Higher than I expected from what I seen and heard from others. Can get county breakdowns at link https://www.dnr.illinois.gov/news/Documents/IDNR-DeerPrelimHarvest-January2019.pdf
That is interesting. I do not keep up on all the other states but given the ability to shoot two bucks alone led me to believe far more deer would be shot in Illinois. We have a week left, but I Ohio is headed for one of our lowest season totals in a while at low 170,000's.
Here in NY 2017 totals are just over 203,000. I thought for sure you boys out there would be putting down more than us Yanks!!
A pretty substantial part of IL is nothing but open cropland as far as the eye can see, which is why our harvest totals aren't as high as other states. For comparison, IL has about 4 million acres of forested land where NY has roughly 19 million.
This always fascinates me, but then again, when I realize just how few hunters these states like Illinois, Iowa and Missouri have, in comparison to my home state here in PA, it isn't all that surprising. PA harvested 367,000 deer in 2017. This number has been declining too, due a lot to less hunters in the woods and less deer than before (this isn't a bad thing as the state had a deer problem back in the 90's).
Over all our deer density is good where there are deer. Illinois is a crop desert which is The same reason our waterfowl migration shifted IMO. Not a lot of natural habitat or vast public land compared to other states.
Can't speak for the entire state, but it was 95° here during youth season. We didn't even hear a shot all weekend.