Zooming In 5 (Season 2)
Show 5 – Greg in Iowa
My late season muzzleloader hunt took place in northern Iowa, just 10 miles from the Minnesota border. As this overhead view clearly shows, the terrain in this part of the state is fairly flat and mostly open. The majority of the cover here is found along this narrow river bottom—which just so happens to be where I was hunting.
Now according to the landowner, there’s always a fairly large population of whitetails living in the river bottom. However, that number increases dramatically due to the pressure from the Iowa gun seasons. And it increases even more with the onset of severe weather. Fortunately for me, my hunt took place a couple weeks after the close of the second gun season. I was doubly fortunate in that the weather took a sudden turn for the worse during my hunt.
To be quite honest, I experienced nearly every form of wintry weather during my Iowa hunt—icy drizzle, freezing rain, blowing snow and brutally cold temperatures. Terrible conditions to be sure, but as the footage from my hunt clearly showed, the exact type of weather needed to put whitetails into a literal feeding frenzy!
Jake and I were set up in a ground blind located right here on the day of my successful hunt. We’d hunted from this same blind the day before and saw close to 100 whitetails, including several shooter bucks, feeding in the croplands that surround the blind. Unfortunately, none of the bucks came within range of my T/C muzzleloader.
It was a different story the next evening, however. The 8-pointer I ended up shooting first appeared here along the edge of the river bottom, over 400 yards away. Luckily for me, the buck ended up walking all the way across this open ground to feed in the cut soybean field here. I waited until the buck got to this point, which put him at just under 100 yards, before taking the shot. He ran only a short distance before tipping over right here, in this CRP field.
I can’t remember ever being on a hunt where I saw so many whitetails in such a short period of time. But as I noted earlier, the conditions were absolutely perfect for putting the deer in a daylight feeding mode. The biggest concern for Jake and I was finding the proper clothing system for dealing with the cold temperatures.
Hey that’s it for now. But make sure you tune in next week to see where on earth we’ll be Zooming In. See you then!
