Iowa whitetail
- Thread starter NorthT
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hvfd21walker
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jjenness
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Zim
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Hey NorthT, I was scrambling to get back from New Hampshire in that nasty hurricane the days prior to your harvest. Was occupied for 3 days cutting up & packaging my moose in Maine. I knew I was missing out. Cashed my Iowa points the wrong year to put in a lot of days. But anyways I also ended up bowhunting south central Iowa public Nov. 2-12, but could not zero in on the toad. Took a thin 136" buck at tail end of peak rut. Only had 3 days left. I was really surprised by the quantity of nonresident hunters in my areas. We hunted several public parcels out from Lake Rathbun.
Curious how much pressure you observed? Resident or nonresident. Very nice heavy rack you got.
Curious how much pressure you observed? Resident or nonresident. Very nice heavy rack you got.
We got into Iowa on the oct 28-nov 8. The first 4-5 days we were the only ones hunting the areas. Starting nov 4th give or take a day people started rolling in. Our hotel filled up over night. We usually trip to plan our trips a week ahead of the rut. We hunt a lot in Missouri and the pressure nov 5-15 is crazy. While the chasing usually isn't that great alot of people is even less fun. Congrats on your deer. I'm a nonresident. From the people I talked most of the residents usually wait till the gun season. The first week we only had pressure from the dnr guys after they got off work haha
Zim
Very Active Member
I had scouted 4 days in February, and would have bowhunted Iowa starting about October 26th if I could have. That is when I've seen good action on the public prior to heavy hunter pressure. I had some great sign identified, but was astounded at the number of NR hunters. There were no less than six guys in one group from Vermont alone! Another thing that really pissed me off was a group of 3 guys from Iowa that each had full size motor homes all parked in one parking lot! And they brought a trailer with an ATV which was not allowed in that area. They camped there for over a month, blocking all other hunters from parking there. They don't allow that at Illinois WMA's and I m glad for it. It was a zoo by us. I did get away from them by going in 3/4 mile. Just wonder how much the deer shut down due to all that activity.
That's a good question. We didn't see a lot of deer this year compare to 3 years ago. We were a little further north on river on area that had access by boat only. It was tiny but we seen 30-40 deer per day. Granted we were the only people hunting due to the extreme pain in the butt it was to access. Get up every morning and ride 30 min in a boat gets old pretty fast
JEandAsGuide
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