You would just wish that the saved money would be funneled back into land aquistion for hunting to preserve the sport for future genearations of Illinois hunters but it isn't. A lot of the money, or so I read on an Illinois site, is actually being directed towards Hunters for the Hungry or whatever that program is. What they don't tell you is a good portion of the meat is going to the Prison system in Cook county to decrease the budget of feeding inmates... Great... Just great, just a nice way for the DNR to fund ANOTHER bloated Illinois Bureacracy..

The check stations in general... I don't like them being gone because I believe it kept the borderline honest people honest. The tradition and all is nice and everything and it will probably hurt some businesses but the DNR and state don't really seem to care about the small business selling liscences (You know a place actually looses money if you buy a fishing liscence with a credit card and buy nothing else at the same time? A combo is a break even prop.) All they really care about.. I'm done, not going to rant any longer.

if saving their money is what they are trying to do, then there thosands of other ways. as Wolfhound76 said, "doing away with the paper work." well now they are going to pay someone to take down the info. from the hunter...as before they didn't have to. so the person the are paying will be taking more money from the state when they dont even need those people to be working. also bwhunter501 said it right to. just because a person calls in a deer doesn't mean they have to put the tag on that deer. for all we know they wont tag it at all. poaching is going to a record high this year, and all of us know it. if they think having more conservation cops working during season will help, that there wastes more money yet. because where i hunt i dont think i have ever seen a con. cop around. its all going to hell... nothing we can do besides hunt with our own common sense and do what we know is right.

http://www.dnr.state.il.us/pubaffairs/2005/August/deerpins.htm

i think it is kinda dumb,because there are probally people out who will shoot a deer and not call it in,as for me only been to check station4 time,gun season 2years ago 2time during bowseason last year 1for me and 1for dad and gun season last year with father but will miss the stories,,like gun season last year we went to the check station and there was a guy who shoot a buck and when they got to the check station the antler where cut off of it and they had a doe tag on it say ing that it had no antlers when they shot it,,never heard any more about it after that,,we didnt want to be nose

Our esteemed DNR director Joel Brunsvold has said that the DNR has modernized our check-in system with the implementation of the phone-in check system. We'll see how it works. We'll see.

My question is...........How many other states (planets?) have a similar, phone-in systems & how have they worked out? Anyone have any idea?

quite a few I beleive. and I wonder how down hill their stae has went ...(as in poaching) I can't wait to see how many deer DON'T get called in. This system is a HUGE mistake, and I am certain that there will be more problems then you can shake a stick at ... as it were.

For me its a big lose because i hunt in the middle of no where so cell phone signals are few and far between. i might have to drive 15 or 20 miles just to get a signal! Yet our checkin station was only 10 minutes away but i guess that doesnt matter any more does it?[:-]

like deerslayer said. the numbers will drop. i bet there will be about 500 less deer this year than last years total #. if this is the case, then that ought to be a sign to DNR.

I know Colorado has a phone system that they use but they call you and ask if you harvested any of the animals that you had permits for. They do not call everyone they call a certain number of permit holders and in the end estimate the amount of animals killed. I for one think that the no check station idea is good I don't believe that we should have to haul our deer all over Gods creation just to check them in. As far as people not being truthful about what they kill, we probably had that before. With people just not checking in their deer. I am concerned about the amount of calls that there will be on the opening evening and how long it will take you to get through.

I'm with DS. i like going to the check station. also, i know acquaintances that do things that i do not agree with. the only thing that kept them fairly honest, is having to check them in