For anyway who does not know who the top dogs at the Illinois DNR are and how to get hold of them (I couldn't find email addresses):

https://dnr.state.il.us/director/

I really think it is important for all of us to contact our elected officials and tell them exactly how we feel (assuming everyone is registered and votes). I know I spend hundreds of hours a year hunting, shooting, scouting, planning, fishing etc. The least I can do is spend a half hour now and then to send a letter, email or make a call to let the people that REPRESENT US know how I feel!

http://www.elections.il.gov/district...byaddress.aspx

That will be an issue. When you write a letter to an elected official they really don't care all that much. Your just another letter that most likely aides will be reading. But if you are one that can articulate your letter in a way that let's them know what you want and also why it would benefit the and the state then that would be more likely to be read.

This is probably the best post I've seen that deals with the shortage of deer we are seeing. Good to see someone gets it and doesn't just blame EHD. Yes EHD has something to do with it, but there are a lot deeper causes to this that a lot of people seem to not understand.

Number 1 and 2 are the main reasons for the shortage of deer in this state. State Farm is based out of Bloomington and Allstate is based out of Northbrook. With the amount jobs and money have in this state, the government quietly does whatever they can to make them happy. People think that license money is why the state issues so many permits. The money the state takes in on deer licenses is nothing compared to the tax money these two companies pay to the state. If either of these companies even mention they are thinking about leaving, the state is going to do whatever they can to make them happy. Also, the amount of money that these companies pay out for deer vs vehicle collisions is A LOT more than what they take in with deer license fees. If either of these two companies wants to flex their muscles, guess what, as much as I hate to say it, hunters are on the losing end.

If you want to make a difference, don't just send a email saying, "The hunting in Illinois sucks, you (the government official is to blame) and I'm not hunting here again" Those emails don't do much. If you want to make a difference, go the extra mile and type out a letter. Anytime I send an important letter, I make sure it look professional and then some. Make a professional header and make sure it looks like a Fortune 500 CEO sent it. Give reasonable explanations on what you feel should be improved and the repercussions on what will happen if they don't. Personally, I then send it in a envelope via Fedex. I want them to question if this came from someone who makes $500,000 a year and has some influence in the community. Like what someone said above, emails do nothing and rarely see the intended persons eyes. A letter sent via Fedex or USPS has a lot better chance of seeing someone of importance. Think about it, you get a lot of junk email that you just delete, but if you get a personalized Fedex envelope in the email, you are much more likely to pay attention to the envelope.

I've done more than send an email to talk about what I feel they are doing wrong. Don't just send emails, send actual letters and make them look professional, we will get a lot more done by unifying and doing that rather than just sending angry emails.

Excellent post fastetti! I couldn't agree more.

I think the other important course of action people need to do is to VOTE! I have started similiar posts on other forums and I've gotten some feedback that it's a lot harder for people outside of Chicago to vote because of the distance to the polling stations. I did some research and it turns out that Illinois is a "no excuse" absentee ballot state. What this means, from what I understand, is that you can vote by mail (you just have to request a ballot ahead of time) or vote in person ahead of election date. So there really is no excuse to not vote anymore.

To put this in prespective, Brady lost to Quinn by about 32,000 votes in 2010. In that same year, 142,135 regular resident hunting licenses were sold. If even just 25% of those 142,135 hunters had voted for Brady (assuming they hadn't voted at all), or convinced someone else to vote for Brady (assuming this person didn't vote), Brady would have received an extra 35,533 votes, making him the governor of Illinois.

We almost don't see what's coming because most of us have not really been hit in the pocket books yet!?
I just heard again WE ARE PRINTING 80 BILLION A MONTH!!!
This is great BEN BERNAKE but we are going to drop like a sack of potatoes as soon as Republicans take over. THen we have explaining to dumb libs who don't get it.
And that fits in to Illinois.


WAIT!? I'm sorry I derailed the subject again. We're we talking about Hunting??
I don't believe in any of that chronic wasting disease crap is depleting our herds.
LOL!!!!

Not sure if anyone else saw this article yesterday, but it seems someone else has a similar idea to those being kicked around on here:

http://www.suntimes.com/sports/outdo...rd-abound.html

I sent Dale Bowman an email requesting contact information for his friend so I'll let you know what I find out.

For those of you who haven't checked out Hearland Outdoors website, you really should. It incorporates a lot of the ideas I have proposed in this thread. Lots of good reading!

http://www.heartlandoutdoors.com/

Am I wrong or does this Dale Bowman sound like another tool. What about the Boom of coyote population? I would take that over CWD.
Also it is complete B.S. if this guy doesn't think that we shouldn't be nipping at the IDNR's heels. It is all political all the way up the chain.
What do you guys think?