Iowa’s pheasant season has evolved over decades

Iowa’s current 70-plus day long pheasant season, opening on the last Saturday in October through Jan. 10 each year, is a long way from how it began. In the early years, from 1926-41, the season varied in length from 2-7 days, and pre-1933, it was only opened in counties where 150 landowners signed a petition to hold a season.
Shooting hours bounced around, too, from opening at noon until WW2 to avoid conflicts with morning farm work, to opening at 9 a.m., and then back to noon, then sunrise to sunset (for one year) before settling on 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., in 1966.