DES MOINES – The Iowa Supreme Court upheld today a ruling by a lower court that says owning land is not enough reason to be able to hunt on the land.
Three Iowa landowners who are not permanent residents here had posed a challenge to Iowa’s hunting laws and claimed discrimination. The court considered whether the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) can revoke resident hunting licenses previously granted to Joseph Democko, Donald Jones, and James Samis on the basis they do not qualify as residents under Iowa Code. The non-resident landowners asserted that decisions of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to revoke their resident hunting licenses were not supported by substantial evidence and state hunting regulations favoring residents violate the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the United States Constitution.
The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that all three men are not residents of Iowa. The court also ruled that it is constitutional that certain advantages in Iowa law are provided to Iowa residents but not afforded to non-residents. “We find … that landownership in Iowa is not accompanied by the right to hunt on one’s own land”
The landowner [farmer] provides habitat & food for the ‘state owned’ wildlife & the DNR collects outrageous license fees to hunt on the private land. High time that the landowners deny hunting access.
As of now my gates are all closed to the public.
You are overlooking one of the biggest issues and this will one day cause serious problems for Iowa. With so much land being purchased by non-residents for hunting and not allowing enough deer to be harvested it is just a matter of time before the health of the Iowa deer herd will change. Southern Iowa has too many deer…period. CWD or another serious disease is just a matter of time for the Iowa deer herd and with the high population and the inability of the DNR to control the herd it will spread like wildfire across the state. Then the hunting will become unatractive to everyone, the state will be forced to kill off as many deer as possible to try and control the spread of disease. Non resident tags will be sold over the counter, but their won’t be many takers. The high priced brush land prices will fall as hunters will be wanting to off load thier land and people could be hesitant to buy beef and pork from Iowa. Something that seems this simple is setting up Iowa for huge risk. Ask any hunter who comes to Iowa and they will tell you Iowa is overpopulated in the areas that have good deer habitat. If you really want to satisfy both your resident interests and protect the herd you should not allow NR to purchase land in Iowa. This would allow the herd to be properly managed and enough deer to be killed to maintain a healthy herd. Otherwise you better turn your deer managment over to your DNR and remove it from your lawmakers. The focus on concerns of what non- residents hunting rights should be is causing Iowa to overlook the importance of being able to have a stable system in place that can properly manage it’s deer herd. In the end unless they don’t develop a better structure one day the ignorance of forgetting the purpose of what hunting does will spell disaster to Iowa’s deer hunting.