I'm not from Lincoln, but my work takes me through there several times a year. Also drive through every year for hunting trips. Been hunting the public statewide for 25+ years. Also scout new properties statewide every year searching, all the way down to Cairo! Also hunted Clinton Lake. Sorry to say but you arrived on the scene about 20 years too late to find unpressured quality hunting anywhere in Illinois. We had great quality on public 25 years ago. Since politicians took over our deer management, everything has gone south on our public land. About the same as Madigan has done with our tax & spend budget management & state employee bloated salaries & pensions. We went from a real nonresident quota, like Iowa, to a pretend "feel good" one that is in fact OTC. Now they implemented a 3 month crossgun season for everyone, including the entire rut. Sound like a plan? You think quality is going to improve any time soon? This is quite evident when you see point creep in Iowa go from 1 to 2 to 3 to now 4. If Illinois had any quality on public, you most certainly would not see that.

Wish I had better news, but this is the sad reality. I actually drew one of the best gun permits in Illinois last year in the lottery, but literally threw it in the garbage can, because I had an Iowa archery tag in my pocket. Today many nonresidents still flock to Illinois for deer hunting due to past reputation, but what little quality remains is exclusively on private land.

Here's who we have managing our deer herd these days. This lady is either retarded or skipped high school history class:
http://ilhousedems.com/2017/03/29/sc...-of-sportsmen/
She has zero education in wildlife biology. She is not qualified to work for the DNR. Yet she and many other politicians like her are the ones taking coin from special interest groups to exploit the Illinois deer herd for personal profit. Welcome to Illinois politics.