Missouri Deer Hunting
Missouri deer hunting has long been enjoyed by residents and a pass by state to non-residents. Many think that an OTC deer tag state has lower quality whitetail deer. A mistaken belief.
Missouri's four point one side restriction has matured well into making it a trophy whitetail state. The books show that to be true.
Missouri Deer Hunting Quality is State Managed
Missouri has an older and more recent four point one size minimum for harvest regulation making for plenty of good eight point racks and more importantly more 10 and 12 point racks. Most eight point racks are safe in this zone to most deer hunters having seen better trophy quality whitetail deer.
Older zone to the left, newer zone to the right.
2013 Mid-America Hunting Association deer lease land heavily overlaps the four point one side restriction zone.
Missouri Deer in Pictures
We spend most of the entire year in the field working leases.
These Missouri deer pictures are of late summer/fall trophy bucks in velvet. Having an idea where trophy quality whitetail bucks are is one means by which we select land for lease or renew a lease and recommend hunts.
Picture quality reflects a pocket sized camera we are limited to carrying about the leases when surveying lease habitat quality for contracting record.
Notice these are long range hand held camera pictures and not motion detector game camera pictures. We captured them from walking the ground. We are not professional wildlife photographers and make the nest use of we can with our pocket cameras.
The low light appearance is as much from the early morning overcast conditions as the long range.
Such summertime activity of relaxed behavior in the open well before dark and after first light makes roadside glassing an effective scouting technique. The next best technique is to get away from the road, walk over the ridge and see what cannot be readily seen by most.
Missouri bow season offers the longest single whitetail season of our three state area and has the most bow huntable habitat. Firearms season is during the peak of the rut in middle November. And, muzzleloader season is centered between that of Kansas and Iowa allowing for the muzzleloader hunter to hunt Iowa and Kansas without overlap.
Missouri does have plans in the work to move the firearm's deer season from its current middle two weeks of November to the third and fourth week. The intent is to allow mature bucks to have the first week of prime breeding period without gun hunter pressure. That second week in November would be archery deer season.
Missouri has the moniker of the "Rivers State" with large coverage watersheds bringing tree lined drainage's and many small wood patches into large grain crop fields mostly of corn and soybean. This makes for the right combination of cover and food within a small area that is repeated many times over.
Most pass on Missouri due to a number of reasons typically centered on having never read or heard much about any trophy whitetail deer success. This is much to the pleasure of the trophy hunters that find Missouri whitetail's to be the very thing desired. The cause for this is the larger whitetail deer count is due to this river state's significant wooded terrain creates means more trophy racks due to more deer numbers overall. We have a number of 200+ racks from our Missouri private land self guided deer hunters. That surprises some hunters and we do not emphasize it much as many refuse to believe an over-the-counter tag state can be that productive. Well, it is.
The value MAHA brings to the average whitetail deer hunter is do it yourself hunts at less cost of time, effort and money than any other private land options to be found.
After the first hunt what brings our hunters back for years of hunts to come is not our prices, it is our deer hunt quality being non-competitive, the right habitat, the right region of Missouri and most importantly of all, the MAHA staff of Jon Nee (owner and operator) and John Wenzel (partner). They are whitetail deer hunters that understand the nuance and subtly that makes for the better hunts. That intangible aspect can be discovered by anyone that talks to us as it can be detected that we know what it means to spend hours in a deer stand working for that trophy buck in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. After these three states we simply run out of time.
Missouri whitetail deer hunting is as good as it is due to it being a river state more so than our Iowa and Kansas ground.
It is not just the Missouri River that makes this state's trophy whitetail deer topography being largely composed of flat valleys with tree covered ridges making the right combination of farm crop field food source and year round woody cover. It is repeating that combination over more area than can be counted.
Add to the Missouri River that of the Osage, the Grand plus more than any but the most dedicated geography student could remember with all their accompanying tributaries. This makes a lot of whitetail deer habitat producing a lot of racked bucks with a fair percentage that are trophy quality.
While a good many doe and scrap racked bucks are also present throughout, the food, cover, genetic stock and sheer whitetail deer numbers mean more trophy whitetail racks. It is a numbers game and as such seeing more whitetail per day in Missouri is the rule and while many are non shooters there will come to pass a wallhanger in time. That wallhanger is not just based on whitetail deer numbers, but also that our Missouri deer lease land is within the food rich agricultural region.
Missouri Deer Habitat
Whitetail deer habitat is tough to illustrate with ground level pictures. Interior to the woods pictures show lots of trees. Exterior panoramic shots offer lots of trees without detail. Aerials miss out on habitat quality. So we do the best we can and here are some examples. These pictures showing two sides of a field cut into the woods are such a case. This happens to be a very fine deer lease.
A Missouri creek bottom connecting to another creating a good sized wood patch. Too thick to see through to include from the center of it facing out to either side.
This Missouri deer lease also has tall grass CRP in addition to the large grain crop fields typical of Missouri in soybean and corn, and no cattle anywhere. Experienced central mid-west deer hunters know the tall grass fields are prime bedding spots. Many traveling hunters have not experienced tall grass fields and see them no different than weed fields or minimal deer bedding areas in their home state. Soon those gaining experience with grass bedding areas distinguish between tall and short prairie grass as well as the quality of the tall grass in terms of holding potential.
