Sask, I grew up in Minnesota and hunted and fished a lot in my youth. Minnesota has a rich tradition of deer hunting that goes back generations. They have always had a gun season during the rut and the "if it's brown, it's down" mentality is very strong. Winters are much more severe than Iowa.Deer numbers are relatively stable from year to year.
Iowa on the other hand is fairly new in respect to deer management. My father grew up in southwest Iowa and it was rare for him to even see track. He grew up shooting lots of pheasants, quail,squirrels and cottontails. Visit the same farms he grew up on today and you will find no quail, a rare pheasant and cottontail, but lots of deer and turkeys. Not to mention that most of the fence lines, draws, ditches, groves, and woodlots are gone. The gun seasons in Iowa were scheduled after the harvest so the farmers could participate. This put the gun seasons after the rut which is ultimately the reason Iowa has become a bow hunters mecca. Combine this with relatively mild winters, lots of high protein food available (corn and soybeans), a relatively small number of hunters and good habitat, and that is why someone would want to hunt Iowa. If I went back to hunt Minnesota, I could expect to see a few deer a day, with the rare chance at a buck. This is on good ground. The farms I hunt in Iowa are full of deer. That is why someone from Minnesota would want to hunt Iowa.
