I now see why Illinois is constantly putting down Huge deer. I drove through IL this past weekend on the way to Notre Dame. We took I-70 from Missouri to 57 in IL and headed up north. The whole time in IL all we saw was beans and corn as far as you could see. I would love to be able to hunt that state!
Lol, the beans and corn could hurt us more than it helps us this year with how late crops are going to be in. The moisture percentage isn't even close to being low enough to think about taking crops out yet, which means deer can just hang out in the tall corn all day, and don't even hardly have to travel to get to a food source =(
P.S. I wouldn't trade anything for my hunting spot in IL, I sound kinda whiny in the above post lol =P
Take a drive south and look around the Shawnee area, totally different terrain but great hunting as well.
It can't be near as bad as it was last year. Here in my part the corn was up so late last year it made seeing deer just plain tough.
I love my Missouri hunting too, but was amazed at how much corn/beans that were planted. I thought we planted a lot here, but nothing compared to IL.
LOL. Yeah my favorite fields are the smaller ones that weave in and out of the wood lots, have rolling hills, and have LOTS of fingers going out into them, and have no real shape to them.
At an estimated 700,000 deer in the state.. you'd be crazy to switch. I bet you sure did see nothing but corn and beans as far as you could see.. but it makes no difference how much food you have unless you got the woods to go with it. Most of that central portion of the state has a VERY poor deer population. That's why all the hunters and outfitters are along the river-systems. Where you were driving through was mostly barren wasteland for whitetail. And boring as haitis to drive through too. But you probably knew that already.
Yep, it sure was pretty boring to drive through. My dad and I noticed that there wasn't many woods there. The whole time we were looking for what would look like a good place to hunt and never really saw any b/c of lack of woods.
It get's alot more wooded once you go east of Effingham. But that's probably where you hopped on 57 at- you should have just kept on going down 70 til you got into the Clark/Edgar county area- the Golden Rectangle baby! lol
We live just south of I70 between St. Louis and Indy and we feed them well here with all the corn and soybeans. I have corn around my house and then beans in front and to the north which is where I like to hunt as it is a natural corridor. We are pretty lucky here. I believe last year alone in my county 3 bucks were taken that scored well over 200".
Man i would love to go on a hunt as well in this state...i love ohio..but i always here big deer constantly being pulled from this state..anyone no of some good public land if i ever decided to make a trip that way i could hunt that would be worth my time...let me know?
