We hunt the late muzzleloader season here in Iowa, have for many years now.The main reason is theres not many people out and I feel its much safer then the shotgun season.By waiting for this season we really disadvantage ourselves anyway, the weathers colder and sometimes quite nasty.The deer have been chased and shot at for several months and can be hard to come by.But its nice and quiet, no big hunting parties, no slugs going past you if you happen to be in the middle of one of thier deer drives.
They passed a special season yesterday, all the shotgun hunters that have tags leftcan now hunt the 21st through the 23rd during the muzzleloader season due to the fact they didnt kill enough deer during the first 2 gun seasons.They want an additional 34,000 deer killed this year and they didnt get it done.How they came up with this idiocy is beyond me, they seperate shotgun into 2 seasons and ML into a 3rd and seperate season so there wont be all the armed guys out at once, in a stroke of geniues theyve decided to throw safety to the wind and let 3 seasons worth of guys lose at once[&o]
To make matters worse they blamed the weather for the shotgun hunters not killing enough deer, I cant speak for anywhere else in the state but the reason there were many unfilled tags here is the populations already to low.They know it to as they pulled all of our extra doe tags for this area that were available.The DNR officer for this area even publicly stated at the end of last year we had killed to many and would be cutting back.
Now im not an overly educated guy but what would have been wrong with adding a 3 day season at the end of the regularly scheduled seasons?Then if they still needed that many deer killed everyone with an unfilled tag could have gained 3 more days of hunting.
And why not just open the extra season for the counties that are actually overpopulated with deer.Wheres the sense in taking away the doe tags then encouraging people to kill mass numbers of them in a special season.Seriously, they threw this all together in just a couple days time, I dont think there was a lot of thought put into it.Kinda pisses me off the more I think about it.
Actually they really couldnt have known they were 34,000 deer short of thier target goal untill 1st season was over.We got hit with a big ice storm the night before season and it made it hard to get around.Then I believe Southern Iowa got hit with one later in the week making 2nd season a bad time to try to get out.We have an electronic reporting syste for deer kills now so theyre able to keep better track of how many are killed and keep it current.I just cant believe thier going to be so anal about it that theyd throw in another season and dump another couple thousand hunters back into the woods at the same time as an existing season.
Some states just want to sell deer. WV is one of those. In the 50s and 60s it was possible to see a 150-170 class buck nearly every deer season. Then they started selling off the deer at very rapid rates. Now it is unsusual to see a 120-130 class buck.
Thats a lotta what pisses me off about this.Hard to explain actually but huntings not guaranteed, they know beforehand that people may or may not kill deer, thats why its hunting and not just shooting.
I purposely choose a season where I know the odds suck and the weathers gonna be bad.A few years back the windchills stayed between -30 and -40 for most of the season, the deer didnt move well and it was miserable.But I hunted, and I killed a buck.Now theyre gonna let them have a weather related do over because they feel we havent met some ridiculous quota for killing deer.And theyre putting it in the middle of an already scheduled season and opening it in zones where deer numbers are already low.Thats not a good policy to set, it sends the wrong message to hunters being that theyre kill ratios more imporatant then the actual sport.Probably doesnt make sense to anyone but me but it just rubs me the wrong way LOL.
Another reason that deer quotas are not being met is that the numbers of hunters, good and bad , are declining.
Quote:
From 2003 to 2006, the number of full-season hunting licenses issued to Maryland residents dropped from 91,524 to 84,046, an 8.2 percent decline. From this article
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Nature does nothing uselessly.
- Aristotle -
It got worse today, talked to a guy that said I could hunt his property during ML since he shotgun hunted and would done by then, they havent filled all thier tags yet so I cant get in untill after they do[&o]The worst part is 3/4 of the stuff I hunt I have a similiar arrangment with the landowners about staying out during shotgun seasonand the other 1/4 just doesnt hold deer in the late season.[>:]
This really sucks
, are declining.
