The Iowa Sportsman
Campfire Cooking Made Simple
Campfire Cooking Made Simple One of the best parts of camping is gathering around the fire and sharing a meal after a day outdoors. While modern campers have plenty of cooking gadgets to choose from, you don’t need much equipment to turn out great camp meals. Campfire Essentials A few basic items can handle most […]
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Summer Foodplots & Projects
Summer Projects for Whitetail Hunters If you’ve been hunting for any period of time, you know a lot of hunting comes down to luck. I’ve always been a fan of trying to make my own luck, or get myself set up in as good a spot as possible to be ready for when a trophy […]
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Training Your Gundog for the Field
When Is My Puppy Ready For The Field? A puppy’s readiness for the field is relative. To bring clarity to this article, I call any dog under the age of two a puppy. Large breed dogs are still developing mentally and physically until they are 16-24 months old. So, if we identify any dog under […]
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Topwater Bass Fishing
Topwater Bass Fishing Of all of the methods that anglers use in chasing after and landing bass, having one of these feisty fish explode on a topwater bait is one of my all-time favorites. In my early years of bass fishing and learning to catch them, topwater wasn’t part of my arsenal. As it turned out, my first encounter […]
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Smart Scouting Tools for Iowa Deer Hunters
Smart Scouting Tools for Iowa Deer Hunters When I first started hunting, scouting consisted of going out to the timber with my dad, looking for deer paths, sign, tracks, and then reflecting on the data. Sometimes we’d hang a stand with the idea that we might have to move it. We relied heavily on woodsmanship […]
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Summer Work That Pays Off in Bow Season
Summer Work That Pays Off in Bow Season Early mornings in the turkey woods are beginning to give way to graduation celebrations, long afternoons on the lawn mower, gardens, and ball parks for yours truly. I would like to think that this “season” of life that falls between springtime gobblers and fall whitetails would be […]
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Calming A Hyper Gun Dog
Calming A Hyper Gun Dog We’ve all experienced a hyper gun dog. If we’re honest, there have been times when the dog is ours. A hyper dog can be a lot of things: annoying, out of control, disruptive, destructive, exhausting, etc. BUT a hyper dog can also be led and taught to manage their energy, […]
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Chase the Bite: Early Season
Chase the Bite: Early Season Walleye, Pike & Crappie in Iowa As May approaches, every angler starts thinking about early-season fishing. Whether you pull your sleeping boat out of the garage or simply slide a couple of fishing poles in your car, you’re ready to find some active fish. The question remains: where do I […]
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Springtime Panfish-Perch, Crappie, and Bluegill
Springtime Panfish-Perch, Crappie, and Bluegill Spring is in full swing here in Iowa, and what can be more pleasant a reminder than the sound of birds, the sight of flowers blooming, and the feel of a warm afternoon? I can think of at least one more thing…Panfish! I can remember it like yesterday, our family […]
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Pre-Spawn Bass
Pre-Spawn Bass One of my all-time seasons for bass fishing is when the water temperatures begin to climb and bass start making their move from deeper winter homes to shallow water where spawning will take place. The transition really begins as water temperatures rise to around 48-58 degrees. Both largemouth and smallmouth bass will start […]
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