The Iowa Natural Resources Commission gave final approval Thursday to antlerless deer quotas that include a drop in the number of does that can be taken in western Iowa.
The DNR held hearings on the issue and commissioner K.R. Buck of Denison says there was support for the cutback at the hearing he attended. “I think there was 35 or 36 at our meeting. I think if everybody was asked to raise their hand they were willing to give up a doe season through the paid season and archery for two years,” he says. “They see the devastation that our deer population has taken in western Iowa.”
Buck says the lack of deer in the area is concerning. “Our deer population last two years has been wiped out. I mean it’s amazing,” Buck says. The DNR’s Jace Elliott oversees the state deer populations and told the commission one of the reasons for the big drop in western Iowa’s deer herd is overhunting. “It’s very obvious that overharvest over an extended period of time from really the mid 2000s to the early 2010s contributed to the population decline,” he says.
Elliott says disease outbreaks in the deer herd are also an issue. “As soon as our department was beginning to take those antlerless tags off the table to try to take some pressure off of the harvest there, that is when we began experiencing our more severe EHD outbreaks in western Iowa starting in 2012,” Elliott says. “Since then there’s been at least five severe outbreaks statewide, which certainly hasn’t helped the situation over in that part of the state.”
The antlerless deer licenses will be cut from 200 to 0 in Cass County, from 250 to 0 in Harrison, Monona, and Pottawattamie Counties, from 150 to 0 in Page County, from 200 to 150 in Montgomery County. Some western Iowa counties, including Woodbury and Worth, already had no antlerless deer tags available.
The DNR has some new meetings about deer management underway now which they say will help shape how they manage the deer population in western Iowa through the next five years.
(This story was updated 7/17 to correct the name of the state deer expert)