SOUTHERN IOWA
WHITETAIL Deer HUNTS
IN ZONE 5 & ZONE 6
BY MDL OUTFITTERS

MDLO offers Hybrid DIY+Semi-Guided whitetail deer hunts in Southern Iowa's Zone 5 and Zone 6 that are rather unique compared to other outfitters across the state and the Midwest. We take pride in our clients taking part in their hunt planning as much as they are qualified for, especially on the Semi-Guided side. We share the assigned farm(s) and their aerial maps in August, trail camera photos/video the entire stretch from June through the hunt, and we openly discuss how and why we have the farms setup the way we do. This allows our clients to understand just how we look at farms and hunting land as well as the deer. This is a team effort, and you should take part in it as much as possible. Doing so really improves your experience of hunting trophy whitetails here in Southern Iowa with MDL Outfitters.

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MDLO operates on 100% exclusive private access where you can see a variety of quality habitat from bedding areas to travel corridors, food plots to cut crop fields, cedar thickets to hardwood ridges, and everything in between. Our farms range in size from 30 acres to 450 acres in size, and frankly, the size has nothing to do with it 95% of the time. The neighborhood is the key, and you'll come to appreciate the neighborhoods that our leases are in - lots of deer, not much hunting pressure, good age-structure, and of course, it's SOUTHERN IOWA! Anything is possible here! You just never know what could walk around the tree into view, or even better, in range.

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Taking a very small amount of hunters every week ensures that our farms remain lightly pressured if at all pressured over the entire season. We will take up to 2 or 3 hunters per week per hunt type (semi-guided: preferred and premium) throughout the season, and it is our pleasure to spread it out based on what deer we have scouted and what farms produce better than others at different points in the deer hunting season. Some of our farms could go a month or more without anyone hunting on them.

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Coming to MDLO, you should set your sights on a mature whitetail that should score north of 150" gross B&C. We have harvested a 200" deer, had a 200" deer or two to chase in 4 of the last 6 seasons, and we have had 25+ encounters with bucks in the "Booner" category over the last 6 years. In 2018, we had 100% kill rate, and every year since we have averaged 2x more daylight encounters under 100 yards than actual hunters booked, not bad when you consider 2018-2023 was strictly all semi-guided hunting. We continue to look at ways to improve as we continue to chase these corn-fed monsters in the great state of Iowa. This is southern Iowa, but it is no cake walk. We'd tie them to the tree if we could, but the DNR frowns on that sort of stuff.

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The 2024 hunting season is still underway for MDLO, so be sure to reach out or check back in after January 10th when our last hunting season closes.