Iowa Sportsman
The Unbalanced Life of a Successful Hunter
The Unbalanced Life of a Successful Hunter By Earl Taylor Successful hunters are not balanced. Most often, their lives are out of kilter from October through January 1. The family suffers. Football goes unwatched. The leaves pile up. Successful hunters hunt. I have many friends who hunt. I would consider them casual hunters. If the […]
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Backwater Hardwater
Backwater Hardwater By Rod Woten Ask any ice angler from Iowa what their favorite fishery is and you’ll hear names like Brushy Creek, Clear Lake, Spirit Lake or Okoboji. For good reason those are all near the top of everyone’s list. There’s another fishery on the state’s eastern seaboard that you don’t hear mentioned much. […]
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Jamie Brincks Buck: Part II
Jamie Brincks Buck: Part II By Jamie Brinks I was looking forward to seeing what Crazy 8 would be this year so we started our trail cameras early. To our surprise we had some other nice bucks on camera, but nothing that I was positive was Crazy 8. There was another 10 point that had […]
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The Bad Ice Angler
The Bad Ice Angler By Rod Woten Throughout my years in the ice fishing industry, I’ve fished more lakes than I can count from one end of the ice belt to the other. During this time, I’ve noticed several things that ice anglers do or don’t do that causes them to struggle. These things don’t […]
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Navigating Big Ice
Navigating Big Ice By Rod Woten Why does it always seem that the bigger a body of water you want to fish, the harder the fish are to find? If you think about it from a statistical standpoint, the bigger lakes have more water you have to sort through in order to find fish, which […]
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Whitetails 365: Buying Recreational Land, Part I
Whitetails 365: Buying Recreational Land, Part I By Tom Peplinski Owning your own recreational land to use and manage can be one of if not the most rewarding experiences you could ever have. For me, managing my own farm is almost more rewarding than the actual hunt itself. It extends the season outside the traditional […]
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Buying Recreational Hunting Land: Part III
Buying Recreational Hunting Land: Part III When you are buying any investment, the most important part about the “buy” is not letting your emotions get the best of you. It is the same idea when buying recreational hunting land. Our emotions can get us to think we need something we really don’t. They can get […]
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Best Crappie Baits
Best Crappie Baits Crappie…animals that forage for discrete, isolated resources are often characterized as either “ambush” (sit-and-wait) or “cruise” (active) searchers. Juvenile white crappie, Pomix annularis, search for zooplankton prey using a salutatory search (SS) strategy. Unlike ambush and cruise, SS involves… Had you readers going there for a moment didn’t I… Well lucky […]
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Different Strokes for All Folks
Different Strokes for All Folks By Rod Woten I am a huge proponent of tournament ice angling. Much like any other competitive sport, tournament ice anglers are constantly looking for an advantage over their competition. This relentless drive often leads to innovative new products, outside-the-box-patterns and torture-testing of longstanding equipment and patterns. Tournament ice angling […]
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Raising an Outdoors Child
Train Up A Child When I was a child I had my life, and my parents had theirs; they did not try to weave their lives into my life; we were not best friends. I did what was normal for a nine-year-old boy, while my parents worked, mowed the yard, went to church suppers, […]
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