Entries Tagged Iowa

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources surveys the state’s whitetails by using spotlights. This conservation work is funded by excise taxes paid by archery, firearms and ammunition manufacturers through the Pittman-Robertson Act.

If you want a legitimate chance at taking a world-class whitetail buck, you must hunt where such bucks exist.

Three cross-country bowhunts to Iowa over many years finally give the author the chance of a lifetime on a massive buck — and he’s unable to draw his compound! And then the situation gets worse.

In our ongoing series of our best and worst hunting stories, GVO President Derrick Nawrocki recounts his excellent bear hunting trip to Idaho and a tough outing in the Iowa deer stand.

New research indicates that the nation’s largest private lands conservation program, the USDA Conservation Reserve Program can magnify its impacts on bobwhite quail, grassland birds and other wildlife if applied to the landscape at scale in locations already targeted by complementary management activities.

Want to waylay a whopper whitetail? Consider playing the draw in these three whitetail hotbeds.

Are you prepared to pack all of your belongings, load the family and move for better whitetail hunting? If so, here’s a little insight into making such a move.

This intense video of using a chainsaw to free locked whitetail bucks definitely falls into the “do NOT try this at home” category.

In the heart of big buck country, two Iowa school districts understand the importance of teaching their youth about firearm and hunter safety.

Living a humble — but busy — life in southwest Iowa, Jimmy Lawrence might be the most talented fish taxidermist in the country.

Officials say hunting is a necessary step to control the city's local goose population of an estimated 2,000 birds.

Iowa governor signs bill to immediately legalize suppressors in the Hawkeye State.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Ring-neck pheasants are rebounding in Iowa after their populations were hurt in recent years by a stretch of harsh winters and drastically fewer conservation acres, according to wildlife officials. A new wildlife survey by the state's Department of Natural Resources show a 37 percent increase in Iowa's ring-necked pheasants compared with 2014, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported. That's the highest count since 2007 and the second-straight year of growth. The survey counts pheasants along 215, 30-mile stretches of Iowa roads in August. This year, the count averaged 24 pheasants per route. That compared with the all-time low set in 2013 of 6.5 birds per route. But the state's pheasant population remains just a fraction of what it was in past decades, officials said. The Natural Resources Department says Iowa pheasant hunters are expected to kill between 300,000 and 500,000 rooster pheasants this year. That compares with nearly 200,000 bagged in 2014. Until about a decade ago, Iowa had regularly seen more than a million pheasants killed by hunters a year, after peaking at nearly 2 million in the 1960s and 1970s. “It's in the right direction, but not to what is thought of as Iowa standards historically,'' said Todd Bogenschutz, a department upland wildlife research biologist who helps conduct the annual roadside survey. “We've had bad weather and lost habitat, which has really hammered the population.'' In 1990, Iowa had 4.6 million acres of habitat, including 2.7 million acres of hay and grain fields, and 1.9 million acres of Conservation Reserve Program land. In 2013, the most recent year of data collected from U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were 2.8 million acres of habitat, including 1.3 million acres of hay and grain and 1.5 million acres of CRP land. ___ Information from: Iowa City Press-Citizen, http://www.press-citizen.com/