Illinois Deer Management
 

Pretty good article on the Illinois herd. Touches on the "touchy" outfitter topic something. The comments at the end of it are about the most interesting part I think.

How bout the 2,000,000+ acres of leased/outfitted land compared to 600,000 acres of public land??


http://www.prairiestateoutdoors.com/index.php?/pso/article/davenport_deer_management/

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

:eek:

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

I'm confused.

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

What and where is the article?

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

Is there supposed to be a link?

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

Yeah there was, sorry!



http://www.prairiestateoutdoors.com/index.php?/pso/article/davenport_deer_management/

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

Thanks for posting that article. I am an outfitter in Iowa. Altougth I am an outfitter I still believe that the deer herd state wide needs to be strictly managed. For the most part I think Iowa does a pretty good job of that. I have had discussions with DNR officials in the past about licensing outfitters here in Iowa. Right now there aren't that many here. The relatively small amount of tags, and the difficulty of drawing those tagsfor non residents keeps the amount of outfitters down. I do believe that the license limits will change someday, and I don't want our state to end up in the same predicament Illinois is in, with outfitters running the state. That is not a good thing for the deer herd, or the resident hunters.

My conversations have really lead nowhere, because the state doesn't want to get involved with the outfitters. I have proposed licensing fees, a cap on the number of outfitters statewide, a cap on the amount of land that can be leased by an outfitter, but they don't think it is a problem right now, so they really don't care. I agree it is really not a problem right now when compared to Illinois, but why should we wait for the problem when we could do something now to prevent the problem from happening in the future. I am sure people will find flaws with my thinking, but it is just an idea to get the ball rolling.

Anyways, I think the article gives some credence to some of the points I was trying to make with our offcials here. Maybe it will help me convince them something needs to be done.

Thanks
Dan

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

Wisconsin I believe has an "earn a buck tag program" meaning you must shoot a doe before you can get a buck tag, I think IL should think about only allowing a 2nd buck tag if you shooot a doe.

And abolishing check stations I think can only have made poachers etc...run wild, I've heard of guys shooting 5 bucks etc.....with their wives' tag, sons etc....which c'mon isn't fair to the rest of us. I thought everyone by now understood QDM? particularly that you want around 1:1 buck:doe ratios. I still don't really understand guys who take a yearling buck in place of a mature doe? What is just any old bucks allure? There's a neighbor near where we hunt who always takes yearling bucks, the only answer I can come up with is supplementing their food with venison and a yearling buck probably has more meat than even a mature doe. Though I wish he would limit his yearling and button bucks and harvest more does. Also you don't need to get the entire state back in check this year, if everyone would practice taking a doe for every buck they took, eventually their heard would balance back to 1:1. Personally I'm not shooting a buck if I'm not putting it on the wall, I'll take does til then. Less I wanted some rattling antlers, which seems like a waste, and possibly shoot a lesser buck for management. But these guys are just shooting anythign with antlers. In IL a 2.5yr old can be a big deer, but by 3.5 they really start to get big in my opinion, if we bumped the avg age up just 1 year, we'd really start seeing some monsters.

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

Also why not more expensive tags? Particularly non-residents, I pay 10-15X for a non-res tag out west, I think here in IL we aren't charging that much, let's increase both res and non-res. I think a non-res is like $250 bucks? Our whitetail deer is to IL what an Elk is to Nevada/utah/arizona. We really only have 1 big game specie and it's phenominal, a non res elk tag in nevada is around $1200 through the state and we're charging $200-250? I know deer out west vary from about $250-450 for a non-res, I think if we increased res by$10 and therefore non-res by 50-100 depending what our multiplier is, that would help, I'm sick of gov't talking about problems, making all of us crazy about them, then doing nothing about them, when in a weekend most of them could be well on their way to being solved, if we just implemented change/ made it mandatory. New bill: kill a doe for a 2nd buck tag, done, period, next issue. That didn't take long. And requires no effort etc...

RE: Illinois Deer Management
 

Great article.
Ill keeps down its path, it will no longer be a HNI location state:D

Proper State deer management is key IMO. Just look at KY and how fast they are moving up the chain.
10 years ago was KY a Location state?;)