As am I. I'm not though with the firearms deer season. Move the season back and start It the 1st weekend of December. Also give out more doe tags. They should also make cross tagging bucks Illegal too.
Cut way back on the antlerless tags. The doe slaughter in Indiana has got to stop. Between this and several bad outbreaks of EHD our herd has been slammed pretty hard. Harvest limits I would be happy with. 3 deer, with the option of one being a buck for all of the Indiana deer season. Kill your 3 with any legal weapon in any season, but 3 is all you get. The IDNR claims our state is over populated with deer and it needs reduced. Actually it's about making money at the cost of our deer herd. IN has never had an over population of deer except in a few state parks where hunting was never allowed and that has been well taken care of.
One thing I would love to see change is allowing bowhunting during all firearm seasons. Doesn't make a lick of sense to allow it in some seasons and not others. Muzzleloader is the longest range weapon legal in IL and is open for bowhunting so it can't be safety concerns. Tag prices are a bit different between firearm and archery, so guessing that is the reason. Other than that IL is pretty good as far as I'm concerned. Long season, copious antlerless permits and two bucks.
I would also like Illinois change its laws on carry archery during gun season. It makes absolutely no sense that we can do It during the rest of the seasons. I would also like to get rid of the late ( doe ) gun seasons. In my opinion deer numbers are down. Late season archery can be a great time to hunt but the deer never get settled down because we gun hunt the heck out of them.
For those of you who wanted earn-a-buck, watch what you wish for. They did that a few years here in WI and I went two seasons of rifle hunting without seeing a single deer. I would make it so we dont have to wear backtags, or a license plate on your back. During changing weather conditions it makes it very dangerous and difficult to add or remove layers while in your stand and switch your back tag to the outside layer.
^^^^Would love for this to happen. Seen many bucks chasing does while scouting after our season ends on Jan 31.
Oklahoma make a 6 point gun rule and 4 point archery rule along with 1 buck tag! Not enough mature deer in this state.
I would also agree with the being able to bowhuntin during gun season. It doesn't make much sense to restrict it on the two main seasons, 3 day weekend before thanksgiving and 4 day weekend after, and allow it the rest. The only thing I can't think is the volume of hunters may be a lot more during that time than the rest.
Id love to see a 1 Buck limit in MI for 5 years than think about changing it. We have almost the same terrain and crops as WI, IL, IA and others. We have a bigger deer population than those other states and we have more state land and possibly more area of the state that u might consider good sanctuaries. Any buck in MI that makes it to 4 or 5 is a really big buck and very high scoring. We just have fewer percent of our deer herd 3 and older. To many people shoot year and a halfs. With a 1 buck limit they still could but they'd only get one not two. Therefore quite a few (not all) would wait for a deer to really get their heart rate going.
There is a lot I would like to change. But seeing a lot of the responses I am glad that we don't have most of those (IL), no Sunday hunting? That's bull. I don't like how the gun season here is a split week. (3 days weekend before Thanksgiving and 4 days weekend, something like that.) I also don't like how you can't bow-hunt those days either even if you were orange. I would be happy with that if you just wore orange on those days.
There are several smaller WMAs I would make bow only for deer and cut out the gun quota hunts. It has been my observation that placing several hundred gun hunters into an area of only a few thousand acres is not only dangerous, but totally screws up the rest of the season for people who want to bow hunt after the two quota hunt weekends. What deer aren't pushed out go nocturnal for the rest of the season.
I wish South Dakota replaced its East River rifle season with a shotgun/muzzleloader season like Iowa.
