We are in the middle of several deer hunting seasons in Iowa and the Greene County Conservation Department is encouraging people to follow the laws and help out the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

Greene County Conservation Director Tanner Scheuermann says the second shotgun season is happening now across Iowa through December 18th and the late bow hunting season is coming up from December 19th-January 10th. He describes the documents that hunters need to have with them to ensure they are legal to hunt deer.

“You got it have your regular hunting license, habitat fee, and you have to have your deer tag as well. You can purchase those online through the DNR website, you can go to Walmart, up to the (Greene County) Recorder’s Office here in the (Greene County) Courthouse. There’s definitely going to be quite a few of those around too, which is pretty typical around Greene County.”

For the first time in several years, the DNR issued Greene County 100 antlerless deer tags, which Scheuermann explains why that decision was made earlier this year.

“We talked to some of the wildlife managers and biologists around, and we did have the one case of Chronic Wasting Disease detected within Greene County last year. I think, the reason being, we want to see some more deer harvested and we want to encourage those hunters to get those deer heads back to the DNR.” 

Scheuermann is asking for hunters to donate their deer heads by dropping them off at two locations in the county where there are blaze orange freezers, at the Milwaukee Depot in Jefferson and at Spring Lake Park. He says by doing that it will help monitor Chronic Wasting Disease in the deer population in the county.