2023 IL Gun Deer Season

No f#ck!ng $h!t...like..why.....super God damn annoying and elementary when it comes to website ui/ux

....or their 'regulations book' that 70% ads. Cut that shit out, just regs, send it out with fishing/hunting license purchase, and iowadnr.gov just becomes a calendar, a map page and a contact us page.

Alas...government....take something easy and mess it up..
😂 I hadn’t really thumbed through the regulations book to much this fall but then the other day someone was talking about sunset/sunrise tables and I always remembered referencing that on the last page of the regs. Not no more! A little blip about using a weather app or the Iowa dnr app for possibly some of the most important information that every hunter probably looks up throughout the season, legal shooting times! But they managed to fit another ad in its place!
 
I hunted the first firearms season with three buddies in southern IL. Those guys killed a small 11 a small 8 and a doe Friday morning, then all went home leaving me in camp solo. In three days of pretty hard hunting I saw 23 bucks from the stand and lots of does. Three of the bucks were pretty good ones with one being exceptional. Passed everything up and the big one was far out of range. Will be back for second season, likely by myself.
 
I hunted the first firearms season with three buddies in southern IL. Those guys killed a small 11 a small 8 and a doe Friday morning, then all went home leaving me in camp solo. In three days of pretty hard hunting I saw 23 bucks from the stand and lots of does. Three of the bucks were pretty good ones with one being exceptional. Passed everything up and the big one was far out of range. Will be back for second season, likely by myself.
Sounds like you need some better friends.
 
I heard from my son in champaign and he said they had snow. Didn't stick to roads though. We only had rain but today is the first day this fall that it really felt cold.
 
Snow didn't last long, looks like rain for latter part of first day second season. I missed first three days as my wife was in hospital and also got bumped off my only private land spot. Hopefully better this coming weekend for me.
 
Read some interesting content in my recently delivered Illinois Outdoors News. Thought I would just tack on to this thread than creating a new one.

10 year success trend in Illinois is on the downhill.

2011-2012 season had 43% of hunters killing at least one deer. 15% of hunters took more than 1 deer.

2021-2022 season had 29% of hunters killing at least one deer. 13% of hunters took more than 1 deer.

Illinois has went from above average to below average success rates when rated between midwestern states. This probably isn't a shock to any Illinois resident but confirms what most of us have discussed in prior threads.
 
Read some interesting content in my recently delivered Illinois Outdoors News. Thought I would just tack on to this thread than creating a new one.

10 year success trend in Illinois is on the downhill.

2011-2012 season had 43% of hunters killing at least one deer. 15% of hunters took more than 1 deer.

2021-2022 season had 29% of hunters killing at least one deer. 13% of hunters took more than 1 deer.

Illinois has went from above average to below average success rates when rated between midwestern states. This probably isn't a shock to any Illinois resident but confirms what most of us have discussed in prior threads.
That totally aligns with what I'm seeing. Are you noticing less deer by you? I can only speak for the northern most counties and southern most. But I would say deer sightings in the last year are down 25% over the last 5 years. And down at least 50% over the last 10. Although that is somewhat skewed up north here due to when they decimated the herd with the cwd shooting. There were several times I would see 10 to 20 deer in a sit. I can't remember a time in the last handful of years where I've seen more than 5 and that is a rare occurrence.
 

Forum statistics

Threads
111,145
Messages
1,948,678
Members
35,048
Latest member
Elkslayer38
Back
Top