Submitted by: Mike Sorensen
Friends of Iowa Landowners & Sportsmen

The state of Iowa has long been known to be home to world-class levels of whitetail deer, consistently being ranked as one of the top 3 states in the country. However, with that reputation and what is a natural environment for its deer herd, all is not well in Iowa these days.

To understand the issues that Iowa’s deer herd has been causing, you only need to listen to local citizens and businesses that have had to deal with increasing levels of property and crop loss. These issues are not uncommon to many other states, but may be compounded by Iowa’s own hunting law.

Despite an aggressive plan initiated in 2003 to reduce the deer herd by increasing the number of anterless permits for Iowa residents, there continues to be much debate within the state on the success of this aggressive campaign. A stalemate on this issue within the state legislature led Iowa’s governor Chet Culver to form a Deer Advisory Committee this past year. Their mission is to evaluate the state's present deer management plan as well as assess the economic value of the deer herd in Iowa.

A group of landowners that has long been left out of Iowa’s deer management plan are out of state landowners, many who are native Iowans. In February of 2008 a grassroots group of Iowa non-resident landowners from across the country helped to form the non-profit organization, “Friends of Iowa Landowners & Sportsmen.” Our website is www.friendsofiowa.com.

The mission of Friends of Iowa Landowners & Sportsmen is to "create a healthy and diverse environment that will benefit wildlife, landowners and sportsmen alike.” Friends of Iowa Landowners & Sportsmen believe that for Iowa to have a successful deer management plan it must include all landowners. Involving all landowners will help to improve the quality deer herd that Iowa has been known for, as well as control the population of its herd effectively.

Due to its increasing economic appeal and recreational value, Iowa farmland attracts a great deal of interest from out of state. Iowa land ownership has changed dramatically since the mid 1980’s when out of state land ownership was 6%; today, Iowa’s out of state land ownership is over 20%. In addition, the generational transfer of landownership from Iowa landowners to non-residents has the potential of increasing this ownership even greater over the next few years.

Iowa’s choice to exclude non-resident landowner hunting opportunities in the past may have been well suited for the state at that time. However, today with declining farmland due to urbanization, declining CRP habitat and an increasing amount of land that is being owned by non-residents, is Iowa’s deer management plan of the 1980s & '90s suited for today?  

With a growing investment by non-residents, excluding this large economic landowner group from being able to actively participate in their own land and wildlife management could have major implications for Iowa and its landowners.

MISSOULA, Mont. -- When Theodore Roosevelt called the first White House conference on conservation in 1908, America craved wild game but many species were dwindling.

A century later, wild game is abundant but now the craving is beginning to subside.

This reversal, says Boone and Crockett Club President Lowell E. Baier, is no less dangerous to the future of wildlife.

In his address to over 500 conservation leaders at last week's White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy, Baier warned, "Diminishing participation in hunting and waning interest and demand for wild game will continue to create complex challenges--including financial, political and judicial setbacks--for all wildlife."

The conference, held Oct. 1-3 in Reno, Nev., was the first White House-convened major summit on conservation since Roosevelt. Though a hundred years apart, both conferences were well represented by one organization: the Boone and Crockett Club.

Roosevelt founded the Club in 1887 to guide wildlife restoration and management. In 1908, members like Gifford Pinchot and George Bird Grinnell helped Roosevelt and White House conferees understand and begin to address conservation issues of their day.

Submitted by Corey Graff, Online Editor

On Friday evening I was situated in a pop-up blind on the corner of a newly-seeded green field. I was camera-hunting wild whitetails. The deer were expected to arrive via crossing a road and would "pop up" on top of a high ridge fence line. It if all worked as planned, it would be a prime opportunity to photograph deer at close range as they entered the field. But photographing free-ranging whitetailed deer is every bit as challenging -- albeit with its own unique nuances -- as bow-hunting. In a future blog post I will argue that it may almost be every bit as exciting and almost as much fun. Now, a very good buck in anyone's book proved that to be true when, as I was turning around to see if deer were approaching from behind, he showed up on the trail approaching the field on my frontside. His eyeballs loacked onto my movement.
 
By the time I turned back around and spotted the buck, he was at full red alert. At ground-level, he simply had spotted me first. Before I could even get an eye up to the camera, he whirled around and bounded back across the road.
 
As he attempted to escape danger -- me, the guy with the perfectly harmless camera -- he cut through a spruce grove in which my brother-in-law Ray Smith was perched with a crossbow (Ray suffered a foundry accident a couple years ago and has a medical permit for the crossbow).
 
"Thwack!"
 
 The sun went down, a friendly chipmunk -- who had been successfully photographed -- retreated to his little home in a dead log for the night, and the bloodtrailing of the camera-shy buck began.
 
Many photos were eventually shot of the buck, which turned out be an excellent 2 1/2-year-old with 12 points.
 
We marveled at the sequence of events and wondered: Did the photographer help the bow-hunter, or vice versa?