Illinois - Sand Ridge State Forest

Zim · 12-21-2010, 10:01 AM

Anyone familiar with this Sand Ridge place? I put it down for my 8th choice for turkey and drew it 3rd season. CO claims it is about tops in IL for turkey.

I called down there and they said they have a lottery for unit choice only 2 days prior to the 1st season opener!? This sounds stupid to me, give a guy a whopping 2 days to scout your unit unless you scout entire property. Very poor way to assign units.

Reason for 8th choice is I enjoy camping but there are no showers at their campgrounds. Anyone know of any private camping or truck stops down there that would have them?

jrfrmn · 12-26-2010, 08:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zim

Anyone familiar with this Sand Ridge place? I put it down for my 8th choice for turkey and drew it 3rd season. CO claims it is about tops in IL for turkey.

I called down there and they said they have a lottery for unit choice only 2 days prior to the 1st season opener!? This sounds stupid to me, give a guy a whopping 2 days to scout your unit unless you scout entire property. Very poor way to assign units.

Reason for 8th choice is I enjoy camping but there are no showers at their campgrounds. Anyone know of any private camping or truck stops down there that would have them?

No one answered my post either. I am interested in bowhunting down there, but don't know where to start there. It is a pretty big place to scout in one weekend.

Matchbook454 · 01-01-2011, 04:50 PM

I'd recommend doing what my buddy and I will be doing for gun deer season next season and that is go down there now and scout it. Try to get a map of the different zones and if you have a buddy going with you split up and look for roosts. Locate the roosting areas and then find strutting areas and funnels. Might take a couple of weekends but with large winter flocks right now it shouldn't be too hard to find a couple of promising areas to hunt. Good luck!

Zim · 01-02-2011, 07:42 AM

Ya I will be scouting in February a couple days. Hopefully I can track down one of the zone maps. I'd really rather they just randomly assign each person a zone 3 months in advance. What is the point to waiting 2 days before the opener to assign zones!!!??? I see no positives about that for anyone. No other property I've hunted in any state does anything like that, and I have hunted a ton.

Nice time to do some shed antler hunting anyway.

jrfrmn · 01-06-2011, 11:47 PM

[quote=Zim;3751438]Ya I will be scouting in February a couple days. Hopefully I can track down one of the zone maps. I'd really rather they just randomly assign each person a zone 3 months in advance. What is the point to waiting 2 days before the opener to assign zones!!!??? I see no positives about that for anyone. No other property I've hunted in any state does anything like that, and I have hunted a ton.

Illinois! Politics as usual.