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| - This is the least public 'public land' I have ever been to and would not recommend it to anyone. It is a sad and pathetic excuse for a national wildlife refuge. The refuge prides itself on being the largest national wildlife refuge in Indiana. However, that doesn't mean much when there are only three national wildlife refuges in the state. It also doesn't mean much when only a sixteenth of the actual property is accessible to the public. There is a very, very small fraction of the refuge that you are allowed to see and access despite its large size. If that were not bad enough, the refuge has 'public access days' which are largely inconvenient. They have only two days a week when people can visit their public use section, and both of these days are on weekdays (mondays and fridays). Good luck getting to see this place if you work full-time, 5 days a week. Admittedly, they have two saturdays a month when it is available to the public, but still it is largely inconvenient. The hours on the public use days are from 7am to 4:30am. Except what they don't tell you is that it takes 30 minutes to drive up to the public use section and you must be out of it 30 minutes before the wildlife refuge closes. Also, you have to watch safety videos and sign forms which take about 30 minutes before entering the public use area. That's an hour and half you have to take into account. So between the area that you're able to access, what days you're able to access it, and the hours that are available, what you can do is extremely limited. Getting to the refuge itself is absolutely horrendous. You will take the craziest dirt roads to get there, just to be stopped by gates, fencing, and poor signage. My advice to anyone who is interested (if you are still interested after reading this) is to heavily research the refuge before visiting. Make sure you go during the right days and get a good early start to your day so that your time and access isn't limited.
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