Iowa

Every so often, a wide range of conditions come together to create paradise. Hawaii is at the right latitude and longitude to have beautiful weather about 95 percent of the time. Aspen is blessed with not only lots of snow fall each year but great big mountains on which the snow can land. Aspen and Hawaii are pretty cool but pale in comparison to the great state of Iowa, seriously, especially if you like hunting with a muzzleloader.

A host of factors come together in Iowa to create the perfect storm for muzzleloader hunters who covet whitetails with lots of headgear. Great swaths of the state are planted with the highest quality deer forage--corn, alfalfa and soybeans--American farmers can grow. All this agriculture helps deer hunters in two ways. Whitetails are able to easily weather Iowa's sometimes severe winters and then are treated to all the protein they could want in the spring when the does are growing babies and bucks are growing antlers. Secondly, all the high-quality forage elevates the land's carrying capacity, allowing more bucks to get bigger.

Other states have tremendous amounts of agriculture, but do not have the big bucks found in Iowa. The state's hunting regulations are the key. Game managers saw fit to limit hunters to shotguns and muzzleloaders and structured firearms seasons so that they did not coincide with the rut. The first 5-day shotgun season starts the first Saturday in December, and the second shogun season starts the following Saturday. A late muzzleloader season begins in mid-December and runs through early January. Quite a few young bucks that would die during the rut in other states at the hands of marksmen capable of shots over 100 or 150 yards survive and get bigger. A draw system also limits the beating deer take from out-of-state hunters. So Iowa, central Iowa in particular, might be home to more big bucks per square mile than any other place on the planet.

I was one of those super-lucky out-of-staters to draw a tag this spring--firearms hunters usually get a tag in the mail every other year--and arrived in Des Moines in time for the first shotgun season. The Outfitter picked me up at the airport and we had an hour drive down to his farm near Albia. We met up with Mike Mattly and zeroed muzzleloaders at a underground shooting tunnel. Prior to the hunt, Mike had talked up the outfitter, an old friend, and I was excited to be in the land of the giants with a competent outfitter.

Opening morning found me in a tall ladder stand on the edge of an acre of standing beans. Under the soft glow of an LED headlamp, I broke open the Knight KP1 and tried my best to drop a primer into the nipple. The excitement, cold weather or thick gloves made the delicate operation tough, but I managed. Two blocks of timber and CRP fields bordered the field and as day started to break, deer started moving from one block to the other along the field edge. The first three deer I saw were bucks, each one bigger than the last. Realizing the potential for big deer makes going early and staying late pretty easy.