James A. Reed Memorial Wildlife Area

Good place to bring the chairs outs and watch nature.If your patient enough and quiet relaxing on your fold up chairs. You're going to see some small four-legged animals. More raccoons, possums. If you post up somewhere by a pond you're definitely going to see and hear lot of loud wild animal noises from frogs and you'll see some turtles there.I recommend bring your binoculars, the ones that can capture electronic pics. You're going to see different species of birds my favorite one are the red-headed vultures.You're going to see deers here pretty often. This is my new hangout so I'm going to try to capture pictures of these animals and post them here.Enjoy!!!

One of the best places to hike, fish, hunt, bird watch, ride horses or anything outdoors. They have a dog training area for hunting dogs, trails for people or horses and lakes galore to fish in. They even have a kids only lake.

Looks nice, although not sure "dog parks" are here. We were told to go north up the road (just a little ways) to happy tails park.

Nice fishing, beautiful lakes and trails. Hunting opportunities as well. Wish people would slow down while driving through the area. Friendly staff at main office.

They have several large lakes for fishing. We've been out twice now and have tried 4 of the lakes. We only caught one fish. There seems to be a lot of overcrowding with fisherman and they do not respect your private space. I suggest to watch out for snakes too. Within an hour, about 10 snakes passed by the area we were fishing at, and they came right up to the shore. The park is beautiful but I'm not convinced it's a great place for fishing.

James A. Reed Wildlife area is located in between Greenwood and Lees Summit Missouri off of 50 highway and Ranson Road. It's a good hike, some of it rugged and some not with varied scenery. I started at Bodarc lake and followed Big Creek until I hit the Water fowl marsh. The trail took me through a rocky craggy watery area, then to a savannah, and out towards the the Water fowl marsh. I missed the savannah area the first time because some of the trails are over grown. I originally tried to hike this trail in the Fall but couldn't due to hunting season, at this time of year, summer months, only fishing was allowed. Before starting to hike I recommend talking to one of the rangers in the station. The one I spoke to gave me a map and advice on which trails to take. This is a great hiking area but can be challenging, also some ticks were abound.

As a birder, JAR provides one a variety of habitats in which nearly 200 species have been recorded via eBird. There are several hiking locations & multiple stocked lakes for fishing (only downfall is that it gets busy on weekends & many leave trash behind). The are also provides good bike riding with many miles of paved & gravel roads. Easy to get to & find, recommend birders to check the area out.