Rumors and opinions are flying among hunters about the prospects for bagging a trophy buck during this year's Iowa hunting seasons. Some say the potential to kill a trophy buck is better than ever in Iowa. Others say the glory days are fading and predict Iowa will add only a few scattered entries in state and national record books.

Andy Sheldon of Sidney is one of the optimists. He arrowed a non-typical buck in southwest Iowa last year that scored 217 7/8 and is confident better bucks still roam that area.

"Within four miles of where I killed my buck, a friend found sheds that would have scored 180, typical, on Boone and Crockett's scale," said Sheldon. "Just minutes before I killed my big buck, I had a 140-class buck walk under my stand that's going to be a real eye-popper this year. And the day after I killed my big buck, my dad got busted by a really nice buck.

"Dad's hunted deer for more than 30 years and isn't a great one to exaggerate," said Sheldon. "He told me, 'Andy, your buck is a good one, but that buck I saw would have pushed your buck pretty hard.' "

Southwest Iowa wasn't the only region in the state to produce record-book bucks last hunting season. Steve Finnegan, show manager for the Iowa Deer Classic held each March in Des Moines, noted that of the 400 racks from Iowa entered in the 2009 Deer Classic, 90 of them met Boone and Crockett record-book standards.

"That's almost 25 percent of all the entries we had," said Finnegan. "Our biggest buck last year was killed by Kyle Simmons in Jackson County in far east-central Iowa and scored 275. That rack now stands as the third biggest bow-killed buck nationally.

"Other states may have more deer, but sheer numbers don't guarantee quality," said Finnegan. "I looked at Pope and Young (record book for bow-killed deer), and Wisconsin and Illinois enter more numbers of deer than Iowa, but their deer tend to be more toward the minimum score necessary to qualify for the record book. The deer from Iowa tend to be more toward the upper end of the scale."

Fewer Deer, More Trophies?
As noted last month in Iowa Game & Fish magazine's annual deer hunting forecast, Iowa's deer population is declining. That's good, a result of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources' carefully designed strategy of using regulations to manipulate hunting pressure and adjust local deer populations to match the carrying capacity of local habitat.

The knee-jerk reaction among deer hunters is that a smaller population of deer reduces the potential for trophy bucks. IDNR deer management biologist Tom Litchfield says the opposite may be true for Iowa. "Bringing deer numbers down from the highs we saw a few years ago actually enhances the possibility of more bucks reaching their full potential," he said. "Studies have shown that bucks don't express their maximum (antler) potential when local populations are high."

Chuck Steffen, wildlife management biologist in far southeast Iowa, agrees: "When we had a lot of exceptional trophy deer coming out of this area, it was back when the herd was still growing and we didn't have as many deer as we have now. There's a saturation point, where after you get too many deer in an area, there doesn't seem to be as many really huge bucks."

Steffen, Litchfield and other deer management experts emphasize that the progressive attitude of Iowa's deer hunters has played a significant role in developing Iowa's world-class population of trophy whitetail bucks. Iowa's hunters have bought into the philosophy of passing up small bucks, shooting does for venison and harvesting only older, mature bucks.