ORLANDO, Fla. — What lures bird-watchers to Lake Apopka is the same thing that brings hunters there.

But one group shoots pictures, while the other shoots ducks.

Both pastimes are legal recreational activities around the state’s fourth-largest lake, a 30,000-acre body of water known worldwide for its crazy abundance of life, offering a shimmering rest stop to migrating birds and a home to big alligators and bobcats.

But birders and hunters are often philosophically at odds.

“It’s two groups of nature lovers with sharply contrasting views of how to enjoy nature,” said Joe Kilsheimer, a former Apopka mayor who frequently touted the freshwater lake’s ecotourism potential during his years leading Orange County’s second-largest city.

Duck hunting season at Lake Apopka ended Sunday, but disagreements linger. The increasing popularity of birding, and persistent encroachment of development, heighten the tension.

In late December, a social media post on the Lake Apopka Cycling Club’s Facebook page showed a photo of two bicyclists paused on a gravel riding trail near hunters in a boat partially obscured by shoreline vegetation, sparking a discussion among the cycling group’s followers.

“I understand that Lake Apopka isn’t a bird sanctuary but do hunters really belong next to a public path frequented by birders, cyclists, families and runners?” writer Mary Shanklin, a former Orlando Sentinel reporter and avid bicyclist, asked fellow riders in the post.

Some shared her outrage. “They allow hunting out there?” one wrote, incredulous. “This seems absurd!”

Others shrugged it off.

“It’s how we co-exist…I’ve been riding out there for years and never had a problem with them and never seen them shooting towards the shoreline,” another cyclist wrote in reply. “I’d rather have them on the shoreline shooting out than in the water shooting in.”

Travis Thompson, a fifth-generation Floridian and duck-hunting guide, said birders owe hunters a debt of gratitude for helping to acquire and protect wetlands through payment of federal duck stamps and state permit fees, providing spaces for birders to spy species.

“It’s great they can go out and watch at all these places but a big reason they’re able to even do so is because of waterfowl hunters,” he said. “Sharing the space with waterfowl hunters ‘x’ number of days a season seems like a small trade-off in exchange.”

Thompson said, to his knowledge, no birder or bicyclist has ever been wounded by a duck hunter.

Hunters on Lake Apopka must have a permit from the state Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission to shoot ducks there. General duck hunting is limited to 18 days from late November to late January, with a handful of special hunts outside of that time frame.

Just 15 permits are allowed per day, with three people allowed to share each permit. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission would not provide information about the use of hunting permits around the lake.

No longer soupy-green and sickened by fertilizer, pesticides and other pollutants, Lake Apopka lures hundreds of species of birds with its abundance.

“They’re coming from all over and, looking down, they see 30,000 acres of water and another 20,000 acres of marsh, a beautiful habitat with food! Of course, they’re going to stop here,” Dunn said. “It’s a destination now for bird lovers from all over the country and the world.”

More than a decade ago, an environmental coalition proposed the idea of a Lake Apopka National Wildlife Refuge, but it failed to gain traction, said Deborah Green, president of Orange Audubon, an area chapter of the not-for-profit group dedicated to defending birds and their habitat.

Yet the area is phenomenally popular.

She said 264,000 vehicles traveled on the Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive in 2025, though it’s only open weekends and holidays.

“One doesn’t have to drive very far on the 11-mile drive to enjoy the quiet and sounds of wetland birds,” she said in an email to the Orlando Sentinel. “The love of that early morning quiet and sounds of wetland birds is something that birders and waterfowl hunters have in common.”

Green called on duck hunters to be allies with the growing number of birders as development creeps closer to Lake Apopka.

Waterfowl hunter Jeff Carter, 56, who lives in the Orlando area, shares her view. He enjoys duck hunting on Lake Apopka, favoring a wood duck or black-bellied whistling duck for dinner, but a successful season doesn’t necessarily mean bagging a bunch of birds.

“If the ducks aren’t flying, I’m watching what else is going on out there in nature,” he said.

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