It's that time again!!! The leaves are turning beautiful colors. We have had a couple of frosty mornings. Harvest is in full swing. Scrapes are showing up along field edges and in the timber. The pre-rut is in its early stages.
I haven't hunted yet. I have had a good friend from Texas visiting since last Thursday. I took him to the airport in Des Moines yesterday evening. We made few scouting sits with binos while he was here.
I have to take my wife to the hand specialist at the University of Iowa medical center in Iowa City tomorrow. I will probably sit here close to the house this evening. I will be getting after it pretty hard from Thursday on.
Last year I didn't really have a target buck going into the season. This year there are a few true Iowa giants running our river bottom. I hope to get a chance at one of them.
Despite what you see on TV and have heard, hunting Whitetail deer in Iowa is not easy. There is abundant food sources everywhere. A lot depends on crop rotation, harvest schedules....generally what the farmers are doing. You try to set up using the intel from scouting, game cams, observation at dawn and dusk, etc. You never really know which trail the deer are going to come from. Then you have to be fortunate enough to stop them in your shooting lanes and make the shot.
My food plots are looking much better since I posted about them on October 8th. We have had a little rain and I got some fertilizer on them just before some pretty good showers. My friend and I watched one of the plots from a distance Saturday evening and several deer were in it.
One thing that is very concerning is that we have had a pretty serious outbreak of EHD (Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease) due to the severe summer drought here in Iowa. Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) is a viral disease of white-tailed deer that is transmitted by biting midges when deer wade into mud to get to water. Our county (Davis county) has the most reported cases of EHD in the state.☹️ EHD can devastate a deer herd in a short time period. We have found one dead doe in the river. I have actually been kinda scared to look for more. EHD can be spotty. I hope and pray we haven't lost a lot of deer. There have been over 60 confirmed EHD deer deaths reported in our county. The DNR estimates that the report rate vs death rate is 20 to 30 to one. That could be 1200 to 1800 dead deer in our county.
I will do my best to keep this thread updated as the season progresses.
I haven't hunted yet. I have had a good friend from Texas visiting since last Thursday. I took him to the airport in Des Moines yesterday evening. We made few scouting sits with binos while he was here.
I have to take my wife to the hand specialist at the University of Iowa medical center in Iowa City tomorrow. I will probably sit here close to the house this evening. I will be getting after it pretty hard from Thursday on.
Last year I didn't really have a target buck going into the season. This year there are a few true Iowa giants running our river bottom. I hope to get a chance at one of them.
Despite what you see on TV and have heard, hunting Whitetail deer in Iowa is not easy. There is abundant food sources everywhere. A lot depends on crop rotation, harvest schedules....generally what the farmers are doing. You try to set up using the intel from scouting, game cams, observation at dawn and dusk, etc. You never really know which trail the deer are going to come from. Then you have to be fortunate enough to stop them in your shooting lanes and make the shot.
My food plots are looking much better since I posted about them on October 8th. We have had a little rain and I got some fertilizer on them just before some pretty good showers. My friend and I watched one of the plots from a distance Saturday evening and several deer were in it.
One thing that is very concerning is that we have had a pretty serious outbreak of EHD (Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease) due to the severe summer drought here in Iowa. Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) is a viral disease of white-tailed deer that is transmitted by biting midges when deer wade into mud to get to water. Our county (Davis county) has the most reported cases of EHD in the state.☹️ EHD can devastate a deer herd in a short time period. We have found one dead doe in the river. I have actually been kinda scared to look for more. EHD can be spotty. I hope and pray we haven't lost a lot of deer. There have been over 60 confirmed EHD deer deaths reported in our county. The DNR estimates that the report rate vs death rate is 20 to 30 to one. That could be 1200 to 1800 dead deer in our county.
I will do my best to keep this thread updated as the season progresses.
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