We have been bashing the Iowa DNR a lot in this thread so I thought I would throw them a bone....I think they are still trying to get a handle on exactly how to manage the deer population. They have lowered the number of antlerless tags and have closed some of the antlerless seasons in many counties. It appears to me that in the mid 2000's the DNR realized that the deer population was exploding and they felt they needed to take drastic measures to reduce it, which was probably the correct thing to do. It also appears that they left these drastic measures in place for a few to many years and we are now seeing the results of that. Hopefully they continue the trend of lowering the antlerless tags and seasons until they figure out the correct ratio to keep the herd at a "good" level. At least they are managing the the antlerless tags on a county by county basis. With time I think they will be able to get a handle on QDM, remember as little as 30 years ago deer were pretty scarce in Iowa so this whole concept of managing the herd is relatively new to the DNR. Hopefully they can learn from their mistakes.
