The 1st lottery for Illinois resident deer permits is being done right now. I went to site to check if there were any results yet and that was the info posted.

Good luck guys.

I wonder if Illinois will ever go to just some sort of over the counter license for deer instead of the whole lottery permit thing.

I actually like the lotto system and the only thing I would change is resident only firearms permits or the muzzleloader permits be not restricted to a specific county. It always happens that I draw for one county and find a monster on some property I can hunt in another county. Oh Well I enjoy it all regardless.

~Jeff

The county thing perplexes me as well. But, I come from MI, which is basically a free-for-all system, all tags OTC and you can buy tags during season as well. One extreme to the next.

Myself I think the lotteries for counties and firearms and OTC for bow is good.

How long does it usually take them to post the lottery results?

The whole by county thing is for deer management or trying to manage the deer herd in Illinois. So many permits issued for certain couties, some more, some less. Same way when the had the first handgun season. First year that was 10 counties and then it's progressed up a lot more. I'd also like to see them sold over the counter. I have a friend that hunts in Missouri and they can buy them that way but I guess they have a database so they control how many permits per county...don't quote me on that though. I do know that he has a assigned hunter number for the state of Missouri even though he is a non resident. I think Missouri has a good system.

I agree! I also like the fact that the State allows us to now enter both the General Firearms and Muzzleloader-Only draws at the same time! It's a good system.