I own in KS. I stay far away from areas that got broke up into 80’s. Ruins them!!! Tons of areas with big landowners. Just buy bigger and don’t split it up.For sure we both could care less about shooting bucks, we’ve both taken our share over the years, but if he could get some reduced rate doe tags I’d be happy with that. I bet if they let NR landowners get those there would be plenty of them more than happy to shoot some does and help manage their farms. We talked about selling one of the farms here and buying one in Kansas but my buddy down there is saying it’s becoming a mess down there as well with all the parceling out and landowner tags if you own an 80. I would propose maybe nonresident landowners in Iowa can get a tag if they own a 120 or more that would keep some of these farms from getting split up as well I think. Or instead of the outfitters getting an extra 500 tags that they’ve been pushing for every year maybe they should have a separate pool for nonresident landowners so at least the wait would be more manageable like three years or so opposed to 5 plus for a bow tag that it’s built up to now because of all the 40’s and 80’s being sold. Something’s gotta give for sure. It can’t just be a black or white issue. Times are definitely changing everywhere. I think on a management side of things they’d be better off, giving nonresident landowners some tags opposed to all of them giving up and up their farms to cash out. That’s gonna make things way worse in the grand scheme of things IMO.
Iowa would lose if we made the min acreage any less than say 320-500. There needs to be no more incentives but anything under that- that’s what everything will be. Make it high acres & ground would be put back together!!!! But…. It would also be all gobbled up by out of state millionaires. There’s so little of it. If u made the minimum “160 acres” ….. every farm would be 160 acres in short order (not 100% but the vast majority). Iowa can’t play with that fire when we under 8% timber & R’s losing access worse each year.
KS has way more overall habitat than iowa, way more big landowners & unlike IA - it’s good across the whole state. Iowa is mainly: Southern tier & the east & west ends along rivers. Rest has very little. The amount of ranches in the thousands of acres is staggering in KS. Biggest private farm in KS: over 42,000 acres, in iowa it’s under 4,400 acres. Across that state- filled with 1000-10,000 acre tracts. Avoid stuff by KC & u in middle of no where… huge tracts, guaranteed tag for LO’s & mature deer. If I didn’t live in iowa- it would be kansas 1000000%!!!!! I personally think that state is INSANE for having an 80 acre minimum. It really should be “500” or whatever. That will ruin & has ruined a lot of the eastern part by KC. Still ton of area left. Hope they wise up before it’s too late. I’d absolutely lock up a nice size KS farm in heartbeat … & be hunting it EVERY YEAR.
Best thing that could ever happen…. WI, MN, MI & MO get common sense regs!!!! Deer hunting would be “SOLVED” …. Would take all the folks fleeing there out of our draw too!! NR’s would want to go there & they might have to put a limit on how many they took. Granted- that’s so much area & such a high deer population - that influx of quality would be dream scenario for our sport. It would be like making the equivalent of “25 more Iowas” …. Demand for quality would finally be met!