Every fall, someone posts the same photo on Nextdoor: the boardwalk at Battle Creek Cypress Swamp Sanctuary, cypress knees poking through still water, the light doing that low-autumn thing everyone loves. It's a nice photo. It's also not the thing that actually determines what your next few months of walking, paddling, and dog outings in Huntingtown look like.
That thing is a calendar collision most residents haven't clocked yet. Three of the town's main outdoor spaces are changing their rules within days of each other this month, and the changes don't overlap the way you'd expect. One park is about to get shorter hours. Another is about to get an active hunting season layered on top of its usual foot traffic. A third has a pet policy that suddenly matters more once the other two options start looking complicated. If you've been treating Kings Landing Park, the Huntingtown Natural Resources Management Area, and Battle Creek Cypress Swamp as interchangeable green space, this is the week that stops working.
What Changes on September 11
Maryland's 2026-27 archery deer season opens statewide on September 11, and Calvert County falls under Deer Management Region B, which carries some of the most liberal bag limits in the state. That matters directly for anyone who walks, bikes, or lets a dog off leash at the Huntingtown Natural Resources Management Area on Smoky Road, because that property is an active public hunting ground. It's also open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, which is convenient for early risers and a little more complicated once archers start showing up before sunrise.
None of this means the NRMA closes. It means the character of the property changes for the next several months, through archery, then muzzleloader, then firearms season, each with its own dates and its own rhythm. A dog walk that felt perfectly ordinary in August is now a walk through a property where you should be visible, aware of posted hunting information at the trailhead kiosk, and thinking about timing rather than just showing up whenever.
Kings Landing Park Just Got Shorter Hours
While that shift is happening at the NRMA, a quieter one is happening next door at Kings Landing Park. The park runs extended hours all summer, open until 8 p.m. on weekends through Labor Day. Once that holiday passes, the schedule drops to a flat 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week, all the way through Memorial Day. It's a meaningful cut for anyone used to an after-work paddle on the Patuxent or a Saturday evening walk out to the fishing pier. The park closes earlier now, full stop, and the pier itself shuts down half an hour before the gates do.
This is easy to miss because nothing about Kings Landing Park looks different from the road. The trails are the same. The gazebo overlooking the marsh is the same. The kayak launch on Cocktown Creek still connects to the same stretch of the Patuxent Water Trail it always has. The only thing that changed is the clock, and it changed the same week the NRMA next door started getting more complicated for a different reason entirely.
Where the Three Properties Actually Stand
| Property | Fall Hours | Dogs Allowed | Hunting Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kings Landing Park | 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily (post-Labor Day) | Yes, leashed | No |
| Huntingtown NRMA (Smoky Road) | Open 24 hours | Yes, leashed | Yes, archery begins Sept. 11 |
| Battle Creek Cypress Swamp Sanctuary | Check posted hours | No, not even leashed | No |
Laid out this way, the pattern is obvious. Only one of the three properties allows dogs and stays off-limits to hunting at the same time, and it also has the shortest hours of the three. That's not a coincidence residents need to solve so much as a fact worth knowing before you load the car.
The Cypress Swamp Is the Odd One Out, on Purpose
Battle Creek Cypress Swamp Sanctuary is a different kind of property from the other two. It's a 100-acre parcel originally purchased by the Nature Conservancy in 1957, its first sanctuary in Maryland, now operated under lease by Calvert County. The quarter-mile elevated boardwalk winds through the only stand of bald cypress in the state west of the Chesapeake Bay, and some of those trees have been there long enough that a walk through them is genuinely closer to a time capsule than a typical nature trail.
Because it's protected as a sanctuary rather than managed as a multi-use recreation area, the rules are stricter. No hunting. No dogs, leashed or otherwise. The boardwalk itself can get slippery, especially after the kind of fall rain Southern Maryland gets in October, so sturdy shoes matter more here than at the other two properties. For residents without a dog in tow, this is the one property on the list that doesn't change at all this season, which quietly makes it the most predictable option once archery season adds a layer of planning everywhere else.
What This Actually Means for a Fall Weekend
None of this is a reason to stay inside. Maryland's Wildlife and Heritage Service framed the season the way it usually does.
Fall is right around the corner and with it comes a new season for Maryland hunters.
That's true, and it's also just one more thing layered onto a town that already had a lot going on outdoors this time of year. The practical version of all this comes down to matching the activity to the property instead of defaulting to whichever one is closest.
If you're walking a dog after work, Kings Landing Park is still the better call, you just need to be out the door earlier than you were in July. If you want a longer trail run or a bike ride with more room to roam, the NRMA on Smoky Road still works, but blaze orange isn't a bad idea starting September 11, and it's worth a glance at the trailhead kiosk for posted hunting activity before you head out, particularly once firearms season adds a shorter, higher-visibility window later in the fall. If the plan is a slower walk with kids or without a dog, the cypress swamp boardwalk is the one property on this list that doesn't ask you to think about any of it.
Paddlers get an extra wrinkle worth knowing. The Kings Landing to Cocktown Creek Water Trail runs along the Patuxent shoreline and connects the park directly to the NRMA property, which means a canoe or kayak trip that starts in the calmer, non-hunting section of the park can drift into hunting-adjacent water without much warning. It's not a reason to avoid the water. It's a reason to know which bank you're paddling past.
The Bigger Point
Huntingtown doesn't have one outdoor identity, it has three, and they don't run on the same schedule. That's easy to miss when you've lived here long enough that Kings Landing, the NRMA, and the cypress swamp all blur into a general sense of nearby green space. But the town's actual fall calendar is more specific than that, and this is the exact stretch of days where the differences stop being theoretical.
If you're weighing where your next walk fits into a town that changes its own rules by the calendar page, that's the same kind of granular, on-the-ground read that goes into understanding a neighborhood before you buy or sell in it. Erica Baker works these Calvert and Anne Arundel communities block by block, not just by median price, and if you're curious what that kind of attention to detail means for your own property, get in touch to talk it through.
