US-11633 Hockomock Swamp WMA

I seem to be spending a lot of time in swamps lately. It's actually not a bad time here in New England to be thinking about swamps – the summer and fall of 2024 were very dry here, and many areas that would normally be impassable are now hike-able. US-11501 Chockalog Swamp is a perfect example, typically only a small portion along the shore of a beaver pond would be accessible, but this season it was so dry that nearly the entire WMA is open.

Hockomock is a very large WMA, broken into two major parts. Lake Nippenicket in Bridgewater is a popular recreation site, and there is a large parking area at its western end off of Rte 104. You can park here and either activate from your car, or move slightly north along the shore and activate from a table.

The west side of the WMA really is swamp and some hardwood. There's a small parking are off of Prospect Hill Street on the east and across from Winnecunnet Pond on the west. Additional areas that I haven't explored yet are on the north and northeast portions of the park.

On the map above, the parking area next to Winnecunnet Pond is not actually part of Hockomock Swamp WMA, it is the parking lot for US-11625 Erwin Wilder WMA, and it's where I parked for this activation. From the parking area I walked northeast along a cart path into Hockomock. There'd been rain the day before, about half an inch, but I wasn't too concerned about the water level, and I'd already visited Erwin Wilder so I knew the area reasonably well. That said, I did sink into the muck a few times and was glad to be wearing my waterproof Merrell hiking boots.

I arrived around 1pm and there were several pheasant hunters active in the fields in Erwin Wilder, with a half dozen cars in the lot. A few dog-walkers ambled down the wide tractor path that makes a 2-mile loop around the fields. I waved at the Fish & Game officers parked at the end of the lot and headed northeast into the Swamp. Note that these two references abut, they don't overlap, and so there's no two-fer here, although you could quite easily activate one and then the other a few feet away.

Half a mile or so down the path from the lot you'll arrive at a branch in the path. To your right is Erwin Wilder, and straight ahead on the lesser-traveled way is Hockomock.

The path gets smaller as you progress northeast, at one point trickling down to not much more than a deer track. I was well into the reference at this point and started to look for a spot to hang an EFHW.

I pushed on from this point toward the patch of sunlight shown in the photo. My thinking is that a patch like that means that the trees are less crowded, and I'll have a better chance at a long line-of-sight for the wire. The brush fell away and tree spacing opened up a bit, and I parked on a damp log to start setting things up.

The wire went up relatively quickly, though it was tough to see. There weren't a lot of visual clues in this spot and I found it easy to lose sight of where things were attached. A quick check showed a very high SWR on 20m, and I found that the antenna wire was looped several times around the coax at the feedpoint. It meant bringing the antenna down, unplugging everything, and setting it back up, which worked perfectly and the SWR dropped down to its more customary 1.2:1.

I remember thinking that it'd taken forever to get started. I set up PoLo, spotted, and called CQ POTA. Seven minutes later I'd locked the activation, just stupid quick. I'd spent a fair amount of effort getting there and decided to stay for a bit, in the end making 20 QSOs in about 20 minutes. Even that seemed like a short time to be there, but I saw that the sun was just starting to kiss the tops of the trees on the horizon and decided that I'd better start packing up. It gets dark quickly and the temperature plummets after sunset this time of year, and even though I know the area I didn't want to be walking out of the swamp in the dark and cold. As a reward for my grown-up choice I was given a lovely sunset across the fields walking back out.

Something new that I did on this activation related to rope work. I carry 100 feet of accessory cord in two 50-foot hanks, and my method to store them had been to loop the cord elbow-to-hand, then fold that loop over and secure it. It makes for a compact bundle, but man does it knot up when you try to deploy the line. I was spending five or ten minutes every activation just untangling paracord.

Someone, it might have been WN1C, pointed me to a Youtube post showing how to wind paracord in a figure-8 on the open hand, winding between the thumb and pinky. I didn't think it would be possible to wind 50 feet of cord that way, but not only does it fit neatly into your hand, when you deploy it there are no knots, loops, or kinks, it just pulls out straight. You could stick it in your pocket and do the old endless-rope magic trick.

Hockomock Swamp WMA is large enough that it'd be worth going back to explore the other areas. There are a handful of smaller POTA references within ten minutes of here, too, so there are rove possibilities. Knocking off Hockomock Swamp and Erwin Wilder would be quick, and then off to Borderlands and Canoe River.