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Second Season Reports?

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crietveld

Active Member
Curious what the guys fighting snowdrifts are seeing for deer. My group only managed two drives yesterday. We hunted a farm the first season groups more or less struck out on and shot 8 deer, 5 does and 3 bucks.

So how is everyone else doing?
 
droptinehunter#1 hunts second season and told me yesterday his group saw about 40 deer. however the group only got 4.
 
Went last night for a while and didn't see a deer. Going again tonight. Just my brother, son, and myself and we normally sit and don't drive deer. May be why we didn't see much. There are some deeeeeeep drifts out there.
 
Over here on the west side of the Big Muddy, it's feast or famine.
Lot of good areas without a track.. Good food source and close cover and they are stacked like cord wood.
Drifts are too darn deep for this "old" fat boy. Hoping for a few days of thawing to settle the snow and possibly crust it over.
 
My party went out yesterday and only saw 4 bucks and about a dozen does. All way too far out to shoot. Not one other hunter did we see. By far the most difficult hunting/walking ever. Most of the snow is so deep we could not access the areas we normally hunt to setup. Tried to push the deer in the opposite direction we have for the past 22 years and it just didnt work. In fact we didnt even go today because we were all sore and had no desire to walk those steep hills. The Loess hills is mostly inaccessible by vehicle and probably will remain that way all winter long. Gonna try again tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday in other areas.
 
A buddy at work shot a nice one on opening morning of 2nd season. Other than that, I haven't heard a whole lot of anything. Another guy at work had the whole group cancel due to lack of access. They hunt an area that's all level B road in southern Iowa and he claims they couldn't get in with anything shy of snowmobiles.
 
Numbers are way down where I hunt. Im seeing about 1/4 of what I should be seeing for this early in the season. The creek flooded pretty bad this summer, and theres a big patch of standing corn on the other side of the interstate, so its hard to say where they are at.
 
There is really know simple way to put it other than the numbers are simply down. I have been around the countryside and they are plain down. I did take a nice buck Sat morning with my landowners but saw far less deer than normal.
 
Deer numbers are down. There are certain pockets that have a lot of deer but other than that they are down and with the DNR's say they will remain down. The insurance companies are having a lot to say about the deer numbers.
 
We hunted prime areas and it was hit or miss. Mix of driving and sitting. Didn't see as much as we thought.
 
i think that you people that say deer numbers are down are full of it. On saturday my group saw 35-40 deer. We only managed to get 5 deer saturday and 4 on sunday. Some of the deer just got through on us. It did make it tough to get around with all of the snow.
 
talking to farmers around the area..they lost more crop this year on edges of the field than any other year. I like that the dnr has the antlerless season in november, but not necessarily in january.
 
we saw quite a few deer and had 3 bucks and 4 does down by sun afternoon. I can saw I saw more deer than the last couple of years, just no big, big bucks. some friends that only drive hunt said they have seen loads of deer.
 
droptinehunter#1 said:
i think that you people that say deer numbers are down are full of it. On saturday my group saw 35-40 deer. We only managed to get 5 deer saturday and 4 on sunday. Some of the deer just got through on us. It did make it tough to get around with all of the snow.
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Hunt the counties with all the late doe seasons and huge doe quotas and you will think they are down. Man 5-6 years ago if you hunted a picked cornfield in late november it was nothing to see 20-25 does a night I havent seen that many does all year.
 
We only saw about a quarter of what we normally see. The snow was a big pain. We did see some nice deer but it was definitely hit and miss. There was a lot of standing corn too so I don't think that helped our cause much. Either way we still did alright.
 
They are 1/3 down to 1/2 . When deer are shot and left laying we will be looking for a place to deer hunt. Sure there are pockets with alot . We are in for the early 70s looking just to fill a tag .I watched a group buy a pile of doe tags . Had to be 12 tags per person .
 
In my area the deer numbers have been declining big time for the last 4 years. Even the landowner made the same comment to me this year :(
 
I went with a group of 5 (including my self) to Ringold county, over the weekend.
Saturday only produced 1 doe, with a combination of sitting and pushing.
Sunday brought on 7 more deer :way:
We saw a ton of deer.
A couple of the guys couldn't hit the broad side of a barn though, and took a day to figure out how there gun was shooting. :grin:
 
I just got back onhere today,,after being down to my land and cabin for the Shotgun season. Not to hunt,,but to watch over my property. I am amazed at the differences in reports from different spots in Iowa. Some say numbers way down. Others say loads of deer. My land is in what is supposed to be prime deer number area. The bottom two rows of counties. But as I have stated before,,only a hand full of deer in my area. I walked around the square mile back roads for two weeks. Not too many hunters, and few tracks crossing the snowy roads. Confirms what I saw bow hunting,,just a few deer here and there. There is plenty of timber in my area and plenty of corn and beans grown every yr, but not alot of deer. Enough to keep me hunting them,, but nothing like I here some guys talk about.?
 
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