Your deer is down, tagged and on its way to the truck. Your harvest is not complete, though, until you register it; online, over the phone or at a license vendor.
For hunters who have registered deer for years, there is no change. Online, it takes just a couple minutes. Go to www.iowadnr.gov and click on the ‘Hunting’ tab, then on ‘Reporting Your Harvest’ and follow instructions. Be ready to enter your tag’s nine-digit harvest report number. By phone? Call 800-771-4692.
The deer should be reported by the hunter whose name is on the tag…and it must come before midnight, the day after the deer is tagged. The harvest reporting system provides information much faster, and with more detail, than the previous, cumbersome postcard survey. This leads to more responsive management of deer populations; such as adjusting county by county tags or special zone hunt allotments.