'5" and from the same trees
That was crazy ridiculous. We would be shooting for a while, no longer see any tails or movement, go around two trees and there they were.
Just some of the big ones that could be accessed from the 2 trees
After that we started walking and guess what!? We couldn’t put our AG on our sides for more than 5 minutes without having one of us sighting some and then lead was flying again. That first day was our most epic day as it was just us three. After 5 hours of shooting, we finally went back to our place, with empty bellies ready for a late lunch but full of memories. We got home, enjoyed some food, a good nap and a relaxing time talking and re-living our highly eventful first day hunting.
Luca did the longest kill shot, with an 95 yards (87 m) with his Bullboss .25cal, he shot twice the first was too low the second hit the light switch.
He also shot our biggest iguana at 5’9”.
Partial result of the day, probably only a 1/3 of the total shot that day.
To be continued
Edit: Puerto Rico Part 2
