Illinois Deer Outlook
November 8th, 2005 by Administrator
Illinois Deer Outlook - Our Best Hunting Areas
Based on the annual numbers, one would think we’ve reached our state’s full deer hunting potential, but we haven’t. Will we reach that pinnacle this season?
Photo by Billkenney.com
It is only reasonable to think that, sooner or later, we would reach a point where we simply couldn’t kill any greater a number of deer in Illinois.
Logic dictates that at some point in the future we would have to reach the top of our potential but, thus far, it is anyone’s guess where that place will be. Deer harvests continue to break record after record, and that maximum — the pinnacle of harvest capacity — is nowhere to be seen.
Not only are hunters filling more tags, they are increasing the take in huge leaps over previous years. During the 1996 combined archery and firearms seasons, sportsmen and sportswomen killed 128,397 deer. Only seven years later the harvest total had climbed to 162,073. That represents a 26.2 percent increase!
By Daniel D. Lamoreux