Sandwiched between Ledges State Park and the Saylorville Wildlife Area in Boone County, the 562-acre McCoy Wildlife Area is often either overlooked or mistaken for being part of the popular state park.
Drawing many of its visitors from Ledges who experience McCoy by walking its nearly mile-long maintenance lane past hayfields, hidden wetlands, food plots and timber, ending at a large bowl-like opening that is currently a large hayfield.
McCoy has been managed by the DNR for a long time. It was home to the state game farm where the Iowa Conservation Commission raised pheasants to expand the population across Iowa (discontinued in 1981 because it was not a biologically sound practice), and is the original site of the DNR’s prairie seed collection effort.
“This is also one of the original MSIM sites,” said Josh Gansen, wildlife biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Saylorville Unit, referring to the Multiple Species Inventory and Monitoring (MSIM) program, an ongoing research project started in 2006 and is a joint effort between the Iowa DNR and Iowa State University (ISU). The goals of the project are to gather information on the population trends and distribution of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, dragonflies, and butterflies.
“It’s been used as a training site for many of the MSIM team members, as well as for animal ecology classes and ornithology classes,” he said.
It is also a seed source for chinquapin oak acorns collected and used to grow stock at the State Forest Nursery, in nearby Ames. These acorns are smaller than their red, white and bur oak cousins.
Beyond providing acorns to the nursery and serving as a hands-on field classroom, McCoy is a public hunting area with a mix of prairie, timber, a pond and small wetlands adjacent to the Des Moines River on its southwest side.
Much of the habitat work is handled through a lease with a nearby producer who is part of the beginning farmer program.
The lease includes cropping areas in preparation for prairie conversion or for direct nut seeding of a new oak stand. “We don’t want any grass as competition. We want 100 percent sunlight on the oaks,” Gansen said.
McCoy added 40 acres on its northeast side recently, and on this early September morning, a contractor is working to implement the forest wildlife stewardship plan by girdling and cutting locusts, honeysuckle and autumn olive from a grove, in favor of the oaks and hickories. The Saylorville team has been working on reclaiming the brome field portion of the addition by pulling the locusts ahead of restoring it to diverse prairie.
Part of this new addition includes a two plus acre pond ringed with trees visible from the road.
Walking up to the water’s edge on southwest corner of the pond, a handful of wood ducks nervously fly away. Expanding rings mark where fish were hitting the water surface. “We will be working with our fisheries staff to manage the pond,” Gansen said.
McCoy is a popular place to pick mushrooms, from morels to golden oysters, and is part of the Des Moines River birding corridor and water trail.