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Shotgunners?

Numbers were down over previous years. I had lots of shot opportunities on legal deer, but was holding out for large antlers. Waited until the last 20 minutes of the first season to punch my tag on a freezer filler.
 
Deer numbers are down still found us some good mature bucks and does. Nice weather lot of hunters out there and lot of groups shooting alot of immature deer. should be enough that escaped til next year. Shotgunning practices seem to be improving every year. Hunters doing in legal taking their time and understanding where everyone one is so no one gets shot. lot more groups working on QDM hopefully withen 5 to 10 years everyone will understand that passing small bucks enables them to get bigger therefor everyone would have a chance a "wall mounter" or just a plain old Mature buck.
On the other hand theres alot of timber sloughs and nice fence lines getting ripped out up here in northern Iowa so Muzzleloading may not be that far off for some of us. No use to push the deer from timbers if theres no where else to hide.
 
Best year we've had in quite a while as far as seeing and harvesting mature deer. I'm guessing that the bad weather we had last year during shotgun season had a lot to do with that. Not as many escaped this year.
 
Deer numbers are down from what they were, but not too low. My younger brothers each got it done. Not near as many mature deer sightings as years past, but a bunch of up and comers. I basically just hunt to try to get my family a deer. I used the doe tag to my advantage. Now bring on the snow and cold and I'll be sitting on a food source with the smoke pole.
 
same here, numbers down some but not real bad, just not hardly any mature bucks. i took a freezer filler, we had the slowest year in 18 years.
 
I saw a lot of does, I bought a 2nd season doe tag so that I could hunt with my dad and took a nice doe with it on Saturday. Going after my 2nd buck during late muzz. The forecast is looking promising.
 
the group I usually hunt with (4 guys) did first season, didn't even fill a tag!! Had a couple opportunities, but never closed the deal.. only saw a couple shooter bucks I guess.. I did second season because of work & the warm weather during 1st season.. I hunted by myself, so I wasn't gonna be too picky, as shotgun season for me is more of a time to get together with buddies n do some hunting together. But I did ok, shot n old warrior, he was with about 15-20 doe, shot him at 40 yds..
 
We had the best year we have ever had. Shot 6 mature bucks of which 5 should have gone on the wall but only 4 are going. Top 5 bucks were 175, 166, 160, 160 and a 142. My dad killed the 15 pointer 175 and when we finally got to where he killed it he was in tears as this is the biggest buck he's ever killed and he has hunted for over 40 years. I was happy for him.
 
This was another not so good year for me. I had a LO anterless tag and a regular 2nd season state wide tag. I hunted Saturday evening and Sunday morning and evening of the 1st season and saw 2 very young small does together on Saturday evening, and that was all. Then my son and I hunted the first weekend of the 2nd season. He saw 1 buck and missed a shot, and I saw a very big doe and shot her with the MZ on Saturday evening, to fill the LO tag. Then we hunted Sunday morning and evening with out seeing any deer at all. Last chance was the last Sunday of the season, morning and evening. Neither of us saw a thing in the morning and we both took shots at different does in the last 20 minutes of light and both missed. I still a couple of tags for late ML and the January season, but don't have really high hopes. As of right now the tally is 1 doe out of 4 licensed for the shotgun season, not good! We were both in stands and blinds in areas that have produced many deer in the past years, so just not many deer to be seen this year or the last couple of years. I just checked the harvest report and it shows a current harvest of only 95260 deer for all seasons completed. Last year there were only about 11,000 deer reported for the remaining seasons and if that is true for this year that will give us a total harvest well under 120,000 deer or almost half of what it was in 2005 and 2006.
 
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It was a great season around here, plenty of deer. Less than 5-6 years ago but not by much and more than the past 2-3 years. A few of the larger groups even tagged out. We shot 8 deer out of 10 tags. One mature buck that won't score too well. One young buck that scored about 150 give or take an inch or two. I shot the mature one, turns out he was a half rack that shed a side already. None the less he should make a nice euro mount. I think the easy winter last year really helped out the deer numvers around here.
 
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As far as the deer that were seen, very bad year. Somehow someway our group pulled their heads out and shot lights out, tagging out with 12 deer. Two mature bucks, one shed antler buck, and the rest were good does. If I would guess the number of shots taken were at an all time low like 20 ish with 12 deer taken. We probably saw somewhere in the range of 40 deer total on the ground we hunted, so not a good numbers year.
 
I think the first season guys had a rough season where we hunt. We filled 10 of our 11 tags on the first saturday of 2nd season and the other tag early on Sunday. Overall, the deer numbers were way down. 9 of our 11 deer were bucks. From Button bucks to a couple 120-130 class deer. We didn't see hardly any does. Most everything was a small buck. Weather was nice, hanging and hunting with family was great, a good time was had by all. Hope we have deer for years to come to continue the tradition. I kept my word and didn't shoot a single doe, but smoked 3 small bucks. A spiker for my antlerless tag (he qualified) and a couple with bad genetics to fill some landowners tags.

Still have my bow and statewide for late muzzy.
 
Hunted first season, not many deer out there. May be the weather but didn't see many bow hunting either. May just be a bow/ late muzzleloader hunter from now on.
 
Yeah, it means they got there act together and shot well... dont read more into it than what is there man
 
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