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The way things are going in Iowa these days with the influx of public land hunting your going to see a major difference from your last trip. The public I hunt used to be 5-10 people hunting it regularly now its more like 50-60 people and the quality of bucks is declining rapidly.
I lived in Iowa for 10 years and hunted both private and public land. Some of the public ground I hunted had 0 other hunters all of archery season. Sure there were others that got some pressure, but I would say compared to many other areas in the US it was minimal.
Shotgun season it got hammered but during bow season not a ton of use. IMHO the trick for public land whitetails, other than the typical "get away from everyone else" advice is this....If you can hunt during the week you have it made. For the most part with whitetail hunting the majority of the guys will be weekend hunting.
I will be hunting some private property in Benton Co. and was wondering about a few public land hunting spots. The ones that I looked at are less than 1 hour from where I will stay. The public land I looked at are Hawkeye WMA, Dudgeon Lake, Cedar River in Linn Co, Iowa River corridor and Red Fox. How crowded are they and what is the hunting like?
McDowell has the last 3 state records, and decent amount of public. Wyoming has a couple top 10 and basically zero public. Don't know much about the other 2. If you do kill a giant there don't broadcast it. DNR in trouble for illegal search and seizure on a guy 2 states away. Lots of home cooking. Avoid the timber company land.
Zone 6 also has a tremendous amount of public hunting opportunity comparatively to other parts of the state, I would suggest looking in Shimek State Forest and researching some of the smaller units. Sorry you didn't have a good experience but as you stated it's not a sure thing to come to Iowa and be successful.
Which amounts to 14.9% of a very large state. Iowa has 266,000 acres of public hunting or .1% of the state. If Iowa had plenty of public hunting; people from out of state wouldn't be asking where to go or what to expect. Keep in mind because Iowa has few public hunting acres it is used for every kind of hunting. Not just deer.
The public areas in all of Eastern Iowa are good and they all hold deer and knock on a few doors because there are farmers who will let you hunt because of crop damage, check that out too. If it were me Id check out those smaller tracts of land and don’t be afraid to hunt those, just because its not 3000 acres that dosen’t mean anything ...
I killed a 202 lb buck three years back. A 115" buck is a decent deer here. The lower part of the state take some hammers every year. Believe it or not,the public land is where the best hunting is. The 4wheelers and trucks on private push deer off their property. Not always, but a lot. Every mid west state is hammered on public land.
Ive heard folks say you can't trim on Iowa public land. However, I've been reading, and can't find anywhere in the regs that states you can't trim limbs when hunting out of a tree stand (climber, lock on, etc).