Iowa deer hunting - self guided

Our Iowa deer hunting leases span deer management zones 4 & 5 within the Grand River Watershed of south central Iowa well known for its trophy whitetail.

Iowa's south central region has the trophy whitetail that makes the top of the record book. While this trophy potential is important, the key points of our land location extend beyond this locality and include the good trophy whitetail genetics plus our lease management will bring the do it yourself hunters back for years of hunts to come. Simply good deer hunts within a historically good region where we can control the leases and hunter pressure. The result is less hunter pressure than almost any other private land hunt option.

Habitat

Iowa's habitat is largely the shallow brush or tree filled intermittent drains that connect many small loafing area wood patches making for good archery stands and crop field shotgun season shooting.

An Iowa deer lease example.

This one shows a difference we look for. Not the only difference, just one more aspect of leasing private land. Part of the nuance between a better deer lease and better habitat.

iowa deer

Outline in yellow is the better Iowa whitetail deer lease as the wood patch while not as thick as the one immediately to the south, it is the one isolated from farm yard, house and road. One small point of many that collect together to determine where we lease deer land and where we do not. Limited year round human pressure is sometimes more valuable than better looking deer habitat with human presence. In this case it is deer loafing/seclusion areas rather than deer movement areas that makes the difference of the likelihood of eyes on deer. This is how we seek out and find the better deer habitat in a productive trophy whitetail deer region. Compare that to a deer hunting guide service with a lodge that must make best use of any available in easy driving distance deer habitat that may exist.

The Iowa deer hunter challenge is that there are a great many of these small loafing/bedding area wood patches over a very large area on much of our lease land. The sheer numbers of them make finding that rare trophy whitetail deer a search that will test the best of anyone's scouting skills. The gentle rolling Iowa terrain so beneficial to farmers further compartmentalizes the terrain restricting shooting ranges in some areas to 10 yards while extending beyond firearms range in many more.

This entire region is created by the Grand River watershed with its thousands of tributaries. While a watershed area, water is not readily apparent in all areas as this area is the upper fringe of the Grand River watershed that composes one of the three lower Missouri River major sub-basins. This portion of the watershed while providing great deer habitat, drains quickly leaving year-round standing water a key deer scouting point.

This region with its expansive watershed based habitat that crosses the Iowa and Missouri state line is the cause for the larger whitetail deer herd and the corresponding higher number of trophy racked whitetail deer harvested each of the three seasons. Some described this Iowa deer terrain to have as many drainages as that of the outward branches of a large oak tree. All this makes for a lot of deer cover that diffuses the deer herd through a number of travel corridors even on as small a piece of ground as a 1/4 section (160 acres).

Have we pounded that dead horse enough about where we lease Iowa deer land? Probably not, as most that read such web pages will give weight to the many magazine articles that stress larger wooded areas means more deer. If that was the case then the large wooded expanse of the Missouri Ozark region would be a deer hunter hot spot, but it is not.

For the skeptics we'll have one more try with that MAHA is not limited to the driving distance from a lodge for where to lease deer land. All of Iowa is available to us. We choose where to lease land where we get the most for our deer hunters in terms of deer hunt quality. That business approach of customer (deer hunter) service of providing the service the customer most wants is what sustains the Association.

A successful deer hunt from a dedicated group that travels over 1,100 miles one way to deer hunt each year on Association land in Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.

Many of our resident deer hunter/members are astonished at the success of some of our non resident deer hunters. They come from whitetail deer states that don't have the quality of deer that the central Mid-West has to offer and take full advantage of every day from sunrise to sunset.

Occasionally, non-resident deer hunters stumble into a great hunt or two the first time out, but typically, it takes a year or two to become familiar with the maps, terrain and weather to put things together.

Once the puzzle is put together it appears all they need is quality Iowa deer land and we have a lot of it.

Iowa deer page 2 3 4

Self Guided Iowa Deer Hunting

Location

Habitat