Current State of the Land Market

[tall@wide]

What’s the main reason behind the longer draw periods for non residents? Are there more outfitters or just more NR landowners now these farms are all getting segmented?

I think it's because everyone's state has poor regs and poor hunting, and everyone wants to come to Iowa. Most hunters from out of state think Iowa is better than it is, and they think booners are on every farm. We have a great whitetail state obviously compared to others but not as good as people think.

 

[Hardwood11]

I think it's because everyone's state has poor regs and poor hunting, and everyone wants to come to Iowa. Most hunters from out of state think Iowa is better than it is, and they think booners are on every farm. We have a great whitetail state obviously compared to others but not as good as people think.

I would agree with that. Iowa probably has the best regulations overall, Kansas is very close.

If South Dakota moved their rifle season back 2 weeks, I think it would have the best regulations as “they” have a draw/lottery for gun tags. Which makes the prime areas of SD pretty good—they just don’t have the cover statewide.

**Unfortunately EHD has hurt several areas in Iowa!

 

[booneriverbucks]

I’m with you on most of this comment but NR anysex tags statewide have stayed the same for years (6000 tags for over 20 years) Pretty simple that more hard core NR hunters wanting a piece of Iowa big deer along with NR landowners in the mix. I wasn’t aware that zones had NR anysex tag reductions or reallocations but even if they have most of the zones especially the high demand zones have experienced point creep with same number of NR tags offered. There are purely more NR willing to travel. I’ve read articles that chasing the turkey slams have increased for similar reasons. Just more people in the mix (supply/demand).

the statewide number of non res anysex tags has stayed at 6000, but the allocation between zones has changed. A few zones, mainly in central to northern/nw iowa have had their non res tags cut in half. Zone 2 for example, used to have twice as many non res tags available. This has been great for residents! Non-res people I know constantly complain about it. If I were to guess this happened around 2017/18ish.