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NW iowa proposed regs..

booneriverbucks

booneriverbucks

PMA Member
I support them but do question how many tax paying residents are currently aware of them. In my limited years of following hunting politics the silence on certain regs has had a greater impact on many regs than all of the stuff I openly complain about on here. Many of the bigger issues have been decided while many were too late to join the arguement! Crazy what the administrative branch can get done with little input from the citizens. Keep fighting! I totally support the proposed regs in NW Iowa if it is truly the will of the people! I do have my questions and doubts tho! I support the current proposed regs but do have a few questions on how well they were advertised and explained (not my opinion, just feedback). The transparency might just be lacking a little!! All of us in other parts of the state have to continue to do our best to responsibly manage the resources we have been blessed with! Educate your neighbors/ other hunters too! Don’t wait until it’s too late to speak up! We all have a responsibility to keep Iowa great!
 
Are these what you are referencing? If so, I don't really see why the will of the people would matter. It looks like the DNR is taking steps to combat low numbers which sounds good to me regardless if most guys up there don't like it. I don't know many hunters in the NW but some in the Loess Hills and they are seeing crazy low deer numbers.

Key Changes and Trends for NW Iowa (2026-27 Season):
  • New Management Zone: The DNR is exploring new resident deer zones to assist with recovery in areas with critically low numbers, particularly in the westernmost tiers of counties.
  • Antlerless Harvest Restrictions: Due to significant population declines, some areas will see restricted antlerless hunting to allow the herd to recover, a shift from previous seasons that aimed to reduce numbers.
  • Reduced Quotas: Specific counties in the region will see decreased, or heavily managed, antlerless quotas to reverse population declines.
  • Cause of Changes: The changes are in response to a 15-year decline, high doe harvest, and impact from disease.
 
Hunters have been asking for changes to help with the declining populations across the state, this is their response. Is it perfect, no, but it's going to help accomplish what they've been hearing at annual meetings with sportsmen for years and COs have been getting preached. I think they communicated it well enough, those local meetings are very informative to attend.
 
deerhunter93 said:
Are these what you are referencing? If so, I don't really see why the will of the people would matter. It looks like the DNR is taking steps to combat low numbers which sounds good to me regardless if most guys up there don't like it. I don't know many hunters in the NW but some in the Loess Hills and they are seeing crazy low deer numbers.

Key Changes and Trends for NW Iowa (2026-27 Season):
  • New Management Zone: The DNR is exploring new resident deer zones to assist with recovery in areas with critically low numbers, particularly in the westernmost tiers of counties.
  • Antlerless Harvest Restrictions: Due to significant population declines, some areas will see restricted antlerless hunting to allow the herd to recover, a shift from previous seasons that aimed to reduce numbers.
  • Reduced Quotas: Specific counties in the region will see decreased, or heavily managed, antlerless quotas to reverse population declines.
  • Cause of Changes: The changes are in response to a 15-year decline, high doe harvest, and impact from disease.
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Exactly. The will of the people is great and all, but that doesn't always align with what is best for the resource. Scientific wildlife management shouldn't be a strict democratic process (ex- ballot initiatives CO has tried to push through). The will of the people would've continued market hunting in the early 1900s. Sometimes there has to be a grown up in the room...

The changes in western Iowa are needed. I also think the DNR has done a pretty good job of publicizing what they intend to do with the meetings and such. I don't think they're trying to sweep anything by unnoticed.
 
They’ve held quite a few public meetings (I think 12) in 2024 and 2025 , in western Iowa just checking the pulse for major changes in regulations out there.
The 3 meetings they held last May ( Denison, Hinton, and Sioux center) had a lot of people at them and everyone had a questionnaire to fill out.
The questionnaire showed 95% support for these new changes among those that attended the meetings.
If I had to guess there was 50-75 people at both Hinton and Sioux center and probably 25 at Denison.
Biggest complaint I overheard from people in these meetings was that there weren’t more counties added to this new zone.
Also something interesting to keep in mind is that in the original proposal for this zone there was going to be the elimination of one buck tag ( your landowner tag was going to count against a statewide buck tag I believe) , there was a problem with legislation that caused that part to get set aside. But my point is , even with all of those restrictions plus losing a buck tag there was 95% support and people complaining their county Next door wasn’t included.
 
booneriverbucks said:
I support them but do question how many tax paying residents are currently aware of them. In my limited years of following hunting politics the silence on certain regs has had a greater impact on many regs than all of the stuff I openly complain about on here. Many of the bigger issues have been decided while many were too late to join the arguement! Crazy what the administrative branch can get done with little input from the citizens. Keep fighting! I totally support the proposed regs in NW Iowa if it is truly the will of the people! I do have my questions and doubts tho! I support the current proposed regs but do have a few questions on how well they were advertised and explained (not my opinion, just feedback). The transparency might just be lacking a little!! All of us in other parts of the state have to continue to do our best to responsibly manage the resources we have been blessed with! Educate your neighbors/ other hunters too! Don’t wait until it’s too late to speak up! We all have a responsibility to keep Iowa great!
Click to expand...
I would say this is without a doubt the will of the hunters in that region that consider themselves “conservationists”
That said, there’s absolutely going to be that %5 of guys that are going to piss and moan about how there’s too many deer in Sioux county Iowa and they need to be able to shoot does. I’m to the point I say $&%@ them, I’ve traveled over 4,000 miles in the last two years going to all the different meetings, fundraisers, etc. to support the people that are going to save the herd over here. There were clearly marked and advertised meetings where they could speak their minds and the only reason they didn’t notice is because they only think about deer and deer hunting the night before season. Anyone in western Iowa that isn’t aware of changes coming was purposely looking the other way.
 
Zone B- buck only except: youth and disabled, LOT, and county any-sex quotas
-Shelby, Crawford, Ida, Woodbury, Plymouth, Sioux, O'Brien, Lynn
Zone A *buck only during Gun 1*
-Fremont, Mills, Pott, Harrison, Monona, Audubon, Carroll, Sac, Calhoun, Cherokee, Buena Vista, Pocahontas, Clay, Palo Alto, Osceola, Dickinson, Emmett
Zone A- status quo
-rest of the state
 
Iowa said:
Probably not enough of one.
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This tends to be bad for bucks ? They get hammered as a result , more small bucks shot . I saw it first hand in Minnesota.

That’s why I never think a complete stop to doe harvest is a good idea, the small bucks will be targets now.
 
Hardwood11 said:
This tends to be bad for bucks ? They get hammered as a result , more small bucks shot . I saw it first hand in Minnesota.

That’s why I never think a complete stop to doe harvest is a good idea, the small bucks will be targets now.
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I definitely get what you’re saying, but theres miles and miles of area in those counties with zero deer.
4 years in a row of EHD and self control hasn’t been exercised by enough people to keep does from getting hammered in those counties.
In a normal situation yes 100% better to shoot a doe than a 2.5 year old, but what if you have 2 deer per square mile average for that county?? Someone might have to eat a tag here and there for this to get better.
 
If deer numbers are that low it’s time to cancel the season . But of course, that won’t happen. Tough situation.
 
Hardwood11 said:
This tends to be bad for bucks ? They get hammered as a result , more small bucks shot . I saw it first hand in Minnesota.

That’s why I never think a complete stop to doe harvest is a good idea, the small bucks will be targets now.
Click to expand...
At this point DNR is TRYING to build the herd back and bucks don’t replenish the herd. Yes quality might slip for a few years but kill one buck or three deer when a doe is shot.
 
I don't have any insight on NW Iowa as I am far from there. But are they experiencing EHD in multiple years up there? How did the population get so low?
 
I won’t speak for everyone but where I work/hunt we lost 1/2 the herd in 2021, had a pretty bad run of it again in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Couldn’t tell you what percentage we are from what we were because some better habitat sections just picked up a lot of the deer that survived. Some sections that used to have 75-100 deer in the winter now have 5-10. Sections with marginal habitat that had 5-10 have 0 2024 guys that do deer drives were telling me they’d walk sections and not even see a track in the mud. 2021 you’d walk a creek for a mile and see 7 deer, all dead.
 
Sad part is if it takes 5 years to get back to the population we had that means it’ll take an additional 5 years to reach the same number of 5 year olds we had on the landscape.
It’s frustrating looking at the harvest data for 2021-2024 and seeing the number of does that got shot after each outbreak. So many guys would complain about how bad the deer numbers are and then in the same sentence mention that they did shoot one doe. If a guys living off of it that’s a little different but nobody I talked to was going to have 60# of deer meat turn their life around.
 
Yup, loss of habitat is really really bad but the EHD die offs took it to another level of bad. For us 2023 was a massive die off, 50%+ of the heard I'd estimate on our farm. Then hunter harvest/pressure has increased significantly each year due to habitat loss. Hunters are getting forced into the few areas left to hunt that have the habitat and deer on em.
They come in and fill their tags, maybe only shooting one or two... no big deal... but the next groups do the same thing and before they know it a good portion of the local small heard is shot and tagged, legally. But the hunters just aren't giving the deer a break to rebound, or at least not enough of a break in my opinion anyway
 
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