Outdoor family,
I think OneCam said it just about perfect, in my opinion NR hunters are good people, good hunters and respectful of the laws and others land. However, I must add that many many of these landowners refuse to let anyone hunt their property, understandable also because we only let family and a few select people hunt our ground. However, we do the management ourselves as far as keeping the buck to doe ratio in check and harvesting only mature deer. If the NRs are not allowing anyone to hunt their land and in 4 years they harvest 6 does and 2 bucks(assuming they buy the $150 doe tag every year) it creates a huge population problem. The problem increases as the hunting pressure does not exist and more and more deer flock to these areas for refuge.
I am not blamming the NR for not keeping the deer herd in check because I wouldn't be buying the $150 doe tag either, but I do blame them for not allowing one or two guys access to their ground in order to help control the deer population, this truly is my only complaint about NR landowners.
Again, not trying to point fingers but of the NR landowners that I have talked with they do not allow access to their ground and I think many of us get this time after time when trying to approach them about deer hunting.
I would have no problem with the NR landowners being able to harvest 5 or 10 does a year, but I don't see that happening. As far as the any-sex tag, Iowa has a system that has worked for years, we have a nice healthy deer herd and some of the best bucks in the country. To date the only problem we have seen is an increase in does in select areas, which we are beginning to get a handle on. Our system definitely isn't broken and therefore doesn't have a need to be fixed. IL does have some areas that are a perfect example of what we don't want to happen in IA. When IL made it so that every NR landowner could draw a tag it created a frenzy to buy hunting land in the big deer counties. It cost alot of people areas to hunt and also raised the price of recreational land to ungodly numbers (at least for the average man). The next step was that outfitters saw that this could be big business for them, they buy the land at these outrageous prices because they know hunters from less fortunate deer quality states will pay $3500 for a shot at a 130" deer or bigger. Next step, 7500 tags are allotted for NR hunters hunting with an outfitter (7500 outfitter guranteed tags). Now, anyone who wants to hunt can, but they can't find land because the Outfitters bought it all up in the big counties, so they are forced to hunt with the outfitters, further allowing the outfitter to buy more land, and it continues on and on. If you look at the land in Pike County, I believe 70% of it is owned/leased by outfitters, the entire county basically gone to resident hunters unless they hung on to their property or hunt with an outfitter. This is the real scare for IA, you give an inch and in certain areas they take an entire county!!!!
HCH, as far as tag prices go IA was not the first state to crank up tag prices and we are still fairly competitive and cheaper than alot of states when it comes to purchasing a tag to hunt big game. A quick search will give you an IL tag of $365, KS $322, MS $150, SD $195, IN $150.
Now I know that none of these are cheap but I also feel that if you seek out IA, IL, OH, IN, WI to hunt deer you are seeking out a place like Arizona or Nevada to hunt elk, Canada to hunt Black Bears, and so on. We are the best of the best when it comes to deer hunting so when someone choses IA to hunt they should expect to pay the fees of hunting a world class area. All of these states make a tremendous amount of money off of non-resident hunting as AZ, NV, IA, IL, WI, have hunting that is not available everywhere in the world.
Like everyone else has stated this is a topic that gets old as we always here about it this time of the year and it seems to get alot of people angry at each other. I don't think this is the intentions of anyone, to make a fellow hunter angry but we must realize that if we want to pursue something outside of our residing state or country we are going to have to pay a substantial amount for it, that is the way that the hunting community has turned as a whole (Try an elephant hunt for 22,000 bucks). Please keep this in mind as it will always be this way and something we will have to deal with as hunters, don't attack your fellow hunter as we have enough people attacking us.
For those of you arguing about the IBA and the guys on here, we are just trying to prevent a tragedy from happening, we have seen parts of IL, most of Missouri, KS and other states deer hunting go down hill and down hill fast by allowing more and more non-residents and we are learning from their mistakes. Another good example of this is Elk hunting. AZ has become the best elk hunting in the world for 1 reason, limit on tags even for residents who draw an average of every 5 years. Look at the areas of CO where anyone can go and hunt, and you will soon find these are areas that no one wants to hunt anymore because of the lack of mature animals. Anyhow, I could preach on and on about this but I think everyone who has posted already knows these things. For those who will be joining us from out of state, congrats on the draw and I wish you the best of luck.
Kratz
