In those 10 days, I've seen more shooter bucks than I would see in 5+ years here in MS..... To put it bluntly, its fairly easy to shoot a decent (110+) buck in Illinois. They have a well defined rut, farm land terrain that funnels movement, etc..... I know one guy out there that has killed 7 P&Y bucks on 40 acres.... 40 freaking acres! Down here you can't kill 7 squirrels on 40 acres, much less P&Y deer.
You make a great point that I left out of my original post. The terrain up in Illinois makes it so easy to pattern and set up on deer it's like taking candy from a baby. Here in Alabama you have huge solid blocks of almost featureless timber. In most places there is literally nothing to channel, funnel or concentrate the deer into any one area or trail. In other words it's hard to pattern deer movement where there is no pattern to the deer movement.
Last I heard mature deer were nocturnal everywhere.
As long as the temps stayed cool we had no problems seeing big bucks during daylight hours on any of our trips to Illinois. By comparrison the mature bucks here in Bama are so nocturnal they are scared to shift their @$$ from one side of their bed to the other before 10 pm.