Going Places

    As we drove up the entry road to the Pine Creek Sporting Club, the club’s helicopter swooshed overhead and fluttered in to the helipad near the clubhouse. It was certainly a fitting sight for what is planned to be a deluxe residential development.
The site is Okeechobee County, Florida, on the northern edge of Lake Okeechobee and about 40 miles inland from Vero Beach and the Atlantic coast. The club property covers more than 2,400 acres. As a private residential development in Florida, you’d think that would automatically mean endless golf courses and shuffleboard. Not even close. This is our kind of place. This club is where you live to shoot and hunt.
    When my wife and I visited Pine Creek, the developing principals, Stephen Myers and Stephen Myers Jr., showed us around in a swamp buggy the size of a tanker truck, because the residential portion is still under construction. But much of the amenity set is already in place, and that toy box is full.
    If it is Florida, it must be quail hunting. To that end Pine Creek has built a large aviary with a 100-yard open-air flyway to encourage vigorous birds. A 3,000-square-foot, 36-pen dog kennel is in place, complete with professional trainer plus the requisite Labs and pointers. There is also a 7,000-square-foot horse barn (with staff apartments above) for the riders in the group.
    At the moment, the club has three 100-acre quail fields, but I was told that another nine 100-acre fields will open next year as they enter Phase 2 of development. Much of the Pine Creek land was purchased from the Rollins family, the founders of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. They also had used the land as a quail plantation. The fields I saw were carefully managed to break up the palmetto cover and provide first-rate habitat.
    As an adjunct to quail, Pine Creek offers guided pheasant and turkey hunts. The personable club manager, Jeff Budz, is an expert turkey hunter with scores of toms to his credit. The club also will arrange hunting for alligator, feral hog, red stag and axis deer at nearby facilities, plus duck shooting in the Kissimmee watershed or Okeechobee basin. Naturally, being Florida, the nearby inland and coastal fishing is unlimited.
    In addition to hunting, the club has extensive newly constructed clay shooting facilities. There are two 20-machine sporting courses plus a 5 Stand. An 85-foot tower was built to throw clays for simulated driven shooting and to release birds for tower shoots. We also were shown through a seven-station electric-eye-actuated clay target quail walk. The rifle, pistol and archery ranges are lit for use at night if you choose. Trap and skeet will be installed next year.
    When the day of sport is over, the members can retire to their individual homes. The club expects to build 22 “ranch houses,” each on a 40-acre lot. The model I saw under construction, complete with guest house and “drive-in” showers, was definitely deluxe. One would expect this for the $1,500,000 and up that these houses will command. For roughly a third of that price, 23 lakeside “cabins” of two to three bedrooms are also planned. As it is anticipated that dwellings here will be a member’s third or fourth domicile, the club’s concierge will fully provision a member’s house for him before arrival and properly close it on departure.
    A resident club membership will include use of the 7,000-square-foot lakeside clubhouse scheduled for completion this fall. It appeared comfortably rustic in a grand style. It includes a wrap-around porch, indoor/outdoor fireplaces, kitchen, dining room, bar, locker room, library, cards, billiards, four guest suites and an outside pool. The concierge will arrange any nearby hunting or fishing desired as well as appointments with the massage therapists on call. The club will be fenced and gated with 24/7 onsite staff. Members have access to the club’s Bell 407 helicopter.
    In addition to the above, the annual $20,000 membership dues include common-area maintenance, concierge service, unlimited quail hunting, unlimited dove hunting and unlimited clays, including all shells. Each lot includes one membership for a husband and wife plus immediate family with some restrictions. An unmarried member may designate a “significant other” once annually.
    The club’s chef, operating out of a temporary kitchen while the main clubhouse was being built, cooked us a marvelous luncheon of wild turkey sausage and salad accompanied by a portabella mushroom stuffed with venison and goat cheese. It was served in Pine Creek’s quaint “tree house” dining area built by a local artist 20 feet above ground in a live oak. As dessert was being served, New York Giant great Tucker Fredrickson’s helicopter zoomed over and settled down on the pad. Fredrickson, pro golfers Jack Nicklaus and Nick Price, plus gunmaker Tullio Fabbri are all honorary founding club members.  Pine Creek Sporting Club is that kind of place.
    Pine Creek Sporting Club, 561-514-9920; www.pinecreeksportingclub.com.