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Sugar Ridge Fish and Wildlife Area is located in Pike County, Indiana, which is southwestern
Indiana. It’s 8000 acres in six different areas, mainly in upland wooded ground primarily
composed of reclaimed mine ground. At Sugar Ridge we primarily manage for deer and turkey,
but we also manage for squirrel, rabbit, quail and Mourning Dove. The deer and turkey like
the rugged terrain, it offers a lot of habitat possibilities for them. We have a lot of upland
oak trees, which is great for the deer and turkey and the rugged terrain gives them a
lot of escape cover. We plant several clover food plots and we also have a lot of turnip
food plots out right now to provide some winter browse. This is to kind of draw the deer in.
Sugar Ridge is just a large forest pretty much, so when you can draw those deer in,
it makes the deer hunting a lot better. Food plots for turkey work about the same.
They like to be out in those clover fields, they use them to feed in, to display in and
it concentrates the game to where hunters can access it easier. We’re in the process
now of building lots of squirrel nesting structures to make some more cavities which will improve
squirrel production. We’re also in the process of making those brush piles for the rabbits
which gives them more cover and increases the population.
We have about 145 acres of water area to fish in. They’re mainly the strip pits, so they’re
usually deep pits. The fishing for red-ear, bluegill and bass can be really good. Sugar
Ridge does have a rifle and pistol range, an archery range and a shotgun range and we
do maintenance on those all the time, so they’re always in really good shape.
I think Sugar Ridge is unique because we are, the whole wildlife area is actually composed
of six different areas kind of scattered through Pike and Warrick County. So you can get kind
of a lot of different areas to hunt in – kind of an upland scenario, but we do have some
lowland areas where you can possibly get into some duck, or maybe some trapping opportunities.
It’s just a really kind of a diverse place, we have a little bit of everything here.