Hunting, Fishing, and More....

Except where posted, all refuge roads, dikes, and levees are open to foot traffic. Hillside NWR offers excellent white-tail deer, squirrel, rabbit, raccoon and waterfowl hunting opportunities. Fishing for largemouth bass, crappie, and catfish is allowed year-round in certain areas of the refuge. Consult your hunting and fishing regulations brochures for details.

Hiking, Bird watching, Photography:

Spend some time in a bottomland hardwood forest on Alligator Slough Nature Trail. This 0.6-mile universally-accessible trail meanders through a bottomland hardwood forest with a bald cypress and water tupelo slough accessed from the South Levee Road. The trail provides excellent opportunities for bird watching, hiking, educational groups, and wildlife photography. Visitors are encouraged to go bird watching and to photograph the wildlife. The best time of the year for viewing wildlife is late fall through spring. The Alligator Slough Nature Trail is a wonderful field trip for environmental education and interpretation.

You can catch a glimpse of one or more of the approximately 200 species of neotropical migratory birds. Look for Golden eagles, winter visitors and Bald eagles which nest in the area and are also winter visitors. Check out the white-tailed deer, gray and fox squirrels, swamp rabbit and a variety of small fur-bearers. And don’t miss the all-time-favorite, the American alligator, a resident of the sloughs, streams, and shallow ponds.