Troy Mills, Iowa - Sitting on the west side of the Wapsipinicon River, a few miles west of the town Troy Mills, Troy Mills Wildlife Area is a mix of sand prairie, timber and wetlands.
On this early June morning, the calls of dickcissels, northern yellow warblers, eastern and western meadowlarks serenade a lone bumble bee searching for prairie rose and Ohio spiderwort that are blooming.
The openness of the sand prairie makes a summertime walk through the prairie an easy one.
“We burn this fairly regularly,” said Jason Auel, wildlife biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Cedar-Wapsi Unit’s Sweet Marsh office. “Usually half of it at a time – but we inner seeded it with grasses two years ago so we have held off burning until next year.”
The openness of the sand prairie transitions to a wet meadow, slightly lower in elevation and closer to the river that will hold water when the Wapsipinicon floods or after a heavy rainfall. The thick vegetation is a known hideout for pheasants in the winter.
Auel said staff are working on writing a forest wildlife stewardship plan that will outline how they plan to mange the timber and the goals of that effort.
The Wapsipinicon River is a significant feature of Troy Mills, flooding low lying oxbows that support waterfowl, and providing excellent fishing from the river bank. The parking lot on the north end has a foot path leading to the river and continues along the bank.
While there is a lot of evidence of previous flooding, the recent string of drought years has the river cutting a new channel to the west. Overtime, the change will create an oxbow and a new island. And because the low water level has left the existing boat ramp high and dry, the Iowa DNR is exploring options to relocate the boat ramp.
The area has three parking lots – one on the north side, one on the northwest side and the other on the east side that’s part of the existing boat ramp. The northwest parking lot is adjacent to the 2-1/2-acre sunflower field where the sunflowers are just starting to emerge. “When the sunflower field is successful, it can be a hidden gem for dove hunters,” Auel said.
“Because of its smaller size (323 acres), Troy Mills often gets overshadowed by nearby Buffalo Creek (six miles away), but it’s a nice area that is popular with deer and turkey hunters, squirrel and pheasant hunters,” he said.
It also provides excellent mushroom hunting in the spring, and grows a lot of poison ivy along the timber edges.
The majority of Troy Mills was acquired in the late 1950s, and then expanded with the prairie addition in 1994. The wildlife area has stayed about the same size since. On the east side of the river are two county conservation board areas offering additional public outdoor recreation.
“There’s a lot of diversity on the small area,” Auel said. “Fishing, hunting, trapping, mushroom hunting – all 30-40 miles from Cedar Rapids and from Waterloo. It’s a pretty neat place.”