Outdoor and hunting enthusiasts from Maine to California are heading for an event later this week that’s being staged in Iowa for the first time. The National Pheasant Fest is being held at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines and it’s being put on by the group Pheasants Forever, where Bob St. Pierre is spokesman.
St. Pierre says there will be shotguns, blaze orange and camouflage, hunting dogs, dog-training seminars, puppies, classes on how to pick a puppy, kennel clubs, wildlife artists, painters, sculptors and woodcarvers. He says other events and workshops will be geared for kids, women hunters and for Iowa farmers.
St. Pierre says there will be programs so farmers can learn to put the most beneficial wildlife habitat on their land and do it so they can get state or U-S-D-A payments. He says this event, which runs Friday through Sunday, promises to be one of state’s largest show-style draws this year, short of the Iowa State Fair. He hopes this is the biggest event Pheasants Forever has ever put together, drawing between 25- and 30-thousand people. Iowa has more Pheasants Forever chapters than any other state with 103 chapters and 22-thousand members. For more information, surf to www.nationalpheasantfest.org .