H
horst
Guest
In another post I seen a lotta talk about someone showing us some numbers to back up thier point.I have to much time on my hands so I decided to see what was really going on with the deer harvest.I just looked at about an hours worth of search results, and got these from the best sources I could find, someof these numbers may be a little disputable but they all came out so close looking at them from different sources that theyl work for this purpose.Some came from the DNR, some from different legislation, things like that.
2001 deer harvest in Iowa was 136, 655 animals
Number of does killed N/A
2002 deer killed in Iowa, 3% higher at 140, 490 animals
Does killed, up 3% to 4,200 antlerless deer
2003 season, 182,721 deer killed
Does killed in 2003, a whopping 96,200 antlerless deer were killed in that season
2004 season
kill results not yet available but...
License sales were up 39% from 2003
Antlerless Licenses actualy sold out in 82 counties
Out of 84,000 available doe licenses 71,000 were bought.
The hush program only has 29 lockers currently accepting deer statewide.These pretty much run in a straight line{according to the map} up through the center of the state.I forgot to note the number of deer donated to this program but it was pretty mind blowing and way higher then the previous year.
90% of the land is privately owned in Iowa, that leaves 10% publicly owned, of that a lot of its game preserves, and refuges.Couldnt find figures on how much of the 90% was off limits to hunting, leased, posted, rural, etc...
So heres my thoughts, We have killed in the nieghborhood of 50,000 more deer then we did just 3 short years ago.
We have jumped the number of antlerless deer killed by somewhere in the nieghborhood of 90,000 does.
We have contributed tons of venison to the needy in recent years, despite a lack of lockers in the state accepting donated deer for the Hush program.
We have accomplished this despite the fact that less then 10% of the ground in Iowa is accessible to all hunters.
And somehow, their saying the deer population is still rising?
Anyway you look at it, were doing our part, and personally I think were doing a hell of a job considering nothings changed in the last 3 years to allow us access to more of the problem areas, and HUSH locations are very limited.You should all be pretty hapy with how far weve come.
Yet the insurance industries been quoted as saying they cant see where them funding more of the HUSH program to make it avalable statewide will increase the deer harvest.The DNRs pushing to have caps on NR tags lifted, despite our best efforts, which can only mean they see it as a way for more funding.I even found notes from an Iowa City board meeting where they discussed sharpshooters not being an effective way to kill enough deer and bowhunting being instituted.But it was thought to be to time consuming to change the city ordinance prohibiting it.
The numbers should speak for themselves, the problems not with the current system, its not with hunters not doing thier part, I think it lies more with people expecting results to fast, they want to up the harvest by an additional 25% this year alone.
Anyay, just some random thoughts and actual numbers to go by, founsd it kinda interesting myself when I started looking them up and thought Id post em.
2001 deer harvest in Iowa was 136, 655 animals
Number of does killed N/A
2002 deer killed in Iowa, 3% higher at 140, 490 animals
Does killed, up 3% to 4,200 antlerless deer
2003 season, 182,721 deer killed
Does killed in 2003, a whopping 96,200 antlerless deer were killed in that season
2004 season
kill results not yet available but...
License sales were up 39% from 2003
Antlerless Licenses actualy sold out in 82 counties
Out of 84,000 available doe licenses 71,000 were bought.
The hush program only has 29 lockers currently accepting deer statewide.These pretty much run in a straight line{according to the map} up through the center of the state.I forgot to note the number of deer donated to this program but it was pretty mind blowing and way higher then the previous year.
90% of the land is privately owned in Iowa, that leaves 10% publicly owned, of that a lot of its game preserves, and refuges.Couldnt find figures on how much of the 90% was off limits to hunting, leased, posted, rural, etc...
So heres my thoughts, We have killed in the nieghborhood of 50,000 more deer then we did just 3 short years ago.
We have jumped the number of antlerless deer killed by somewhere in the nieghborhood of 90,000 does.
We have contributed tons of venison to the needy in recent years, despite a lack of lockers in the state accepting donated deer for the Hush program.
We have accomplished this despite the fact that less then 10% of the ground in Iowa is accessible to all hunters.
And somehow, their saying the deer population is still rising?
Anyway you look at it, were doing our part, and personally I think were doing a hell of a job considering nothings changed in the last 3 years to allow us access to more of the problem areas, and HUSH locations are very limited.You should all be pretty hapy with how far weve come.
Yet the insurance industries been quoted as saying they cant see where them funding more of the HUSH program to make it avalable statewide will increase the deer harvest.The DNRs pushing to have caps on NR tags lifted, despite our best efforts, which can only mean they see it as a way for more funding.I even found notes from an Iowa City board meeting where they discussed sharpshooters not being an effective way to kill enough deer and bowhunting being instituted.But it was thought to be to time consuming to change the city ordinance prohibiting it.
The numbers should speak for themselves, the problems not with the current system, its not with hunters not doing thier part, I think it lies more with people expecting results to fast, they want to up the harvest by an additional 25% this year alone.
Anyay, just some random thoughts and actual numbers to go by, founsd it kinda interesting myself when I started looking them up and thought Id post em.
