I've read through every single post while sitting here, yes it took awhile. But I've noticed some things I'd like to get out there. This is going to be a very long post and I'm warning you of that now. I'll start off telling about myself so that's out of the way.
I'm 19 years old (I know you're already thinking why the hell would I listen to a 19 year old but stick with me), I'm from Iowa county and that's where I hunt. I've been an avid member of this site for several years I just don't post often. I only bow hunt and muzzloader hunt in Iowa, I also hunt in Missouri on 4000 privately owned acres between my family and friends from St Louis. In Missouri I hunt during bow and rifle (damn rifles I know). I've hunted other game in Minnesota South Dakota and Texas. I'm an avid hunter of pheasant, turkey, and waterfowl. If it can be hunted in Iowa I've done it. I shot my first turkey when I was 6 and deer when I was 7, I started bow hunting when I was 12 so I've been around the block a few times. I killed my first deer during a deer drive which was a doe. I've killed 2 deer in the 140s, 2 in the 150s and 1 in the 160s. I'm not a very good waterfowl hunter I'll admit. On my pheasant hunting ground here in Iowa county, which is 240 acres of switch grass, we killed 50 roosters this year between five of us. On the last day of season we still saw atleast 10 roosters but they got up to far away. I barely got to bow hunt this year because I was going to school in South Dakota, but I still had 9 hunts this year and saw a couple 160s from a distance and had a close encounter with a mid 150s 8 point. I was able to get my buddy a shot at a 140s ten that's been on the farm way to long, unfortunately he missed. I hunt strictly off permission, 2 other guys bowhunt the same ground as me, and then a group of shotgunners hunt it which is also who I used to shotgun hunt with. In Iowa I won't shoot a deer unless he's atleast 4 and 150", I figure why waste my tag on anything smaller even if he is a mature buck if he could possibly be killed during the shotgun season and I can be pickier. In Missouri I shoot any buck that's atleast 4, since the other 10 guys are strictly trophy hunting I figure I can do the culling.I've killed a turkey almost every year since I've started except for a few. I consider myself a fairly good hunter, I'd like to be better but who wouldn't. I run 6 trailcams on the ground I hunt in Iowa, and probably 15-20 at a time in Missouri. My dad used a crossbow for a year after he had surgery on a pinched nerve in his back and couldn't draw back a bow. I'll say some more personal stuff now, I'm a strong republican, I work for Monsanto in the summers and probably will the rest of my life after college. I wanted you to know all this stuff before reading my opinions on anything, that way if you have any questions regarding me I may have already answered it. If you still have a question about me go ahead and post it, I'll answer without thinking twice no matter the question. If you have have any doubts about what I said about myself I can guarantee you I'm not lying, one I wouldn't do that, and two there are people on here that I personally know that would be able to pick out my lies, like my highschool baseball coach, I'm not going to say who he is and not calling for him to verify what I said I'm just making a point on how that'd be embarrassing for me.
Sorry for such the long wait to read what I have to say, I'm going to break each topic into multiple sections to keep things seperate, if your for some reason wondering what a section is, this would be the third section by my definition. My sections may not be in an order that makes since and I apologize I'm just gonna go with how everything is flowing in my head at the time. I will try to cover as many things as possible. I'm not gonna call anyone out, there's no reason for that I'm just stating my opinions. I'll be fair to every side and state my opinion. I will list possible benefits and possible problems. I'm not 100% on some current laws since I've been out of state so go ahead and correct me if I'm ever wrong.
I'll start with the crossbows during youth season, I personally don't like the idea. I think it would be nice that kids could use crossbows if for some reason a gun isn't an option or if that's the kids choice or parents choice for the kid. I also know this as a 19 year old though, if we let this happen where would the end be for crossbows? Do we seriously believe that they wouldn't try to pass a law that crossbows could be used during regular bow? Oh and not to mention the group of kids that got to use a crossbow during youth season and then during the time where they couldn't use it after turning 16 realize over the next few years that they like the crossbows better over regular bows so they push for the right to use crossbows once they're old enough to influence laws. Do we really believe this wouldn't happen? Like I said I'm okay with having this right for kids I just don't believe it would truly stop there. If I'm not mistaken we can now use crossbows during late muzzleloader, which I'm not a fan of obviously. My belief on whether this is ethical bowhunting or not is kind of strange. I know that a crossbows range if further than a compound isn't much, but the room for error in lethal range is less. It's not like your gonna be shooting deer at 70 yards. You still have to be careful about wind and limbs. Whether or not this will effect harvest totals is pretty straight forward. I think it will increase the amount of deer killed during bow. Not because it's a crossbow, that will add very little, but because I believe more people will be in the woods at that point. I don't think it will be much more but there will be more, there's no denying that. I think these people that it's gonna draw into archery, not as whole but a lot of the people, are likely people we don't want archery hunting. It could be people that have always only gun hunted and never had the commitment to learn how to use a bow but now it's simpler, people that have never even hunted but now they can use crossbows and that's pretty cool, and last but not least, the straight up crossbow hunters that aren't living in Iowa now because they can't use a crossbow but we're about to send an invitation to our state for the big day and we all know we've already sent them the engagement pictures. I think it will definitely increase pressure right away, maybe not harvest totals but it will. I just think that's a big hill that we don't want the ball to go down, and unfortunately it's already starting to roll I just hope nobody gives it an extra push. Let's leave it at if you really can't use a compound because of medical issues you can get the license to use a crossbow.
Second is the early bow season, interesting idea but it's a no go for this guy. Like mentioned by other people there are plenty of deer seasons and time to kill a deer. Why a whole extra month of hunting especially in the easiest time of the year to pattern bucks. This sounds kind of like a special interest group, hear me out, during the summer months sure deer eat corn but not a whole lot. They are interested more in green leaves and what else, they'd rather the corn kernels dry out before eating them, so if I'm a lobbyist wanting to kill more deer for betterment of crops I'm thinking why not kill as many deer before the deer even start eating to our beloved corn instead of waiting until after they've started. Back onto the hunting it's not gonna be fair for a lot of people, if you hunt ground where it's just you you're probably not going to be affected. It's the people sharing ground and a group of hunters we seem to forget, the public ground hunters. If there's people out there for a whole month before you pressuring the deer, it's just made it a lot harder in an already tough situation. And people think that there will be less younger deer killed, I'm not completely sure on that because true the people hunting early will have an easier chance to kill mature deer, but what about the people hunting regular bow? If you hunt a small property with other people and you already know the mature buck on the farm has been killed and now the oldest deer is a 3 year old and it's mature considering the circumstances why wouldn't you shoot it, and if this goes on every year in an area for awhile there will be less mature deer over time. Our deer herd is currently in recovery, it's very fragile at the time. We just got it back on track and heading in the right direction and it's gonna be a long road. I don't think this season is necessarily gonna pull it off track but it's gonna distract it, I'll use a little analogy for you all, if you are driving down the road and you need to hurry get home to your wife but you see there's several good looking topless chicks standing off the side of the road it's gonna be pretty damn hard to drive straight hell you might even stop for awhile. You driving your car is our deer herd, your wife is the goal, and the ladies are this early deer season. Sure it sounds nice, and looks damn good but we both know only bad things are gonna happen from this distraction because you better not drive off the road and you sure as hell better not stop for a longer look, because now you're getting home late and you better not step out off the car and leave the road following temptation because it's hard telling what troubles that'll cause at home, hell your wife might just leave you if she finds out and you may never have her back, you just gotta pray she forgives you. I hope you were able to follow along in that. I felt it was a good way to describe this early deer season.
I know that those first two proposed laws have been stopped as of now, but I guarantee we haven't seen the last of them. They will be rewrote to look and sound better before we see them again, but we all know what they truly are underneath. I'll continue on with some more stuff, I'm sorry this post as been so long I just feel like this need to be said. If those first ones were the only ones your interested in you can stop reading now.
So onto the one any sex tag unless you're a landowner. I'm more or less gonna play devils advocate on this one explaining scenarios. I could care less if this was a law or not, some people will but I don't. I'll say now though that if we do this that we'd need to be very careful on how it's done but I'll get to those details later. What I'll start with is this, how often do people fill both their tags let alone a landowner filling all 3? I've only filled both my tags once in my 7 years of bowhunting. Yes I know there are people who do it, we really see it all the time with the big hunting celebrities from our state but even they can't do it every year. I'm just trying to figure out how we benefit from having 2 or 3 any sex tags as hunters (we all know the government likes the money), and I can only think of select people who do and that's the hunters on tv, who make more money the more deer they kill. There's no reason why we need to shoot two or three bucks a year, but I also don't see the effect it'll have on the herd if we do. If we stay true to our management and stay away from shooting young bucks it really shouldn't affect the herd at all. Most people won't shoot two let alone three bucks in a year, and if you can I'm truly jealous of you considering they are mature. So I don't think this law needs to be changed but if we do we need to be careful. If we let you use your tag from October 1 through January 10 we would have to make some changes. The early muzzleloader season would have to be abolished, if we keep it we'd have to keep our current quota because we don't want an increase of muzzleloader hunters during bow season. The problem would be who gets to hunt the early muzzleloader. We can make it a lottery that you buy into sometime earlier in the year and when you receive your tag it'll say if you'll get to hunt early muzzleloader, so basically how it currently is. This next option would be my preferred route, let's make it random. You buy your tags and if you get chosen to hunt the early muzzle you can but obviously you don't have to, which gives you the option to hunt other gun season. This would be less people out during early muzzleloader than our current setup. I'm gonna finish off this subject with this. With current party hunting rules all you need is proof that you had a tag for that season to keep participating in the hunt for the rest of the season. But say now you fill your tag during bow so you're just going into the shotgun season without even providing a tag for your party, are you still gonna be able to participate? If you say they shouldn't be able to what about the small parties, the ones where it's just a few guys that need that man to walk the timber but can't because he's tagged out. It's an interesting topic but I think how we have it now would be much simpler than the one tag deal, if it's not broke don't fix it.
Kind of picking up where we left off with the last subject, party hunting. Not everyone has party hunted and some have never done anything else. I'm guessing there's not many people under the second category on this site but they exist. A big thing I see all the time on this site is people bashing party hunting and I understand why they don't like it. Just like any type of hunting it can be abused, this just tends to be abused more. Deer get wounded and never recovered, deer are under pressure for 3 weeks just running like hell to live, lots of trespassing, bullets flying through the air with many people out there. But here's what it comes down to, shotgun hunters outnumber bowhunters, they have more say than us. That's when a majority of the deer are killed which is very important with our dnrs management plan, which someone mentioned the Dnr should never manage for trophy deer and they were spot on. That's our responsibility to shoot mature deer. But they are doing a great job of making sure we shoot enough deer, I know what some of you are thinking. Yes we did shoot to many deer for to many years, but we need to shoot the amount of deer we do to prevent the states herd from getting to large and causing very bad affects and thankfully we fixed it just in time. But needing to keep the deer herd in check that's where a gun season and letting people do drives in December is perfect. Trust me on this one, I've hunted in Missouri for 10 years where rifle season is in the middle of the rut. We need to be thankful not just for when our season is but making them use shotguns, even if it means letting them do drives. So I'm gonna end here, whether you like it or whether you choose to believe me or not, the reason our deer hunting is the best in the nation is because of party hunting, during December.
My very last subject has to do with the turkey and pheasant hunting. Again there is opinion in this subject but I'll try state mostly facts. I hope all of you know what I'm about to say but incase there are some people that don't and end up confused by what's been said I'll straighten some stuff up. I'm not sure whether these were being discussed jokingly or what and I don't really care what they said because at this point I can't remember what was said. Both seasons perfect the way they are. Us hunting pheasant and turkey have absolutely zero effect of eggs laid and hatched in the spring which is what affects the future population. If anything we help the population for the next year by hunting this year, I'll explain don't worry. So when hen turkeys lay eggs they hide them from predators and gobblers. Gobblers will break the hens eggs in her nest if he finds it that way he can mate with her again. As a turkey hunter you better hope he breaks every single egg because if one avoids being broken that hen will sit on that egg until it hatches and then she's done breeding for the year. But if all her eggs get broken she will mate again until her nest is full. But if we can shoot a couple gobblers to prevent this we will have more chicks hatched and healthier birds by winter. I'm not sure rooster pheasants also pull this trick or not. But what I do know, is the less roosters there are in the winter months the more hens will survive until spring, I'll use my pheasant ground as an example and I know this doesn't apply everywhere. We feed our pheasant after season, we drop a lot of corn on our ground for easier meals, and we will see roosters running hens off the food until they finish eating. So if there's to many rooster in the winter our hens don't get food. And for proper breeding in the spring I'm sure there's a ratio that would be best but we try to keep our hen to rooster ratio from getting any higher than 10/1. Of course this is hard to really keep in check unless you hunt your ground a lot. We've never released any birds on this ground, yet we still killed 42 roosters in 2013 and 50 this year with plenty left at the end of the year and a beautiful 75+ bird flush on the last day. Pheasants are a lot simpler than people make them to be, if there's food to make it through the winter months and good nesting ground for spring, which is what is lacked in Iowa and why South Dakota has been striving, you'll have plenty of pheasants.
Go ahead and critique what I've said, I enjoy the discussions that come about with threads like this one. But I'd like you all to remember when in heated discussions like this thread has been some of you need to relax and realize other people will have different views than you and this can drive people away from posting. A lot of you think you are the majority on this site with your opinion but it might be a closer margin than you imagine but you're keeping the others from chirping in worry they might ridiculed or lose your respect. I really think all this stuff needs to be discussed but without the attacks on people with different views. If something needs clarifying just ask or if you think I'm wrong on something call me out and let's talk about it.
