Touring the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge

Since Carol and I have retired, one of the things we enjoy doing is visiting the 74,622-acre Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Louisiana to look for bears, deer, alligators and other critters.

Two hundred years ago, the Mississippi River floodplain was a huge wilderness, but it was gradually cleared to make way for farming. By modern times the 25 million acres of hardwood forest had been reduced to 5 million acres.

In 1980, Congress authorized the creation of the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge to conserve the largest of the remaining tracts of timber. Locally, the land was known as the Singer Tract because it was owned by the Chicago Mill and Lumber Company. Much of the wood harvested there in the 1920s and 1930s was used to make Singer sewing machines.

We enter the refuge by way of the Quebec Road, a highway off US 80 east of Delhi that dead ends at the refuge visitor center (currently, the visitor center is closed due to covid). Occasionally, we encounter a bear before we even get to the refuge, and we once saw a bald eagle eating road kill in the middle of the highway.

At the refuge entrance there is a self check-in station where you have to fill out a visitor’s card. The stretch of highway from there to the visitor center is a good place to see bears, deer, and turkeys. Bears may be seen anytime of the year, but late August is particularly good because they feed on the muscadines that ripen alongside the highway.

From the visitor center, we drive the three-mile long Greenlea Wildlife Loop, which is a good place to see deer, ducks, bobcats, songbirds and the occasional black bear. Dusk is the best time to see deer, and we sometimes spot some huge bucks.

A couple of months ago, we saw something round and black sticking up above the weeds about a hundred yards from the road. It would appear and disappear at regular intervals, and it took us a moment to realize that a bear was standing up to look at us, then dropping down and walking a bit before standing up again. It finally crossed the road in front of us.

When the weather is pleasant, we also go down a wooden walkway that snakes through the woods behind the visitor center to an elevated viewing platform that overlooks a field. We almost always see squirrels, armadillos, raccoons, and deer along the way. One autumn day we were watching a herd of deer at one end of the field when they suddenly stopped grazing and began staring at the other end. A large bear waddled out of the woods and stood on its hind legs to eat acorns from trees on the edge of the field. It paid no attention to the deer, but the deer watched him intently the entire time.

There is also a short hiking trail off the Greenlea loop that goes out to an egret rookery and to Rainey Lake. Snowy egrets nest at the rookery during the spring, and there is a covered viewing blind that provides a closeup view of the turquoise-colored eggs and the fuzzy chicks after they hatch. Rainey Lake has a wooden pier that is a good place to see big alligators sunning along the bank and large flocks of ducks out in the water.

From the visitor center, we retrace our route back to the check-in station and then turn west down the gravel Mill Road. At one point the road dips into a low spot called Africa Bottom. When the water is high, numerous alligators sun alongside the road, and in the spring the baby gators hang out around the numerous barrow pits. On one occasion we counted fifteen alligators about eighteen inches long sunning on the bank.

Two roads off the Mill Road go out to Africa Lake and one of them ends at a boat launch. Africa Lake is a narrow mile-long lake that is lined with beautiful cypress trees and is good for fishing and wildlife viewing.

Several miles down the Mill Road there is an intersection where we turn right to make the short trip to Indian Lake, another one of the numerous lakes in the refuge. Depending on the time of year, we usually can find several alligators swimming there, as well as great blue herons stalking the shoreline.

Indian Lake marks the end of our tour and we return to the Quebec Road from there. On a typical visit we spend about two and a half hours touring Tensas. It’s a great way to spend a quiet, relaxing afternoon, and you never know what you might see.

Learn more about the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge at fws.gov/refuge/tensas_river. 

Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. For an autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, send $25 to Terry L. Jones, P.O Box 1581, West Monroe, LA 71294.