Young hunters in Iowa participate in a youth hunting and outdoor event in Polk County. (Photo courtesy of Northern Polk Pheasants Forever)
Iowa expects to see between 60,000 and 80,000 hunters for pheasant season, which opens Saturday and runs through Jan. 10, 2025, as the state celebrates nearly 100 years of the popular sport.
Iowa is consistently one of the best states for pheasant hunting, but the now-famous birds were released into the state accidentally.
According to a centennial document prepared by Iowa Department of Natural Resources, a windstorm in 1901 destroyed cages at a Cedar Falls game breeder’s farm and 2,000 pheasants took refuge in Iowa’s agricultural landscape.
It turns out the grain fields and prairies of Iowa were perfect for the China-native birds. By 1925, there were so many pheasants in Iowa that the Conservation Commission (now part of DNR) started the first pheasant hunting season.
At its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, Iowa saw nearly 2 million pheasants harvested annually and over 300,000 hunters a year.
Severe weather and loss of habitat caused bird populations to decline, though the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to convert marginal cropland to grasslands, has helped preserve pheasant habitat.
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Youth-only season wraps up
In 1997 the state established a youth-only hunt weekend to give beginning hunters, under the age of 15, a chance to work with a mentor without the pressure of a busy opening weekend. The youth season ran from Oct. 19 through Oct. 20 this year.
Results from Iowa Department of Natural Resource roadside surveys show estimated pheasant distribution in the state. (Map from Iowa DNR)
Todd Bogenschutz, upland wildlife biologist for Iowa Department of Natural Resources said the department doesn’t collect real-time data, but on average, 7,000 hunters participate in the youth season and bag around 4,600 rooster pheasants.
He said despite flooding in the northern region of the state earlier this year, roadside counts indicate a healthy sized population. Plus, Bogenschutz said 2023 was the best season the state had seen in about 17 years, so he has “a lot of optimism coming into this season.”
“We expect a lot of people to be out opening day,” Bogenschutz said.
Encouraging conservation
Bogenschutz said current numbers are a “long cry” from even the 1990s when it was normal to see 200,000 hunters in a season.
The youth season is part of ongoing efforts to encourage hunting and conservation by cultivating positive experiences in the outdoors.
Amy Buckendahl, the communications and mentor chair for Northern Polk Pheasants Forever, said hunting isn’t as popular a hobby as it used to be because kids have access to so many other activities, sports and clubs.
She, along with several other Pheasants Forever chapters, Polk County Conservation, Capitol Callers of Delta Waterfowl and Iowa Department of Natural Resources, hosted the Mid-Iowa youth event Oct. 12 to introduce kids to the “all things outdoors.”
This was the 20th year the group hosted the event, which taught safety skills, shooting with bird dogs, harvesting, wearing the mandatory blaze orange and other skills to prepare kids for the upcoming hunting seasons.
“If we’re going to make the world a better place, we want to get kids excited about going outside,” Buckendahl said. “People don’t care or preserve or protect things that they don’t love.”
Buckendahl is also president of the newly enacted Iowa chapter of Women on the Wing, an initiative that similarly encourages women to get involved in hunting, the outdoors and conservation.
Buckendahl said the programs support a national R3 initiative of recruitment, retention and reactivation to increase participation in outdoor activities like hunting and fishing.
Beyond a passion for conservation, advocates say maintaining a population of hunters is vital to conservation work in the state.
Bogenschutz said his office and conservation efforts are funded by hunter licenses sales and a special excise tax on firearms and ammunition.
“Everything we do out there is derived from those funds,” Bogenschutz said.
That includes the more than 680,000 acres of Iowa public hunting land managed by DNR. Hunters interested in finding a new spot this year can use the online atlas to find public land open for hunting.
Pheasant enthusiasts can visit the department’s website to collect a 100th anniversary pheasant hunting license, read more about the history of the sport in Iowa and brush up on safety rules.
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