RE: Illinois - Why shotgun only?
I lived in Ill. for 40+ years and I noticed that the rural portion of the state was still quite well populated. Drive down any rural road and you will notice that homes are not that far apart. I believe that the Conservation Dept. determined that high powered rifles, due to the distance those rounds could carry may cause injuries and by limiting the firearms to shotguns would reduce the distance an errant shot would carry.
One thing it has not affected is the harvest numbers of deer taken. One other thing the Cons. Dept. did was to limit the number of hunters in any one county, and this, it seems, was also determined by the population in each county.
Deer density is still a problem, and they have set up special hunts in some of the state parks and again they have ;made a choice to allow only pistols to be used, again limiting the distance errent shots would carry.
Illinois also has a large population that are anti-gun, which shows in the fact that this state is one of the last holdouts against allowing the people to have a concealed carry law.
Russ