Iowa Deer Hunts - self guided privae land hunting

Iowa deer hunting provides the options of all of Iowa's deer seasons plus close proximity to Missouri and Kansas to continue any hunt beyond Iowa's seasons.

For those that successfully harvest a buck they can continue their hunt with the Association's Missouri lease land right across the state line. With Missouri's tags over the counter purchase many will find reason to continue their hunt rather than return early.

The bottom line when considering the Association is simply the opportunity for private land with good habitat in the right region of Iowa and without hunter pressure. This is true not just for our Iowa land but that as well as in the other two states we offer land access.

These are the elements: private land with habitat for the hunter that can hunt on his own. Add to this the ability of pre season scouting and hang stands and it is very difficult to find a better alternative.

Deer hunter feedback is always sought after. And, there will always be turnover in MAHA just like there is in a club anywhere. As a business however, we certainly appreciate those that tell us why they do not renew their memberships and we frequently call those that do not inform us of why they depart. This email is one such example of some good folks that did not renew their MAHA membership.

John, Jon and Shaun,

Forgive me for taking so long to write but my family has been in the middle of a move since January. We are just now getting settled into our new home and I'm able to finally access my computer where my e-mails have been inaccessible for quite a few months.

Charles and I have tremendously enjoyed our membership in M.A.H.A.. As missionaries, however we are not aware of the amount of funds that we receive at any given time and so far we haven't had the money to renew our M.A.H.A. membership. I wanted you to know that this is the only reason we haven't renewed and that our experience with M.A.H.A. has been tremendous and we could highly recommend M.A.H.A. to anyone. The members that we've met have been tremendous.

I hope that you will consider us as worthy candidates in the future should finances be available for our membership. I'm sorry if this has caused you any inconvenience.

Blessings and God's abundant grace to each of you.

Chris F

MAHA Hunts

One aspect of this website and our approach to the do it yourself deer hunter is that we will never promote ourselves as being the "premier, best, largest, most of anything" as we fully appreciate from our day's in deer stand just how hard deer hunting is.

All we offer is the right habitat in the right region of the state that provides the best potential for deer hunter success as we can afford to lease. That by itself is a lot.

While we do not guarantee deer tags being filled with the trophy whitetail deer dreams are made of, we will ensure all have the chance to hunt quality deer. That is the chance for the deer hunter to have far more days of failure than success. For as many years as we have been providing private deer lease land for deer hunters we have yet to find that one farm that comes with a guarantee.

Rarely, is anyone disappointed for the quality of our land or the opportunity to get on quality whitetail deer. Those that are it has been our experience, more belong to a deer guide service than a deer scout and hunt on your own organization.

For those interested in self guided Iowa deer hunts wanting to make their own success we provide the private land resource that is so very difficult to acquire by the individual work a day deer hunter. For the simple act of writing a check the Association deer hunter will access more deer lease land than he will be able to hunt. In short we provide deer hunting for the whitetail deer hunter that seeks to make his own trophy harvest.

Reading on through the many pages of this website will offer several decision models with criteria to form a basis of analysis which of the many deer hunt options that exist is better than the other. We will also offer the basic decision criteria to those that call us to discuss possible membership application. What we will not do is to advertise that our approach to paid deer hunts is the right approach for all deer hunters. And of those that do call us, there are several that we state without hesitation they should not consider us the option for their stated desires.

One example of a deer hunter we would reject is the hunter that says: "He will join if (you fill in the blank with anything)". Any deer hunter that attempts to negotiate in contravention to our published rules will receive an immediate negative response, his name captured and most likely put on our keep out list.

The most common occurrence of this is those deer hunters that feel their membership costs entitle them to unlimited or any type of guests for that matter. The hypocrisy of this is profound. All deer hunters want to hunt without pressure from others, yet many of these same deer hunters feel they should be entitled to bring free hunters onto MAHA leases. Land is expensive and no one gets a free ride.

Whenever ready to call us for membership application having read our rules and several testimonials will give that applicant sufficient sources of information to make valid assessments.

For all that truly want to experience hassle free Iowa deer hunting consider this just the first step to seasons of Iowa deer hunts to come.

Deer Scouting

We have received a good bit of deer scouting feedback from those that have been and those that are planning a trip out before the season. One set of member feedback inclusive of the pictures below that were sent in to add some fuel to the standing corn and deer hunt quality debate.

The area where the cornfield extends back into the section over a ridge that secures the corn field from road and farm yard activity, the deer showed much recurring browse activity. The outside two rows along the secluded area to six rows in spots were browsed down. This side of the cornfield is boarded partly by a fallow pasture and mostly by hay ground. Inside the field showed no such browse activity and the majority of deer tracks were along this edge, not inside the field.

Evidence of recurring deer browse shown by the corn attempting to re-growing its main stalk.

From top of the ridge to the road, the outside corn rows were untouched.

Where the corn field meets a substantial wood patch we expected to see deer activity of a parallel trail and corn stalk browsing but found neither.

Second week in July velvet. A morning picture moving away from the cornfield pictured above (only crop for 1/2 mile) along the fallow pasture edge of a lightly wooded dry drainage that connects after about a 1/4 mile to another dry drainage. Nearest water is a stock pond in the adjoining pasture about a 1/4 mile distance.

The pictures on the motion camera were mostly of doe and small bucks, both day and night. Our binoculars allowed us eyes on a good sized 10 pointer that most deer hunters would seek.

Continue our discussion on Iowa whitetail deer hunts

Iowa Deer Hunting page 4

MAHA Hunts