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Iowa Blues

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Bowhunting Life

By Brian Strickland

I really couldn’t ask for anything more. I was perched 20 feet up in a tree, in early November, in arguably one of the best places in the Lower 48 for bowhunting whitetails. I was in Iowa. As far as I was concerned, I was sitting in whitetail paradise.

This was my first trip to the Hawkeye State, although I had been planning for this week-long bowhunt for three years. Finally, my number had been drawn, and I had my ticket to the November Iowa dance. Needless to say, I was beside myself when I climbed into my stand the first morning of the hunt. Then, when my first visitor was a young but impressive 8-point buck, I thought I was going to float right out of the tree. I quickly decided not to shoot him, but having a dandy buck within spitting distance during the first hour of the hunt really had me pumped.

I really had high hopes for this hunt. I’d read the stories and seen the videos, and I knew the rich fertile ground I was hunting grew more than just soybeans and corn. In fact, I was lucky enough to gain access to a patch of private ground that, rumor had it, was home to a 170-plus buck as well as a hoard of 140-type bucks.

Not long after my first visitor came and left, a doe trotted down the same trail. And you guessed it, a three-year-old buck followed her. He was mature, and I found his 135-inch, 9-point rack tempting at just 20 steps away. As hard as it was, I let him too evaporate into the timbered creek bottom. I was in the land of the giants, and although he was a buck I would have taken almost anywhere else, I couldn’t end this hunt knowing that older bucks roamed here.

When day seven rolled around, though, I was beginning to second-guess letting buck number two slip away.

You know the old saying that begins with “a bird in the hand.” Well, that’s what I was thinking. It wasn’t that I’d not seen other good bucks. I had. But let’s just say that a couple of poor decisions on my part and some bad luck had brought me to the last few hours of my bowhunt with an Iowa buck tag still in my pocket.

The buck I’d seen on day three was a good example. His dark 10-point frame was amazingly symmetrical and his thick body indicated he was mature. That buck had everything I wanted in an Iowa brute, and my bone-grinding rattling sequence had him coming in ready for battle. As the yards between us melted away…50…40…30…my breath quickened. All he had to do was continue on his path and I would have a chip shot. But I guess when mature bucks are thrown into the mix, nothing is a sure thing. Just as I was about to draw, he stopped behind a cedar tree, leaving me with only his headgear to look at. I’d like to say he stepped out and gave me the easy shot I was after, but instead he turned and walked straight away.

The day-six buck was similar. I had sat for 11 hours in 20-degree weather with a steady north wind chapping my face when he decided to sneak into my setup. It was clear that he was old. The scars on his face and the mass of his antlers told that tale. But he caught me flatfooted. I’d been cold to the bone and had decided to climb down just a wee bit early that evening. Actually, I was halfway down the tree when he appeared on the ridge heading in my direction. I was caught with my proverbial pants down, and all I could do was cling to the cold tree-pegs and watch him pass by at just 20 steps.

On the last evening of the last day I again found myself nearly frozen in my treestand as the light began slipping away. Pelting sleet and northern wind had nearly frozen me to the stand. But I was still sticking it out when a last-chance buck showed up.

I could barely believe what I was seeing. His big rack had it all––mass, height, width and countless drops and stickers that seemed to jet out in all directions. I was set up on the far southeast boundary of the property, and from the looks of things he was headed right at me along the property line.

I can’t begin to understand why it happened, but just 50 yards out this big Iowa king suddenly decided to jump the fence onto the neighbor’s property and continue along that fence right past my position. It would have been an easy shot, but that thin barbed-wire fence might as well have been a prison wall. The other side was off limits, and despite my best attempts to call him back to my side of the line, he just kept walking.

The sky was gray but I was blue in Iowa. D

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