Ultimate Outdoor Challenge

For Iowa’s 60,000 archery deer hunters, November is simply the grandest month of the year.  When it comes to pursuing the ever popular, ever elusive white-tailed deer, November is the ultimate game changer.  As the fall rut goes full throttle, monster bucks – those behemoths that have remained totally invisible for the entire year — are suddenly on their feet and on the prowl; striding through midday fields as if they owned them.

True legends of the fall, Iowa stags are second to none.    Whether you judge them in terms of body weight or in total inches of antlers, there is no disputing that Iowa bucks grow to heart stopping proportions.    So how big are they?  Well, to date, Iowa has produced 19 of the all-time top deer ever recorded.    That’s more top, record book white-tails than is currently listed by any other state or Canadian province.  That’s something to think about that.

But even in November – a time when deer hunting is as good as it’s ever going to get — putting your tag on the buck of your dreams remains the ultimate outdoor challenge.    Getting within twenty-yard bow range of a mature deer is no easy task.    For the bow hunter, there are a million things that can, and usually do, go wrong. 

But no matter how many times a big buck may outsmart the human archer, the pendulum will eventually swing – or so we hope.  If a dedicated bow hunter determines to never sleep in, continues to play the wind, makes all the right moves, and spends endless hours shivering in a treetop, then that hunter just might be rewarded with the deer of a lifetime.  One of the things that makes bow hunting so intriguing is that you just never know what’s going to come down the trail.  For Iowa’s 60,000 archery deer hunters, November is a time like no other.