Is Iowa "worth it"
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
A buddy and I was there for 2 weeks. Retuned Friday evening. Hunted public ground. Iowa is nice, but if anyone thinks "it's Iowa we are Gonna kill a good one" you better wake up. It's not given and dang sure is earned there still yet.
- James
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
Dewey wrote:I had fun in Iowa last year and killed a good buck. If you think you are just going to show up blind without scouting and easily kill a 150” buck your probably wasting your money. Plenty of Beast members tried that over the years and failed to fill their tag. If you read my kill story last year you saw it was far from easy. I put in a huge amount of work before the season and spent over a 100 hours on stand before tagging a buck.
If you put in the work and show up prepared a 130” buck is reasonable. Everybody thinks there are 150”+ bucks behind every tree but that’s definitely not true. If you go there thinking that you will be in for a very disappointing trip. Just like anywhere you will have to be prepared to put in a ton of effort.
That being said I will be there again hopefully in a few years with a good attitude and ready to work hard again. In the meantime I will just keep scouting in the offseason counting down the days till I can hunt there again.
Couldn’t agree more. If a hunter is only going purely for public land hunting you need to set your expectations up right and put in the hard work scouting. Aaron, Zach and the public land crew live there and put in countless hours scouting. I wouldn’t necessarily use their results as my guidance system for how successful I might be as a non-resident hunter with limited time.
I shared this post on my thoughts hunting zone 9 this year. I was happy with the buck I harvested but I did not find the public land in 9 to be quite the hype everyone made it out to be. Save for a single buck I did not have any 150's on camera and I ran quite a few cameras on several tracts for nearly a month.
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
James wrote:Dewey wrote:I had fun in Iowa last year and killed a good buck. If you think you are just going to show up blind without scouting and easily kill a 150” buck your probably wasting your money. Plenty of Beast members tried that over the years and failed to fill their tag. If you read my kill story last year you saw it was far from easy. I put in a huge amount of work before the season and spent over a 100 hours on stand before tagging a buck.
If you put in the work and show up prepared a 130” buck is reasonable. Everybody thinks there are 150”+ bucks behind every tree but that’s definitely not true. If you go there thinking that you will be in for a very disappointing trip. Just like anywhere you will have to be prepared to put in a ton of effort.
That being said I will be there again hopefully in a few years with a good attitude and ready to work hard again. In the meantime I will just keep scouting in the offseason counting down the days till I can hunt there again.
Couldn’t agree more. If a hunter is only going purely for public land hunting you need to set your expectations up right and put in the hard work scouting. Aaron, Zach and the public land crew live there and put in countless hours scouting. I wouldn’t necessarily use their results as my guidance system for how successful I might be as a non-resident hunter with limited time.
I shared this post on my thoughts hunting zone 9 this year. I was happy with the buck I harvested but I did not find the public land in 9 to be quite the hype everyone made it out to be. Save for a single buck I did not have any 150's on camera and I ran quite a few cameras on several tracts for nearly a month.
I think it's a misconception that a lot of guys think about most of the midwest. Most of the "150s" guys see are tops 130 at the most. Because when someone tells me they saw 6 bucks over 130, 4 bucks over 150 and 1 possible boone ...i start to chuckle.
I had some buddies that hunt S iowa this year. Most bucks were in the 130s range. 1 buck was in the 50s. They had a ball hunting thst place.
Non residents hunting public land for the 1st time, never setting foot on a place trying to kill a 140s buck is a tall order. I saw 1 buck from stand in NE this year that would hit that mark. Not a single one of them on 8 cams in 10 days.
- MN_DeerHunter
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
I’ll be heading there in either 2019 or 2020 so hopefully it’s decent in that timeframe. I am hoping to be hunting private land however...I think no matter where you go you still have to put in the time when it comes to public.
- <DK>
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
Found this thread on a random search and I was just curious if anyone had anything more to say. I also saw that Jackson Marsh & Sam Potter killed some beautiful bucks! Congrats to them guys.
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
mainebowhunter wrote:I think it's a misconception that a lot of guys think about most of the midwest. Most of the "150s" guys see are tops 130 at the most. Because when someone tells me they saw 6 bucks over 130, 4 bucks over 150 and 1 possible boone ...i start to chuckle.
I had some buddies that hunt S iowa this year. Most bucks were in the 130s range. 1 buck was in the 50s. They had a ball hunting thst place.
Non residents hunting public land for the 1st time, never setting foot on a place trying to kill a 140s buck is a tall order. I saw 1 buck from stand in NE this year that would hit that mark. Not a single one of them on 8 cams in 10 days.
I hunted zone 5 last fall and the scenario you painted in the first part above sounds pretty much how I have described my trip. You can chuckle all you want but I know what I saw and the 9 days I hunted were the best hunting I have ever had in my life, anywhere. We didn't even have good weather and I was still seeing good deer. The morning I shot my buck I saw 10 different bucks by 9AM. Of the 10 one was a 140's type deer and one was probably a booner(both came thru after I shot my buck). Again chuckle away but the biggest buck had tine length and mass unlike any deer I have ever seen. It might be a tall order to hit public land for the first time and take a 140" deer, but I don't hunk there is anywhere else in the states that would give you a better opportunity to do so.
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
October john, what did your buck score?
- SamPotter
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
Iowa sucks, don't waste your time and money.
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
I know a guy who went with a very well known outfitter 3 season to get a P&Y & another 3 for a booner, so around $30,000. Not for me. Mike
- gravebeforeshave80
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
could always give Ohio a try...over the counter license and tag that is good for the duration of deer season no matter the weapon....season opens last Saturday in sept closes in feb....non resident license $125 either sex deer tag $24
Terry Urban Jr
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- SamPotter
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
gravebeforeshave80 wrote:could always give Ohio a try...over the counter license and tag that is good for the duration of deer season no matter the weapon....season opens last Saturday in sept closes in feb....non resident license $125 either sex deer tag $24
I would 2nd that. Great bucks for a ridiculously low NR fee. If I was going to shell out $700 for a NR deer tag I'd probably try to get private land permission. That's a lot of money to hope for a chance at a 130" buck.
- Jonny
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
SamPotter wrote:Iowa sucks, don't waste your time and money.
Nice buck this year Sam
You have a monkey Mr. Munson?
- SamPotter
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
Jonny wrote:SamPotter wrote:Iowa sucks, don't waste your time and money.
Nice buck this year Sam
Whoops. Got me. If the question was "Is moving to Iowa worth it?", I'd have to plead the 5th. I think my statewide any deer archery tag was $28 or so?
- Stanley
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
Octoberjohn wrote:mainebowhunter wrote:I think it's a misconception that a lot of guys think about most of the midwest. Most of the "150s" guys see are tops 130 at the most. Because when someone tells me they saw 6 bucks over 130, 4 bucks over 150 and 1 possible boone ...i start to chuckle.
I had some buddies that hunt S iowa this year. Most bucks were in the 130s range. 1 buck was in the 50s. They had a ball hunting thst place.
Non residents hunting public land for the 1st time, never setting foot on a place trying to kill a 140s buck is a tall order. I saw 1 buck from stand in NE this year that would hit that mark. Not a single one of them on 8 cams in 10 days.
I hunted zone 5 last fall and the scenario you painted in the first part above sounds pretty much how I have described my trip. You can chuckle all you want but I know what I saw and the 9 days I hunted were the best hunting I have ever had in my life, anywhere. We didn't even have good weather and I was still seeing good deer. The morning I shot my buck I saw 10 different bucks by 9AM. Of the 10 one was a 140's type deer and one was probably a booner(both came thru after I shot my buck). Again chuckle away but the biggest buck had tine length and mass unlike any deer I have ever seen. It might be a tall order to hit public land for the first time and take a 140" deer, but I don't hunk there is anywhere else in the states that would give you a better opportunity to do so.
Just curious what did the buck you kill score?
You can fool some of the bucks, all of the time, and fool all of the bucks, some of the time, however you certainly can't fool all of the bucks, all of the time.
- Stanley
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Re: Is Iowa "worth it"
wmihunter wrote:October john, what did your buck score?
Curious about this also?
You can fool some of the bucks, all of the time, and fool all of the bucks, some of the time, however you certainly can't fool all of the bucks, all of the time.
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