Windlooker
Well-Known Member
You’re right.
Late Rifle Season and AR Hunters
- Thread starter thecreedeer
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I’d still be against the shed buck season if the weapon was shotguns! I’d be against it if it were ROCKS & SLING SHOTS!!!! 4 months, 6 seasons, Jan 10 needs to be the end.
HERE’S ONE POINT GUYS ARE GONNA LEARN THE HARD WAY!!!….. this isn’t a knock on anyone!!! This is just my experience…. We shot too many does a few years ago. ***During the regular 4 months of deer season- how did we find the time?!??!?
. Anyways…. What happened the next year…. We found so many bucks that went to war or vanished - it sucked. Found 2 sets of locked up bucks. Had countless bucks relocate. Had so many injured, broke off, eyes gouged out, etc - it was a problem. A big one. Dnr called us on a salvage tag across road…. Big wide deer he inspected…. Yep- a tine in the neck killed him.
I understand this happens every year with bucks- they fight & want new turf to dominate. The level I saw it taken to after killing too many does was eye opening. It was way way way worse. We dialed it back & things got better pretty quick. I’ve “managed deer” for 20 years & hunted 30…. I continue to learn & make mistakes. Will never end. I’ll BOTTOM LINE IT HERE…. You do NOT want to shoot for a 1 to 1 ratio!!!!! 1 to 2 or even 1 to 3…. Ok, probably a healthy ratio. You will lose bucks from them leaving or battling to death with tight ratios like 1 to 1 or 1 to 1.5. To a problematic degree.
1 to 10 or 1 to 15 - of course- u need to whack does.
But- on managed farms to the everyday “hunted hard” - they got some lessons they will be learning soon. Lessons I learned in a painful way as a deer manager.
Then the other side is the farms that don’t have too many deer! Places that have been pounded & shot up all year with medium to low deer #’s. Those are gonna be hurting after a few years of this season. Those will be the guys posting here & voicing at the dnr meetings that their deer #’s tanked and hunting sucks. Funny how history repeats itself. Gonna be the same as 5 years ago when hunters got so loud that it got this season shut down.
HERE’S ONE POINT GUYS ARE GONNA LEARN THE HARD WAY!!!….. this isn’t a knock on anyone!!! This is just my experience…. We shot too many does a few years ago. ***During the regular 4 months of deer season- how did we find the time?!??!?
. Anyways…. What happened the next year…. We found so many bucks that went to war or vanished - it sucked. Found 2 sets of locked up bucks. Had countless bucks relocate. Had so many injured, broke off, eyes gouged out, etc - it was a problem. A big one. Dnr called us on a salvage tag across road…. Big wide deer he inspected…. Yep- a tine in the neck killed him. I understand this happens every year with bucks- they fight & want new turf to dominate. The level I saw it taken to after killing too many does was eye opening. It was way way way worse. We dialed it back & things got better pretty quick. I’ve “managed deer” for 20 years & hunted 30…. I continue to learn & make mistakes. Will never end. I’ll BOTTOM LINE IT HERE…. You do NOT want to shoot for a 1 to 1 ratio!!!!! 1 to 2 or even 1 to 3…. Ok, probably a healthy ratio. You will lose bucks from them leaving or battling to death with tight ratios like 1 to 1 or 1 to 1.5. To a problematic degree.
1 to 10 or 1 to 15 - of course- u need to whack does.
But- on managed farms to the everyday “hunted hard” - they got some lessons they will be learning soon
. Lessons I learned in a painful way as a deer manager. Then the other side is the farms that don’t have too many deer! Places that have been pounded & shot up all year with medium to low deer #’s. Those are gonna be hurting after a few years of this season. Those will be the guys posting here & voicing at the dnr meetings that their deer #’s tanked and hunting sucks. Funny how history repeats itself. Gonna be the same as 5 years ago when hunters got so loud that it got this season shut down.
Bowtech bandit
Active Member
How many shed bucks got shot rifle season ?
Officially it’s at 155 as of today. This is a long story & can of worms I’ll skip past BUT - my best guess based on a lot of reasons is that number is probably over double that. Let’s say it’s 300. Is that game changing??? Yes & no. It’s hundreds more bucks in a handful of counties that got rifled down after evading hunters for 4 months. That’s hundreds of future memories & ends a successful season for guys in fall of 2023+ before it gets here. It’s very likely “50-100” absolute slammers that could have been someone’s dream buck… gun down with a rifle & bare Pedicles in late january. It’s a waste & it’s a shame. Is there a counter argument?? Sure: “still gets eaten”. “Few hundred bucks over several counties isn’t end of world”. “Can’t eat horns”. Whatever. I get it. This is just stupid though. Absolute WASTE & complete foolishness. This hurts Iowa’s resource & future dreams of hunters - fact. The GOAL of the season is: DOES/female deer. & I question the logic & effectiveness of that!!!! & all these extra bucks shot is just shameful.
!!! On top of the shed bucks… there’s been another (roughly) 400 button bucks shot after Jan 10. Let’s say we hit 1000 EXTRA male deer after Jan 10. Why?!?!?! It’s crazy. That’s 1,000 bucks that could have made someone’s season or made a memory of a lifetime. The only folks that get merit or this makes sense to is: Politicians & Farm Bureau.
Bucksnbears
Well-Known Member
Skip, you make a ton of sense.
fatboy
Well-Known Member
You said you carried one, "Thank You for your Service", but when I was in and with the soldiers I work with to this day, we have never called it an assault weapon. Again, that's a name made up by the liberals to scare people.
Every firearm was meant to kill, weather it was humans or animals for protection or to put food on the table. About every shotgun manufacture sold shotguns to the U.S. military from the Civil War to present, does that mean bird hunters shouldn't be allowed to hunt with them? How about the Remington 700? One of the most used sniper rifles made. Should it not be used for hunting?
Why was the AR created? To replace the M1 Garand due to its weight and round capacity and the M14 even though it was able to be fired in full or semi auto.
The thing is the AR platform can and will be used for hunting. I'm not a fan of the .223, 5.56 round being used in Iowa for the same reasons most have posted on this site. But I will shoot the hell out of song dogs with my AR's, bolt action rifles and shotguns!
jflournoy
Active Member
The evolution of weapons allowed in Iowa's regular gun seasons is a big slippery slope, no doubt. Just like crossbows worming their way in to regular archery seasons in so many states over the years, and for anyone, not just the limb-handicapped. I would be very surprised if we aren't allowed to use .30-06, .270, 7 mag, etc. within 5 years in Iowa. If that happens, some management changes will need to happen somewhere else or it will affect things to at least some degree, for sure. On the other hand, though, Kansas has allowed high-powered rifles for as long as I can remember, their gun season starts a week earlier, and that state still churns out monsters at a steady clip. Is it Iowa? No, not quite, but it's still probably overall the 2nd best trophy buck state in the lower 48 after Iowa.
I have mixed feelings about the late doe season. These are tags that were allotted before the beginning of hunting season, there were no extra tags just for the doe seasons. Does it really matter *that* much whether those does are killed in September - December, or whether they're killed in January? One could make the argument that killing mature does in January instead of September - December actually makes for better fawn survival. Yes, some shed antler bucks get shot, but some probably also get shot in the muzzy season and even in the 2 regular gun seasons. Do some button bucks get shot? Sure, but that happens during all of the hunting seasons. Some perspective is useful. Overall, Iowa hunters killed 46,465 antlered bucks this season. How many shed antler bucks were killed, across all counties and all seasons? 1,055. Clayton county killed by far more deer than any other county (4,137) in the state and they killed a total of 59 shed antler bucks. So, 1.42% of the deer killed in Clayton county this year were shed bucks. Statewide, less than 1% of the deer killed were shed antler bucks, and that's with all counties having a late doe season that had doe tags left on the last day of muzzy, compared to only half a dozen counties having a late doe season last year. Only an additional 300 or so shed antler bucks were killed statewide this year than last. Seems pretty minimal to me. There were 8 times as many button bucks killed as shed antler bucks. I don't know how many of those were taken in the late antlerless seasons, but I'm sure a lot of them were killed throughout all the regular seasons. The style of gun hunting (drives) that is a tradition for a lot of Iowa hunters doesn't really lend itself very well to carefully determining ahead of time whether it's a doe or a button buck or a shed buck.
I grew up in a state where there is no tradition of deer drives, most hunting is done from stands or blinds, and when I take my kids out to hunt in gun season here in Iowa, we hunt from stationary stands or blinds. We were on vacation during much of youth season in September. Most of my kids that hunt don't bowhunt, or at least not yet, so they didn't kill any does during bow season (nor did I, I was too busy hunting for a buck). Our whole family was sick with the flu crud for the entirety of the 1st gun season so I didn't take any of my kids out then. I took 2 of them out multiple times in 2nd gun season and muzzy season, and we just had miserable luck, hardly saw any deer. In the late doe season, we had an opportunity to hunt on the land of a friend, in 2 different counties, from box blinds watching over standing crops. We took advantage of that opportunity and 3 of my kids killed a mature doe each, and I killed 2 mature does and now our freezer is very happy once again. Every deer we pulled the trigger on was confirmed ahead of time with good binoculars to be an actual doe. Each kill was made with a .243, all shots were 65 - 150 yards, and everything turned out great. I can only control what we do, can't control what others do.
One last note on the use of increasingly longer-range guns (both centerfire and muzzy) in Iowa. I ran some cameras for 3 weeks on public after 1st and 2nd gun season were over and I got pics of multiple mature bucks that I had gotten pictures of back in November during the rut. So, they survived the onslaught of the orange army on public during the 2 main gun seasons. It's still hunting. My guess is the longer range/more accurate rifles probably make more of an impact on highly managed private lands where most hunting is being done from stationary blinds/box stands overlooking food sources.
I have mixed feelings about the late doe season. These are tags that were allotted before the beginning of hunting season, there were no extra tags just for the doe seasons. Does it really matter *that* much whether those does are killed in September - December, or whether they're killed in January? One could make the argument that killing mature does in January instead of September - December actually makes for better fawn survival. Yes, some shed antler bucks get shot, but some probably also get shot in the muzzy season and even in the 2 regular gun seasons. Do some button bucks get shot? Sure, but that happens during all of the hunting seasons. Some perspective is useful. Overall, Iowa hunters killed 46,465 antlered bucks this season. How many shed antler bucks were killed, across all counties and all seasons? 1,055. Clayton county killed by far more deer than any other county (4,137) in the state and they killed a total of 59 shed antler bucks. So, 1.42% of the deer killed in Clayton county this year were shed bucks. Statewide, less than 1% of the deer killed were shed antler bucks, and that's with all counties having a late doe season that had doe tags left on the last day of muzzy, compared to only half a dozen counties having a late doe season last year. Only an additional 300 or so shed antler bucks were killed statewide this year than last. Seems pretty minimal to me. There were 8 times as many button bucks killed as shed antler bucks. I don't know how many of those were taken in the late antlerless seasons, but I'm sure a lot of them were killed throughout all the regular seasons. The style of gun hunting (drives) that is a tradition for a lot of Iowa hunters doesn't really lend itself very well to carefully determining ahead of time whether it's a doe or a button buck or a shed buck.
I grew up in a state where there is no tradition of deer drives, most hunting is done from stands or blinds, and when I take my kids out to hunt in gun season here in Iowa, we hunt from stationary stands or blinds. We were on vacation during much of youth season in September. Most of my kids that hunt don't bowhunt, or at least not yet, so they didn't kill any does during bow season (nor did I, I was too busy hunting for a buck). Our whole family was sick with the flu crud for the entirety of the 1st gun season so I didn't take any of my kids out then. I took 2 of them out multiple times in 2nd gun season and muzzy season, and we just had miserable luck, hardly saw any deer. In the late doe season, we had an opportunity to hunt on the land of a friend, in 2 different counties, from box blinds watching over standing crops. We took advantage of that opportunity and 3 of my kids killed a mature doe each, and I killed 2 mature does and now our freezer is very happy once again. Every deer we pulled the trigger on was confirmed ahead of time with good binoculars to be an actual doe. Each kill was made with a .243, all shots were 65 - 150 yards, and everything turned out great. I can only control what we do, can't control what others do.
One last note on the use of increasingly longer-range guns (both centerfire and muzzy) in Iowa. I ran some cameras for 3 weeks on public after 1st and 2nd gun season were over and I got pics of multiple mature bucks that I had gotten pictures of back in November during the rut. So, they survived the onslaught of the orange army on public during the 2 main gun seasons. It's still hunting. My guess is the longer range/more accurate rifles probably make more of an impact on highly managed private lands where most hunting is being done from stationary blinds/box stands overlooking food sources.
Bowtech bandit
Active Member
Thanks for the reply.
I find it just as bad, the number of bucks shot that never get recovered or even left for the next day, knowing the meat is wasted and only keeping the rack. I started following the Blood trackers page on Facebook for deer and couldn't believe the amount of dogs needed every day.
jflournoy
Active Member
Oh boy, now you're hitting one of my pet peeves, the number of guys who "back out" and leave their deer overnight "just in case" because they weren't sure about the hit. As someone whose family loves deer meat and eats way more of that than ground beef, it makes me a little hot under the collar when I see some of these youtube videos of guys going in the next morning to recover their deer, dressed for what are obviously not very cold temps, and when they find their deer it is usually stiff. No way there's not at least some meat gone sour by that time with all the heat of the guts being contained in the body cavity. And there is almost never any comment from them of regret about the meat, or about half the deer being eaten by coyotes, but they sure are ecstatic about the big rack. I understand giving a deer some time if you're really confident it was a bad shot, but a gut shot deer doesn't need 12-15 hours to die usually. Better stop now or I'll really get going.