fe2manz;
fe2manz wrote: the foerst preserve would not be paying anyone to be a sharpshooter--it is volunteer work by shooters approved by IDNR and the meat goes to charity. hunters cannot and will not make a dent in tehnumbers of deer--it doesn't work in Du Page or Lake or Piatt or McHenry or Cook or any other county in the midwest and it won't work here. Regulated hunting costs a great deal, and then you have to add monitoring to the places you do hunting so you are talking maybe $100,000 per year---ask any surrounding county why they do not hunt? too many good reasons not to hunt and very few good ones to do hunting.
You are incorrect when you wrote it dosent work in Piatt County.
As the Hunt in
Piatt County at Robert Allerton Park has been proven to work in the reduction of deer population numbers per square mile, A reduction in Deer Vechicle collisions in the surrounding area's,they in fact did away with the sharpshooters all together , and have since allowed Bowhunting Only in the Park.
One University Of Illinois Robert Allerton Park employee ran the program while performing his regular job of pre existing Natural Areas Manager.
Allowing 65 preselected Bowhunters to participate in the Annual Bowhunt. All 65 hunters each perform 40 hours minimum of voluntary service work to the park, attend manditory meetings and pass an Archery Proficency Shooting Test before they are allowed to participate in the hunt. All Bowhunters were required to take a Doe before they were allowed to take a Buck and Bowhunters whom wished to take a second Buck were required to take a second Doe 1st, many bowhunters took as many as 5 to 8 deer each.
All deer were subject to biologial tissue & organ samples to aid in research at the University Of Illinois. Topics of research included but were not limited to testing for CWD, EHD, West Nile Virus,Lyme D and aging of deer.