Hunting Land in Crawford County, Kansas

The Mined Land Wildlife Area: reclaimed strip-pit ground, unit-specific rules

The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks manages the Mined Land Wildlife Area across roughly 14,500 acres spanning Cherokee, Crawford, and Labette Counties -- about 13,000 acres of land and 1,500 acres of water spread across more than 1,000 former coal strip-pit lakes, a physical legacy of the region's coal-mining history rather than naturally formed terrain. Whitetail deer, eastern turkey, mourning dove, bobwhite quail, fox squirrel, cottontail rabbits, and waterfowl are all harvested from the area under standard Kansas seasons, and its strip-pit lakes support largemouth bass, walleye, crappie, and trout fishing, accessed via boat ramps on the larger pits.

What a hunter genuinely needs to check before going out is that the area's rules are not uniform across its full acreage. KDWP's own regulations prohibit firearms outright on Units 1, 21, 23, and a portion of Unit 22 -- archery equipment only is permitted for hunting on those specific units. Elsewhere on the broader area, standard firearm and archery seasons apply per state regulations. Because the property spans three counties and covers a large, irregularly shaped footprint of former strip-pit cuts and spoil piles, a hunter needs the area's current unit map in hand, not a general sense of "the Mined Land area," before choosing a weapon and a spot.

Fishing rules and what the terrain means for land nearby

Fishing on the area's strip-pit lakes carries its own special regulations: set lines are prohibited across the area's waters, a Kansas fishing license is required unless otherwise exempt, and certain individual lakes -- particularly ones stocked for trout -- carry additional special regulations beyond the area-wide rules. Because the lakes range from a quarter-acre to 50 acres and vary widely in depth and water quality depending on how each pit was reclaimed, treating any two lakes on the property as interchangeable is a mistake; check the current regulations for the specific lake you plan to fish.

For a land buyer evaluating private ground near the Mined Land Wildlife Area -- particularly anywhere near Franklin, Mulberry, or other historic mining communities in the county -- the same reclaimed strip-pit topography that defines the public wildlife area often continues onto adjoining or nearby private parcels. That can mean genuinely attractive small ponds and wildlife habitat spillover, but it can also mean the same irregular, engineered ground that complicates building, septic siting, and agricultural use elsewhere in the county's mining-affected areas (see our separate page on building on raw land in Crawford County for that side of the same history).

Before you hunt or fish there

1. Get KDWP's current Mined Land Wildlife Area unit map before heading out, and confirm whether the specific unit you plan to hunt is one of the firearm-restricted units (1, 21, 23, or part of 22) requiring archery equipment only.
2. Check current species seasons and bag limits directly with KDWP, since these follow standard statewide rules layered onto the area-specific weapon restrictions above.
3. Before fishing a specific strip-pit lake, confirm whether it carries any special regulation beyond the area-wide set-line ban -- this is especially relevant for lakes stocked with trout.
4. If evaluating private land near the wildlife area, ask directly whether the specific parcel was itself part of the historic strip-mine footprint, since that history can carry over onto private ground the same way it defines the public area.