Editor’s note: Here is your chance to tell your story about your team, your school or your favorite player. If you’d like to join The Gazette’s growing list of high school contributors, contact J.R. Ogden at jr.ogden@thegazette.com By Jacob Doyle, Monticello senior MONTICELLO – Imagine a place you can be truly free. Imagine paradise. For [...]
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The Iowa House approved a measure Wednesday to expand crossbow hunting of deer by allowing residents to use crossbows during the late hunting season, from Dec. 17 to Jan. 10. They would not be required to purchase a separate crossbow hunting license. Under current law, only muzzleloader and archery hunters can hunt deer during that [...]
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Planting radishes could be the key to boosting pheasant numbers in Iowa, according to a wildlife researcher who spoke to lawmakers Thursday. It likely will take more than farmers planting a winter cover crop of radishes to increase pheasant numbers to where they were 50 years ago, but it’s one of the strategies Willie Suchy [...]
continue »One month into 2013, it’s time for a checkup. As in, how are those New Year resolutions going? You know the ones — losing a few pounds gained over the holidays, getting back in shape, starting a new challenge? I’ve discovered a couple of things during my recent excursions on some frigid mornings, always a [...]
continue »CEDAR RAPIDS — Dan Solomon’s beagles, who bark only when they smell a rabbit, bayed nonstop for four hours Sunday morning in the Cedar River badlands just southeast of town. Barreling at full cry through horseweeds and multiflora rose, Sadie, 11, the leader of the pack, and her proteges, Storm and Jasmine, hounded scores of [...]
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Raise the number of buck deer that Gov. Terry Branstad has bagged to three. The five-term governor could hardly contain his pride Monday in describing to reporters at his weekly news conference how he shot an eight-point buck during the governor’s deer hunt near Leon in Decatur County last weekend. “This is the biggest [...]
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The state’s deer population, in decline since 2006 in response to hunters’ intensified efforts to kill does, is down another 10 percent this year, according to Department of Natural Resources research biologist Tom Litchfield. Hunters will see fewer deer than they are accustomed to during the upcoming shotgun seasons, Saturday through Dec. 5 and Dec. [...]
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Iowa’s first seven cases of chronic wasting disease — all directly related to confined whitetail deer — have put a bull’s eye on the backs of the state’s deer breeders and the pay-to-shoot facilities they supply. Critics of penned deer operations — mainly hunters and game managers — say captive deer are more likely than [...]
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For the first time in seven years, the annual August roadside count shows an increase in the state’s pheasant population, which has been driven steadily downward by bad weather and lost habitat. This year’s statewide index — 7.9 pheasants per 30-mile route — is up about 16 percent from last year’s record low index of [...]
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QUASQUETON — Lowell Walter had a man cave at least 50 years before the expression came into vogue. No big flat-screen TV, sports memorabilia or lavish bar. Just an elegant brick pavilion complete with fireplace, sleeping and lounging quarters, storage and launching facilities for his boat and a deck overlooking the scenic Wapsipinicon River — [...]
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