Just wandering If anyone hunts public land in Iowa as a non resident. Whats your experience's been? How much are licenses fill me in on all that you can. Considering it for 2012 as driving out for long weekends and hunting public land possibly doing some scouting and gaining access to maybe a private sector of land. Anyways any details that you can provide me would be great!

I bowhunted Iowa for several years before I ended up moving to Illinois which allowed me 2 bucks/year for $26/each instead of one for $550 in Iowa. Public land is very good, except the big problem we ran into at ALL the properties we went to were coon and bird hunters after those seasons opened 1st week of November.

The coon hunters were incredible, pounding every woodlot with barking dogs and spotlights all night long. I have not hunted anywhere so many wanted to coon hunt. It must be some kind of hillbilly tradition there or something?

Anyway this activity takes place late at night so as bowhunters we would never have even known how bad it was if we had not been camping inside our hunting area. We did always see the occasional coon remains. I spoke with a few other NR's who also complained of patterning several nice bucks but they disappeared after pheasant dogs ran them off.

We hunted Sedan Bottoms, Lake Rathbun, Appanoose County. Many areas of the Stephens State Forest are very good. You just need to scout them. Also there are many county properties available you will not see advertised in the F&G regulations.

Nope. No Deer here in Iowa, its a way to bring in tourists; you know the "ole bait and switch".... :-P

I dont know what part of the state you plan on hunting, but you have plenty of time to plan it as it will take you at least 3 years to draw a $550 tag for archery. I started going to Iowa 15 years ago and drew every year for 4 years in a row. Then as Iowa started to show up in every hunting magazine printed it was every other year and now it takes 3 preferance points to get a tag. I hunt the NE corner of the state on both private and public and have had excellent hunting. Don't get me wrong, the first couple of years were tough until I got to know the ins and outs. I wish you luck on planning your hunt