Secluded Winford Wildlife Area supports quality deer and pheasant populations

That narrow access lane off a dead-end road is the only way in and out of the Winford Wildlife Area, a 637-acre floodplain grassland, just north of Oskaloosa, Iowa.  The public wildlife area was created after the Skunk River blew out a levee in 2008 and flooded adjacent crop fields. These fields had been farmed since the early 1900s, but the levee giving out was the final straw. Farmers working the sandy, silty soils decided it was time to get rid of the headache and enroll this land into the Wetland Reserve Program.