Nick Glover's Coryell County resource

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With permission from Nick Glover, written 11/10/20

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We are having an astounding fall so far in this section of Central TX, so I'd like to highlight Coryell county for the TCC and hopefully get a few more of you out here to help find the good stuff.

It seems that many birders consider it a tougher county than it actually is, since it is covered almost entirely by private ranches and Fort Hood. Many who do work it focus heavily on the couple of city parks, the tiny Mother Neff State Park, or trespassing in closed areas of Fort Hood. Something most people including locals don't know is that Fort Hood is actually relatively easy to legally access for recreation and has amazing birding.

Fort Hood covers over 214,000 acres in Bell and Coryell counties, mostly on the Coryell side. Most of the training ranges can be publicly accessed with an annual permit for various recreational activities including birding. There is a wide array of habitats from mature riparian deciduous forest to vast juniper brakes, tons of classic hill country canyons, thousands of acres of prairie, and on our Bell county side there is approximately 50 miles of Belton Lake shoreline.

Our location on the edge of multiple ecoregions means we get a good variety of birds (over 300 spp for each county) from both east and west such as resident Rock Wren and breeding Acadian Flycatcher. In the winter it is not too tough to get 50 species in a day and on a good spring day with enough open training areas, it is possible to get 100+ species in either county. We are directly between Dallas and San Antonio, about 2.5 hours from each, which puts us in easy day-tripper range from Austin and Waco or a weekender from the bigger cities.

I am always happy to help birders, so if you want advice for target species, which training areas to visit, or other aspects of birding in Coryell let me know. I can be reached here, via facebook messenger, or at nglo.aves91@gmail.com. My "special" range pass has restrictions that make it tough to bird with visitors, so I usually will not be able to do any sort of in-person guiding.

Important points to consider

• The Natural and Cultural Resources Management Branch has numerous areas within training ranges where recreation is not allowed. The permanent ones are generally fenced and/or marked for easy avoidance, but our seasonally active ones are not. Please respect these areas, and if you come across someone who tells you you're on a study site please leave the area. If our study sites are being disturbed we will call the game wardens. You can easily find the interesting birds in many other areas.

• NO PLAYBACK from February through September. See previous point.

• DO NOT make personal locations on eBird. We have several hotspots that cover relatively large areas for good reasons. Please use them. The attached map outlines the training areas (green-gray) and live fire areas (pink-red) and indicates the suggested hotspot for each.

• Photography IS allowed, as long as it doesn't depict military activity.

• Despite being so close to cities, Fort Hood is still remote as far as safety concerns. You may not always have cell signal and it may take awhile for emergency services to reach you. I highly recommend having a GPS so you can provide an exact location if needed, and orient yourself with the gridded map.

• There are no amenities such as drinking water, first aid, or marked trails.

• You will have to pass a short background check to get your visitor pass, which is required to buy a recreation permit.

• Overnight stays are not allowed except in the designated Belton Lake Outdoor Recreation Area. There are hotels in the surrounding towns and camping at ACE parks around Belton and Stillhouse Hollow Reservoirs. Mother Neff state park is also relatively close to some of our northern and eastern training ranges, and could be a good place to get your Coryell owls.

• Offroading is not allowed, but you can drive on military trails that show signs of regular use as long as they do not take you out of the areas you are signed in to. Decent clearance and 4WD or AWD are highly recommended.

• Game Wardens can not help with vehicle recoveries, but they are on duty 24/7 and eager to issue citations for any infraction. Since Fort Hood sees so few recreators, they will pretty much always check out any vehicles/people they see. If you do get your vehicle stuck, try to contact me. I have a jeep with a winch and other recovery gear.

• You can only sign into 3 training areas at a time, and it has to be done online. You can use a smartphone browser to sign in and out of areas as you go.

• Recreation is a bottom priority for range use, so the list of open areas is rather fluid and can change at the last minute. Sometimes whole regions can be closed for months at a time. However, with the amount of training areas we have there is almost always somewhere that is open.

• Open areas are listed on a weekly basis and are updated on Thursdays. The most reliable way to find them is on the Fort Hood Outdoor Adventures facebook page.

• I am not affiliated with DFMWR or the game wardens, so am not an authority on the rules. Those I have listed here are absolutely not all inclusive and they do get updated, so you should familiarize yourself with the rulebook provided when you buy your range pass.

How to access Fort Hood

• MAKE SURE TO CHECK THE SPORTSMEN'S CENTER HOURS ONLINE!! There have been a few changes to the regular hours this year due to COVID, so I'm not going to post them here in case they change again.

• Get a free visitor pass at the visitor welcome center on T.J. Mills Blvd off of route 14/190 in Killeen

• Take TJ Mills through the main gate and continue through several intersections until it ends at Murphy Rd.

• Follow signs to the left to the Sportsmen's Center

• Go through the cafe past the soda fountain to get to the Sportsmen's shop to buy your pass. Basic 1 year recreation Passes cost $13, and allow all recreational activities except hunting and fishing. They will provide you with a topo map with 1km gridlines that shows all training areas, the rule book, and instructions for logging in to the training areas.

Coryell County map

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