Puerto Rico Green Iguana hunt

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  • Rhinestone Pete

    Plinker
    Rating - 100%
    27   0   0
    Jun 23, 2009
    83
    8
    Greenwood, IN
    I normally hunt early bow season and gun season to fill my deer tag(s), but this year my family decided that we wanted to go somewhere warm for vacation during Thanksgiving week. Which meant I only had opening weekend for gun season and had no luck. So I did a little google search to see what kind of hunting opportunities there were while we stayed in Puerto Rico all week. The only thing that came up was Iguana hunting. I thought to myself this should be very interesting. So apparently the green iguana is an invasive species and is considered the green plague in Puerto Rico and is devastating the farming on the island. So what the heck, let's book it! So for $150, I got a 3 hour hunt with TWO guides. I met the guides at a Burger King and only one spoke English, the owner only spoke Spanish. Surely nothing bad would happen to an Americano following a couple Puerto Ricans into the hillsides! As I'm following the guides, of course many things come to mind, but YOLO! Anyways, they seem to get turned around a little as we're navigating the narrow roads in the suburbs of a small town to come to our "hunting grounds". I thought, what the hell am I doing? We pulled into the driveway of what we would think around here as a homesteader. He had a couple goats, some scrawny chickens in a cage, and a barren yard of pasture. But he also had some trees in his back yard and some heavy vegetation, and yes you could see several iguanas in one of the trees. My thought originally was are we hunting here for the entire 3 hours? Anyways, he hands me my .22 scoped air rifle and we headed on back to the trees. After a very brief safety briefing, we started my hunt. We are at tree #1 and I started shooting. I would have never thought that there could be that many iguanas in a single tree, I probably fired at least at 20 different targets. And yes, you have to have head shots to kill them. Unsupported, 80+ degrees in humid climate, for nearly 3 hours. It was exhausting, but it was a blast. I would shoot an iguana and if it fell, we'd just look for another target if they didn't move far, or just keep circling the tree until we engaged another. I'd say in one tree, I dropped close to 20 iguanas. In particular, there was a tree that was kind of barren of leaves and I dropped every single one of them, probably close to 15. Got a couple in the palm trees near by, but they were typically in the thicker trees with heavy cover. After about 1.5 hours, I was getting really sore in my neck from the constant looking up to find my targets. These things are tough as can be too, if you don't hit them right, they just hang on for dear life in the trees. So I just kept firing till they would fall. I even had to shoot some of the ones that did fall again in the head because they were still alive, not moving, just breathing. I finished up my hunt earlier than the three hours, just got too exhausted from the heat and my neck was killing me. All in all, it was a great experience, and definitely the cheapest guided hunt I've ever been on. If anyone ever visits Puerto Rico, I highly recommend it. Only a half day hunt with lots of trigger time. By the end of the hunt, my guides estimated 60+ kills, of course you couldn't count them all as some were hanging in forks or limbs of the trees and some were not recovered in some of the heavy overgrowth under the trees. Hats off to the guys at Los Iguaneros de Aguada! I seen they even posted me on their facebook page. Here's a couple pics for the heck of it.

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    KokomoDave

    Enigma Suspect
    Site Supporter
    Rating - 100%
    75   0   0
    Oct 20, 2008
    4,500
    149
    Kokomo
    They are bad in Florida too! Nice shooting BTW!!
    I know they are edible from my jungle survival course courtesy of Uncle Sam.
     

    Rhinestone Pete

    Plinker
    Rating - 100%
    27   0   0
    Jun 23, 2009
    83
    8
    Greenwood, IN
    I heard they're good eating too, but these guides didn't offer to cook them up after the hunt. He did offer to clean a few if I wanted to pack them in a cooler and take them with me, but we were staying in a resort that had no kitchen or even a microwave in our room. And yes, next time if I go, I will probably get some shooting sticks to take, that would've made it much more pleasant to shoot.
     

    easy

    Sharpshooter
    Rating - 0%
    0   0   0
    Aug 11, 2010
    707
    18
    SEOK
    Saw a tv show about iguana shooting in PR a few months ago. Thought my wife's head was going to explode. But it's really no different than going after prairie dogs or ground squirrels.

    Did they say why no firearms for the shoot?
     

    ghuns

    Grandmaster
    Rating - 100%
    2   0   0
    Nov 22, 2011
    9,308
    113
    That looks like a blast.

    Your guides should really do some marketing work. Sell it as guided hunts for giant Puerto Rican hairless squirrels or something.:laugh:

    All the Texas land owners whining about their hog problem should take a hint from those guys instead of trying to get rich off of people who'd love to help solve their problem.:rolleyes:
     

    two70

    Master
    Rating - 100%
    19   0   0
    Feb 5, 2016
    3,725
    113
    Johnson
    I guess it depends on how you look at it. I couldn't even imagine the whining by some if someone tried to charge $50 per hour to hunt hogs and that didn't include accommodations and meals. Only on a per animal basis do the economics favor the iguana hunt. Considering that travel expenses and food are probably a wash between the two, any one willing to put in the effort can have multiple days if not weeks of hog hunting in Texas for about $100 total... one just won't have someone to hold their hand during the hunt, feed them, or a bed to be tucked into at night at that price.
     

    JSJamboree

    Plinker
    Rating - 100%
    3   0   0
    Oct 9, 2013
    88
    18
    Avon
    Puerto Rico is one of my favorite places thats 'close' for vacation. Never even though about going hunting while there. Might have to sneak away and try, ive already had enough 'questionable' experiences there that ended up just fine so that seems pretty standard.
     

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