I think to put it in the simplest of terms........if you treat ALL deer EVERYWHERE with the assumption that they are pressured, skitish,paranoid, creatures of habit and hunt them carefully and according to weather and wind you'll be successful to some degree.......what animals are available to you is then dictated by where you are.

I hunt these PA deer like a frckin' Ninja and am still lucky to see a decent 2.5yr old buck where I hunt. I take that same skill set to somewhere where there are more deer, more mature deer.......more target animals and it seems like a piece of cake to shoot that same 2.5yr old and now I'm in the game for 3.5yr old deer and up without changing a thing about how I hunt.

I sincerely think hunting pressured deer and the tactics it takes to kill even average bucks in these places prepares you quite nicely to hunt a place like the midwest. From my experiences at least ,even if you are hunting pressured deer on public ground in Illinois it is still a breath of fresh air from pressured ground in a state like PA.
Then when someone like me finds himself on decent private ground in Illinois I feel like I've died and gone to Deersyneyland, and cannot fathom why everyone doesn't kill a P&Y buck every other year at least.