DNR upland game wildlife biologists estimate the possibility of Iowa hunters taking, by season’s end on Jan. 10, 2024, anywhere between 300,000 and 400,000 roosters. That number is way below the total rooster population.

There will easily be a sufficient number of roosters remaining as spring of 2024 finally rolls around. For this fall’s hunting, an expected 50,000 hunters will take to the field in hopes of connecting with a bird or two, and a reminder is in order that hunters must wear at least some blaze orange clothing in which 50 percent or more of that item is orange.

Actually, the more orange the better to allow others in a hunting party to see everyone. Hunt plans should be discussed and followed to prevent a hunting/firearm related incident or accident from happening. Safety is of utmost importance at all times.

Finding a private and or public land area to hunt game birds can be accomplished by the interactive Iowa hunting atlas. This online source features 680,000 acres of public lands owned by either the state, county or federal government. You can look up specific data by going to www.iowadnr.gov/hunting.

Once a general area is selected, your device can zoom in on maps for a specific site and see how to get there, and how the lay of the land can offer strategies for conducting a hunt. The atlas method also will show private lands enrolled in what is called IHAP (Iowa Hunter Access Program). Under this program, landowners do get advice and assistance to improve habitat on their land in exchange for allowing hunter access.

Marshall County public lands where habitat exists that pheasants will utilize include the Arney Bend Wildlife Area, Stanley Mill Mitigation Areas, Marietta Sand Prairie, Iowa River Wildlife Area and Klauenberg Prairie Preserve. State owned lands nearby include Hendrickson Marsh in

the southwest corner of Marshall and the southeast corner of Story County.

Story County also has the Colo Bogs Complex located west of State Center along old U.S. Highway 30. A good well trained bird dog is a tremendous help to point at a sitting bird and to find and retrieve game birds.

Good luck to all who take to the fields this weekend. Stay safe. Enjoy an active pheasant hunting experience.

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Congratulations are in order to Blaedyn Benscoter, a team member with the Hawkeye RedTails Sports Shooting team. Blaedyn placed second in the Men’s Individual Singles Trap contests held recently at Waukee’s New Pioneer Gun Club last weekend.

The weekend event was the gathering from statewide colleges for the State Championships of Collegiate Trap, Skeet, Sporting Clays and Super Sporting Clays. More than 160 college level gals and guys took part in the contests.

The Scholastic Clay Target Program (SCTP) is a youth development program. It is accomplished via shooting sports and competitive shooting. Training and competition allows these athletes to reach their highest potential in their chosen sports activity.

Shooting sports make a valid statement that not all athletics centers around baseball, softball, soccer, volleyball, basketball or football. All of the ‘ball’ sports are important to young students, and so are shooting sports for those so inclined to learn and enjoy the safe use and competitive spirit from firearm target contests.

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Pheasants Forever’s banquet is coming up next weekend, Nov. 4, 2023. This banquet and fundraising opportunity will be held at Marshalltown’s Midnight Ballroom.

The Marshall and Tama County PF chapters combine their efforts to raise dollars, have a lot of fun, and contribute to local projects of habitat on the land and other conservation causes. One of the recipients to get a portion of the proceeds is the youth shooting sports program, specifically the Central Iowa Straight Shooters.

Contact Luke Engel, President of the PF chapters, by calling 641-861-1015, or in the Marshalltown area, call Eric Briggs at 641-854-0660, for banquet tickets.

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Halloween time is this weekend. Trick or treaters will be going door-to-door dressed in scary costumes. One costume could include bat masks and bat wings.

However, to some folks bats are scary animals at any time they are encountered. Did you know that Iowa has several species of these little flying mammals, insect catchers that take moths and mosquitoes in huge amounts?

Bats are important pollinators for some plants. We need bats, even if some folks do not like them. Education about bats can inform you about myths and facts.

Facts matter. Myths, not so much.

Nine species of bats call Iowa home. Five of them live here all year long and hibernate under leaf litter, inside hollow trees, or caves.

Four species live in Iowa but migrate south each fall. These migrating bats do not find insects to sustain them during our cold times of the year, so they go south to find food in order to survive. Bats living here all year long include the Big Brown Bat, Little Brown Bat, Indiana Bat, Northern Long-Eared Bat, and Tri-Colored Bat. Those four species that are summer visitors and who go south for winter are the Evening Bat, Eastern Red Bat, Hoary Bat, and the Silver-Haired Bat.

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November happenings will soon be upon us. Get ready for all things that November can and will offer.

Will we adapt or just complain? Adaption is the preferred course of action. Some duck species will peak in their migration during November.

Furbearer seasons open Nov. 4 for hunting or trapping. Daylight savings time ends Nov. 5. Deer rutting intensity will peak during the second week of November. Archers await an increased movement of doe and buck deer as the hunters observe from elevated tree stands. Thanksgiving Day is Nov. 23, and fishing enthusiasts for the big Muskie will have the season close on those lakes Iowa shares with Minnesota, including Iowa’s Great Lakes.

Sunrise on Nov. 1 will be at 7:42 a.m, and sunset at 6:05 p.m. At month’s end, sunrise will be 7:17 a.m. and sunset at 4:40 p.m.

Since standard time comes on Nov. 5, let’s look at day lengths. On the first of the month, day length will be 10 hours and 23 minutes.

Nov. 30 shortens this by one hour, coming in at nine hours and 23 minutes. The sun’s lower angle of height above the horizon attests to the position of our earth in its orbit as the Earth orbits the sun.

The northern hemisphere is tilting away from direct sunlight angles. Southern hemisphere locations will begin enjoying their summer seasons.

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Rain events during 2023 for Iowa and much of the Midwest were much lower than normal. Drought monitor maps clearly indicated shortages of ground water as summer and fall weather forecasts informed us of local conditions.

At my residence in Albion, I kept track of 2023 rains from May 1 up to the present time. Of course as I write this story, late October rains on Thursday and Friday of this week, I do not have those most recent data entries.

However, interesting data does verify the overall dryness of 2023, and I will compare this year to long term averages to gain a historical perspective. Here are the total rain amounts by month for Albion: May, 4.01″; Jun 2.30″; Jul 2.43″; Aug 1.54″; Sep 1.35″; and October (as of the 25th) was 2.79″.

This total for plant growing season is 14.95″. By the time Nov. 1 arrives, the total will be a tad over 15 inches. So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, how do these data entries compare with averages?

A 30-year average for rains for Marshalltown and surrounding area from April 1 through Oct. 31 is 28.36 inches. If a five-year average is considered using years 2013-2017, April through October rain data shows 31.07 inches.

So our year 2023 had only about one-half of the rains we could reasonably expect. Thus, we had drought conditions to adapt to this year.

Additional data shows rains with respect to April 1 to Oct. 31 for the years 2013 through 2017. The 30-year averages from 1981 to 2010 serve as our baseline for comparison’s sake. In 2013, we had 108 percent of the average with 31.36″. The year 2014 had 120 percent totals with 37.39″.

Incidentally, on July 2, 2014, record setting flood waters overtopped North Center Street road. The river crest was recorded at its highest at 22.25′. Virtually every roadway into or out of Marshalltown had road closure signs and barricades posted.

During the year 2015, rains were also abundant with April-October total of 127 percent of the 30 year average. That total was 34.81″.

Why is this figure lower than 2014? Good question. It is because during December of 2015, we got rain, lots of it, 5.36″ to be exact, and the Iowa River flooded in December!

The year 2016 had April through October rains of 99 percent of the 30 year average — 28.82″. And during 2017, rain totals were lower at 82 percent of the 30 year average, at 22.93″.

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To summarize: Mother Nature is always toying with us, giving us an unequal distribution of rain events. From excessively wetter than normal to dryer than normal, and an entire range of rain events we like to call ‘normal’, we have only one choice — and that is to adapt.

Do remember that weather and climate are two different things. Weather is what is happening right now. Climate definitions are data sets of hundreds to multi-thousands of year time spans, and climate fluctuations have nothing to do with the vehicles we drive.

Climate has everything to do with our sun and its own idiosyncrasies of behavior, our Earth’s circular to slightly elliptical orbit variations on a 200,000 year cycle, earth’s axial tilt changes every 39,000 years and finally earth’s wobble on its axis on a 19,000 cycle. These celestial forces are the paramount factors that give Earth interglacial warm times or re-domination by intense glacial growths and advances of hemispherical ice ages.

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Garry Brandenburg is the retired director of the Marshall County Conservation Board. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with a BS degree in Fish & Wildlife Biology.

Contact him at:

P.O. Box 96

Albion, IA 50005

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