East Central Illinois

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DropTyne
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East Central Illinois

Unread postby DropTyne » Mon May 15, 2017 10:03 am

Considering taking a job in East Central Illinois. Not much for public that way. Any of you guys ever hunt there? Is it hard to get permission? Quality animals? Does Illinois have an MFL type program?


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burtle
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Re: East Central Illinois

Unread postby burtle » Wed May 17, 2017 12:34 pm

There's a lot of public land. There's guys who kill some nice deer off public ground around here.

As far as getting permission to hunt private...yeah, that won't happen anymore. A lot of land is leased out to outfitters.
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Bigb
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Re: East Central Illinois

Unread postby Bigb » Thu May 18, 2017 2:13 pm

I hunt in West Central Illinois and I have to respectfully disagree with Burtle. There isn't much public land until you get to the southern part of the state. Don't get me wrong, there is some public ground but it gets hunted pretty hard. You can find some good deer but you have to work really hard. The good thing is we have the Shawnee N.F. and depending on where you are located, its only a few hour drive. 250,000 acres of good land and it does have some good bucks. Plus, there is a lot of other good public land in that area. If you google "Illinois public hunting Results" it gives you a annual report of harvests at each individual public site. The good thing is you will also be close to Indiana and there are also of plenty of opportunities there. They have a one buck limit so its a good up and coming state.

Private land it hard to come by unless you are looking to lease. Most farmers/land owners know they can make good money off of leases now.
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ol_ben
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Re: East Central Illinois

Unread postby ol_ben » Fri May 19, 2017 7:16 am

This is only tangentially related but I FOIA'd the excel spreadsheets the DNR uses to generate the pdf they publish on their website for public land harvest numbers. It's 9 or 10 years worth of data which is cool because you can generate reports on what sites are the most productive overall, most productive per acre, per hunter trip, etc. PM me if you want 'em. Just to be clear, the data are available on the DNR site but not in spreadsheet form.
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Bigb
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Re: East Central Illinois

Unread postby Bigb » Sat May 20, 2017 7:35 am

Ol' Ben, I do like the report they have, only issue is they do "hunter trips" but don't say what species they are after. If you look at the site and don't realize that have put and take pheasant hunts you'll think that state park gets hit HARD. One thing I'll say that is Silverr Springs SP ever opens up to Deer hunting on the entire property, I will be first in line for that place. I pheasant hunted there in January and in all my life, I have never seen so much deer sign. It's basically a giant sanctuary other than the few acres they let people deer hunt.
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ol_ben
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Re: East Central Illinois

Unread postby ol_ben » Sat May 20, 2017 7:45 am

Bigb wrote:Ol' Ben, I do like the report they have, only issue is they do "hunter trips" but don't say what species they are after. If you look at the site and don't realize that have put and take pheasant hunts you'll think that state park gets hit HARD. One thing I'll say that is Silverr Springs SP ever opens up to Deer hunting on the entire property, I will be first in line for that place. I pheasant hunted there in January and in all my life, I have never seen so much deer sign. It's basically a giant sanctuary other than the few acres they let people deer hunt.


Agreed on the hunter trips stat. I don't really use that one unless I'm just looking overall at how well people fare there. Also worth keeping in mind is that there are sites where not all harvests are reported, and some reported at far lower rates than reality (example - my neighbor noticed that there were only a handful of reports at a site he grew up hunting but he knows way more people get deer there).


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