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Whitetails 365: Utilizing Frost Seeding For Clover Food Plots
Whitetails 365: Utilizing Frost Seeding For Clover Food Plots By Jessica Graham As spring approaches hunters begin to plan and strategize over food plots. One staple that should be included in your food plot tactic is clover. Clover is one of the best perennial food sources for deer, and offers birds prime habitat as well. It is beneficial almost all year round. It is one of the first food sources to begin to green-up in the spring, provides habitat and food for wildlife in the spring and summer, and it can withstand a couple of frosts. In fact, deer will paw through the snow to get to clover food plots. Did you know that clover is also easy to plant [...]
Giving Back: Iowa’s Bald Eagle Territory Monitoring Project
Giving Back: Iowa's Bald Eagle Territory Monitoring Project By Steve Webner Have you ever enjoyed watching the majestic bald eagle in flight over the Iowa countryside? Or have you viewed the live Decorah eagle nest video online with awe and wonder? I have always been fascinated with the great bald eagle and have enjoyed watching them make a great comeback in Iowa over the past several years. I have also always found it important to find ways to give back in my own community and the natural resources around me. Fortunately, there is a way for bald eagle-lovers to do just that! The Iowa Department of Natural Resource is seeking citizen volunteers for their Iowa Bald Eagle Territory Monitoring Project. [...]
How Not To Shed Hunt
How Not To Shed Hunt By Kent Boucher I once heard a sports radio host ask the question, “Would it be easier to fill out a March Madness bracket by selecting the teams you think will lose instead of the teams you think will win?”He had an interesting hypothesis that still has yet to yield me any major cash winnings, but I think that radio personality was tapping into some kind of psychological ease that comes from flipping our attention to the opposite side of our task we are trying to accomplish. So when it comes to shed hunting, there are plenty of things that a good shed hunter should be doing, which means there are also plenty of things [...]
Walleye Length Changes Coming in 2022
Walleye Length Changes Coming in 2022 By Steve Weisman When you catch a walleye in Iowa, there’s a good chance that the fish got its start in one of Iowa’s walleye hatcheries. Since walleye often don’t reproduce naturally in the state’s inland rivers and lakes, their populations must be maintained through the Iowa DNR’s stocking program. The hundreds of millions of eggs needed annually to keep populations healthy are predominantly collected from wild broodstock populations in Big Spirit Lake, East and West Okoboji Lake, Storm Lake and Clear Lake. Earlier this year, I visited with the DNR biologists Mike Hawkins and Jonathan Meerbeek at the Spirit Lake Hatchery about potential changes coming for the walleye slot limit regulations on the [...]
Getting Ready for the Spring Spawn
Getting Ready for the Spring Spawn By Ben Leal Spring in Iowa, and anywhere in the country, is a pretty busy time for our fishy friends who reside in area lakes. Warming water temps signal walleye, crappie, and bass that it’s time to start moving to shallow spring haunts. Walleye are the first to transition to shallow water for the spawn. And I do mean shallow! Walleye can be found in a foot of water at times, especially at night. Crappies are not far behind; they will also transition from their deep wintering holes to shallow cover. Bass will soon follow as water temps continue to warm, giving them the signal that it’s time to move in and start digging [...]
Preseason Scouting for Spring Gobblers
Preseason Scouting for Spring Gobblers By Troy Hoepker Have you ever asked yourself what one thing is most vitally important to the success of any turkey hunt before it begins? Some might say that it is practicing with their trusty box call or mouth call to be able to replicate just the right sounds. Others may point out that patterning the right shotgun and shell combination is the most important thing they do. Or is it picking out just the right decoy to use when the season arrives? All of these things are must do’s and can really help seal the deal on an old gobbler, but for me, it all comes back to the golden rule of hunting any [...]
Deer Management
Deer Management By Ricky Kinder If you are an archery hunter please raise your hand if you agree to the following question: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have 1,500 acres of vast pristine whitetail habitat to hunt in Iowa? While I obviously can’t see the hands going up I could imagine most of you have your hands in the air. The bad news is the overwhelming majority of hunters don’t have such quantities of land to hunt. In fact I would be willing to bet that most hunters who own, rent, or lease hunting property have less than 120 acres to hunt on. The problem that most of us small acreage hunters face is how do we get the bucks [...]
Sportsman’s New Year’s Resolutions
Sportsman's New Year's Resolutions By Gary Faith Many peoples New Year’s resolutions have to do with self-improvement. They deal with wanting to be better at work, save more money, or maybe get in better shape. Myself, I tend to make everything into, how can i improve my odds of hunting more? This form of self-improvement subsequently leads to things like saving money or getting in better shape, but in a different manner. It is with this thought of getting more time in the woods that this list of Sportsman’s New Year’s Resolutions was created. Find a new spot to hunt While it is true that food plots can cost a lot go out and find a brand new area to go [...]
Breaking It Down Under The Ice
Breaking It Down Under The Ice By Rod Woten Fishing a new lake through the ice for the very first time can be intimidating. While the layer of ice covering the lake gives us unrestricted access, it also makes it much more difficult to effectively eliminate unproductive water. Gone are the sunny summer days where we can just drift or troll around in our boats dragging crankbaits, crappie rigs or spinners until we contact fish. Notice that I said the ice makes it more difficult. What I did NOT say is that the ice makes it impossible. What separates good ice anglers from average ice anglers is their ability to minimize the damper that a layer of ice makes on [...]
Public Land Coyotes
Public Land Coyotes By Troy Hoepker Every fall the day comes when warm temperatures give way to a cold front passing through that stokes that burning desire to hunt inside of us! You know the feeling I’m talking about? When that mercury dips for the first time under 40 or 30 degrees and you just feel it. The need to grab the gun and hit the field to scratch that insatiable itch to hunt! One late October day a few years back was one of those days and it found me headed down a dead-end, winding gravel road for an afternoon coyote hunt. Fur hadn’t primed yet but I just couldn’t resist the urge to hunt that cold front and [...]
