I've hunted cutover, riverbottom, open hardwoods, tree farms, grass land, swamps, etc. mostly in Mississippi and Arkansas.

I've also been to Illinois on a bowhunt and I would tend to agree with you. It is VERY easy to eyeball a topo map and pinpoint the "best" places to put up a stand in Illinois. That becomes much more difficult when hunting large tracts of solid woods, been there, it literally takes hundreds or thousands of hours on stand to see the big picture.

My favorite, I prefer hunting the Mississippi River bottoms, from south Mississippi up to Illinois, it's all good and probably some of the best hunting on the planet.