A friend and I are looking at taking a trip to Iowa next fall for a bowhunt and are wondering if anyone could help us out with a good starting point. Are there any good areas of public land with good deer hunting? How tough is it to get permission to hunt private land for an out of stater and how tough is the draw for a non-resident tag? Any help would be greatly appreciated. We would much rather have a do it yourself hunt than hire an outfitter.

ESetter1, it took me and my friends 3 years to draw. We finally got lucky this year and we' re heading there for the first week in November.

As far as do-it-yourselfing it, I can only tell you that we' ve found a few farmers that will allow us to hunt their farms for a fee, pretty steep to, but we get free run of the farms. Outfitters have a LOT of land wrapped up in leases and they charge HUGE money to sit in their stands. Depends on what zone you want to hunt to, some areas are harder then others .. Zone 5 is the toughest to draw and the hardest to find free hunting but some of the other zones that don' t get the press seem to be a bit easier, we are hunting zone 9. Forums like this as the guys will get you started in the right direction.

Good luck, and after waiting 3 years I would suggest applying and when you get lucky worry about trying to make it happen then.