I checked my cameras the other day on my land in Illinois to see what deer has survived . I got this picture and its a first for me.

Looks like a DNR telemetry collar that tracks it's whereabouts. Call your nearest DNR Office and see if they're doing any of that in your area. If it's not that, maybe it stuck it's head through what looks like a collar.

I had one cross the road in front of me last week on the way to work. Looks exactly the same. Same color. Thought it may have been someone's pet at the time.

Looks like a research collar to me. Saw a cow elk back in CO with one many years ago.

Why the heck would DNR make the collar orange? To easy to see.

I know that would make seriously consider not shooting. the uncertainty of things.

yup, see collared deer and elk from time to time.it really is not that rare. if you do kill one wearing such collar, take it to your f&G OFFICE. it is not illegal to kill them (in season of coarse) and fish &game will appriciate your cooperation.

well its pretty rare for me. I have been hunting for the last 39 years and seen them on tv shows but never for real. Sent the pic to other veteran hunters I know and not one person has ever seen one while hunting or on any of there cameras. Checked with an outfitter in the area of my land who has thousands of acres he leases and runs hundreds of cameras and he has never seen this either, So I would say its definitely rare. One of my neighbors thinks he heard of someone in the area with a pet deer that wears an orange collar. We are still checking the situation out and will let you guys know what I found.

That is not the kind of collar anyone wold put on a pet. It clearly has a pod under the deer's head which I suspect it is a GPS transmitting pod for research on deer movement. They can be on a heavy nylon collar or a leather collar . I have seen them before, and I lean towards the GPS collar instead of the telemetry collar. Just because most hunters have never seen a collared deer doesn't mean they aren't out there. I did some googling for GPS pods fr research collars and I found this. The shape looks the same as in the picture. Be aware, different companies make different configurations of the collars and pods.

http://www.telemetrysolutions.com/tr...ailed-deer.php

It looks just like a smaller version of the Elk tracking collars that are on the released Elk in my area. Every Elk has one, although 2 more elk recently got ate by wolves so we're down to 15 as of last week.

Oldtimr---Although I used the word telemetry in my post, I actually intended it to mean GSP tracking like you stated.