If we are looking to blame someone for the massive increases in license fees, we should look in the mirror. We are the ones who support the companies/cable channels/manufacturers/magazines/etc who have turned whitetail deer (or any huntable species for that matter) into commodities. I live in Illinois, so the fees here don't hurt me too much. However, I just paid over $300 to go hunt with an old friend in Iowa this fall. I didn't like it. I could have thought of another way to use the money. The point is that I paid what the market will bear. If I don't buy the license, some schmo behind me certainly will. Illinois only sold 12,000 NR archery permits annually before they put the cap on. Now they can sell 15,000 in 9 HOURS!!! Hunters and the state created a perceived demand that made those permits a hot item.

Illinois, through 50 years of good management, good habitat, and good hunting, has suddenly found itself in possession of one of the most coveted"hunts" in the whitetail universe. In this time of shrinking budgets, can you blame them for capitalizing on this? If you want to be mad at the state, please be mad at it for not putting that money directly back into the resource. But as I write this I have hunting magazines on my desk, and the Outdoor Channel is on the TV. I'm just as much to blame as anyone else.....or we could just blame Bill Jordan and all those other guys for letting the secret out....