This is one of those topics you can talk about until you're blue in the face and not get any where. East central Illinois, except for a few areas, needs more than quotas an deer. Driving between Bloomington and Champaign on I74 you can count on one hand the areas with quality wildlife habitat. Most farmers are farming road ditch to road ditch because they have no incentive not to. As big farms get bigger, fence rows and timber stands are turning into tillable ground.

Don't get me wrong. I grew up farming, and I know the farmers are trying to make some money in hard times, but it hurts to see a fencerow disappear for a couple extra acres, or quality timber on ultra erodible hillsides clearcut in favor of tillable ground.

In the areas of declining deer herds, more than just regulating the number of permits available needs to be done. I do agree that some sort of regional management may be needed instead of trying to manage the whole states herd with general regulations. We have 5 regions designated by the DNR. I think that if they could come up with some type of quota system with in those regions for bowhunting they would do a better job managing the herd on a more local basis. I can't see how Champaign County and Pike County could possibly require the same management programs. I don't know if the deer populations could be on more opposite ends of the spectrum between these 2 counties. Granted there are always going to be small areas within these areas the are above or below the region average, but this would have to be better than managing the state as one.

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Live - Urbana, IL
Hunt - Knox Co., IL