I don't know if this will help much, but I live in Chicago and went to the University of Kansas and hunted about 30 minutes outside Lawrence, KS (and hour and 20 from KC)at a place called Clinton Lake. I was there mainly for school and chase girls
, but got out to do adecent amount of hunting while I was there. I'll tell you what, there are some BIG bucks out there. Unfortunately, I found them when I was rabbit and bird hunting and not with a rifle. There are thousands of acres there to hunt and it is all situated along Clinton Lakes shoreline. There are pockets here and there that hold a lot of deer. Prozac is right, there are a decent amount of Deer hunters opening day, but the majority of them are hunting the corn and bean fields. If you get into the woods a decent ways, you'll find the deer and hopefully some bucks. Those public deer know when deer season starts and sit in the woods and thick stuff til just about dark. You get back into the stuff a mile off the road, I think you'll getan opportunity at a deer.They are there though, I pretty much half assed it during gun season, only making it out twice due to midterms and papers and still managed to get a large doe in about 4 hours of hunting of sitting with myback to a tree. I wasn't looking for much more, just some tasty Venison
If I would have put time into a blind and scouting im sure I couldhave gotten one of the many 8 and 10 points I saw during upland game season.Good luck, they have some big deer out there, the ones you see on TV are no joke!!