SA, I already know for a fact that outiftting is growing in this area and others and I am not in the Golden Triangle. Far from it. There are several guides around here that are leasing/buying up as much ground as possible one leasing in excess of 8,000 acres and several farmers I know are thinking of opening up shop too as soon as they think they can guarentee the business to take more ground out of production for animal habitat. It will happen, I don't know how much more it will happen but it will.

One would think that the high prices would keep NR's from coming in but most who are using the outfitters don't seem to care about another 100-200 bucks, as long as they are getting what they paid for which is a "good" hunt that hopefully ends in a big buck. I personally don't like the thought of $500 dollar tags to hunt in Illinois and could think of alternative measures to raise funding for the DNR (And have seen some interesting ones for other organizations in the state) but fortunately I am not King so what I want can't happen. I also don't think unlimted either sex tags are a good idea either (Prefer DNR have the right to regulate the herd how Biologists see fit, not pencil pushers in Chicago land see fit).

Pike County isn't the only county producing great bucks but I do understand what you are saying about their odd success rate with very poor (According to QDM principles) ratio's. Other parts of the state are not in the same situation as far as extreme unbalanced. From what the long time locals have told me this area has balanced out a lot since they put the two buck maximum in however many years ago that was. i have heard the same from other areas of the state that are not as known for Trophy bucks all though they still have some big ones.. The local Archery Check stations were telling me that they had never seen so many big bucks and does like they did this year.. It's a shame that they are elminating this because they couldn't get someone to collect the data... There were check stations that hadn't been visited by the DNR for 2 years.