Wildcat Hollow
Wildcat Hollow
From Illinois Route 37, drive directly north of Mason, Illinois on the road leading north from the corner with a trailer and a Pentecostal church by the side of the trailer. Cross the Interstate 57 (I-57) overpass to the first crossroads (about 2 miles north of Mason, just south of the tall radio towers). Turn right (east) and go past the farm to the gravel frontage road. If the road is too wet, park your car there and walk down the frontage road to Wildcat Hollow. If the frontage road is dry, drive 1 mile to the fence and park your car.
There are lots of animals, birds, and reptiles to see. You can see what animals do when people disturb them. You can see pretty rocks, caves, animal tracks, animals' homes, river and creek, trees, birds, reptiles, and plants. You can see where white-tailed deer rub their horns on trees, and where the wild turkeys scratch the ground to find food.
You can have a great time with your family. You can walk around and look at all the animals, trees, plants, and rocks. You might even find turkey or other feathers on the ground.
You can hunt some of the animals during hunting season. You must have a permit before you can hunt.
Most of Wildcat Hollow was a part of the Ada Kepley farm.
There are 520 acres of state forest and fields.
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Animals |
Raccoons, white-tailed deer, opossums, toads, gray and fox squirrels, red and gray foxes, cottontail rabbits, bats, minks, weasels, beavers, voles, white-footed mice, shrews, muskrats, chipmunks, skunks, woodchucks, badgers |
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Birds |
Eastern wild turkeys, wood ducks, great-horned owls, barred owls, bluejays, woodpeckers, wrens, sparrows, whippor-wills, hummingbirds, red-tailed hawks, Cooper's and sharp-shinned hawks, buzzards, bobwhite quails, mourning doves, woodcocks, American kestrels, loggerhead shrikes |
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Insects |
Worms, beetles, roaches, butterflies, sowbugs, spiders, ants, ticks, flies, bees, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, butterflies |
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Reptiles |
Black snakes, lizards, salamanders, turtles, timber rattlesnakes, blue racers, garter snakes |
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Trees |
Shag-barked hickories, red-oaks. white, black, post, and pin oaks, black walnuts, sugar and silver maples, green and white ashes, sycamores, butternuts, basswoods, shadbushes, red cedars, hop hornbeams, flowering dogwoods, black cherries, box elders |
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Plants |
Daisies, berries, flowers, ferns, poison ivy, yellow trout-lilies, blue-eyed Mary, squirrel corns, putty-root orchids, and silvery spleenwort fern |
Bedrock is Mattoon Formation (Pennsylvanian) with outcrops of sandstone, limestone, and shale. This is overlain with Illinoisan glacial till. Topography is that of a dissected till plain with ravines extending down into the underlying rock, and the floodplain of Fulfer Creek. Upland soils are of the Bluford-Hickory-Ava-Wakeland-Coffeen Association.
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Agricultural - cultivated mixed grain food patches |
22 acres |
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Agricultural - non-cultivated |
0 acres |
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Managed Grasslands/Legumes |
22 acres |
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Shrub/berry plantings |
2.5 acres |
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Mast tree plantings |
2.5 acres |
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Upland Woodland - more than 15 years of age |
234.9 acres |
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Bottomland Woodland - more than 15 years of age |
100 acres |
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Wetland Habitat - < 6 feet deep, herbaceous, woody |
1.5 acres |
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Less than 3 acre pond - > 6 ft. deep |
1.0 acres |
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Day use/ picnic area |
0 acres |
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Roads/ campgrounds/buildings/parking lots |
4.4 acres |
Fulfer Creek, Little Wabash River, springs and seeps, and spring branches
Water
The springs are high in mineral content and were once thought to have medicinal properties. The rock-walled canyons are unusual for this part of Illinois, and some of the caves may have been inhabited by Indians. Some of the unusual to rare plants that occur here are yellow trout-lily, blue-eyed Mary, squirrel corn, putty-root orchid, and silvery spleenwort fern.
