The new Golden Triangle for Whitetail hunting

I’m going to show this article to every out of stater I run into in Southern Illinois.

 

Amen and how about Illinois and KY going to a draw system like Iowa has so that NRs have to wait at least a year or two in between seasons they can hunt? What must that be like? I’d be willing to pay 5X every year for my license and tags if that’s what it takes to make up the money difference. I’m pretty sure that within the next 5 years I will be relegated to hunting my own small piece of ground and public land because the wave of out of state money rolling in is just washing away the resident hunters. If you or your family don’t own a good piece of ground you will just be SOL. There’s no stopping it now. It’s like a tsunami.

 

I hear ya man but I didn’t make the numbers public... I just reiterated what the article said. The news is out and has been for some time and like you I’m mourning it not celebrating it.

Anyway come on down and get you a good batch of seed ticks you no account out of stater.

 

Dude let me get you a tissue. I live in Wisconsin A RED STATE and we have the same issues so your point is null. If you hate Illinois so much then move. Whining doesn't help.

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If Illinois started opening season up the first week of September (like KY)...and started letting guys bump a half ton of corn out to hunt over (like KY)...and started having a nice long two week rifle season during the heart of the rut (like KY)...well, not only would they leave KY behind, they would run off and leave the whole "new golden triangle" combined in their wake, lol.

 

I'm not here to say Illinois is the best. I have seen the decline first hand. I went from 5-15 deer in one sit to 2-7 now. This is in the last 5-7 years. Last year was the first decent year I've had for sightings. Still very low numbers. I've been hunting 20 years and have seen the numbers at its best to its worst like it is now. Even with low number we still have banging bucks. O ya I forgot 2 add Illinois has no care about population as long as its lower and they can sell every tag possible.

 

Whew! Why so rustled? Lol. You win. Illinois is definitely much better than KY and Ohio. It’s so obvious now.

Have a great season.

 

Not even a little rustled....just adding to the discussion with a few key components that the original article left out. Just thought we could possibly have an intelligent dialogue on the matter, my bad.

Have a great season.

 

So the way you start an attempt at having some intelligent dialogue is to roll in with a few ill considered excuses and then wrap them up with an over the top and goofy conclusion? It really doesn’t seem like an intelligent dialogue was the goal of your wham bam thank you mam post. It’s too late now to reframe the spirit of your original post but that’s OK.

Let’s start over. I agree with you 100% that KY season being in a month before Illinois season provides a distinct advantage. Now let’s talk about late season hunting in the two states. The quality of late season hunting over food source in Illinois (esp the Northern half of the state) is leaps and bounds more advantageous than anything to be found in KY. Cold weather is almost zero help with late season bucks here. It just never gets cold enough to phase the deer and snow is rare. At least some of the advantage gained by KY hunters in Sept is lost in Dec and January.

Now for the dumping of tons of corn... does it get some really big deer killed? Sure. Are most of the top end deer killed in KY killed standing in a corn pile? Of course not. If throwing corn out on the ground was anything close to a surefire way to kill big mature bucks then folks everywhere would be doing it whether legal or not.... which of course they do anyway even in states like Illinois. Not only are there plenty of folks in Illinois just flat out tossing corn out like a KY hillbilly... they also know there’s more than one way to skin that cat and legally too. How many unpicked or selectively partially picked corn and bean fields are scattered across the Illinois landscape in October and November? That’s not baiting though. Amirite? I’ll concur with you that legal baiting makes certain things easier for a KY hunter in a relative sense but let’s not act like it’s a slam dunk while the poors in Illinois are sitting around with their hands tied behind their back.

Lastly to the worst of your points.... that super advantageous rifle season in KY. This is where your frame of reference becomes the problem. You are imagining guys sitting all over Illinois with high powered rifles in mid November and thinking of all the giants that they would kill and you are right... it would be a field day. The problem is that the guys in KY are sitting in KY not in Illinois. To understand why this matters you have to consider that Illinois is 45% larger than KY but KY has 4 times more forested acres. This means there is roughly 6 times more cover per avg square mile in KY than in Illinois. Take out Shawnee and that number likely jumps past 8X for the rest of the state. So if you tell me I’ve got a huge buck on 500 acres that I get to hunt and my choices are to do it in Illinois with a shotgun where the deer has 50 acres of cover to be in or in KY with a rifle where the deer has 300 acres of cover to be in... well that’s an easy one. I’m choosing Illinois every day and twice on Sunday. It is precisely this difference in available cover and sanctuary that has caused the decline in Illinois and has precipitated the rise of KY. Once KY went to one buck and so many of the hunters in the state stopped shooting young deer... the cover took care of the rest. When Illinois starting attracting so much attention 25 yrs ago and the hunting pressure went through the roof the deer had no recourse. Where were they going to go? Illinois is without a doubt an elite place from a genetics standpoint and I would for sure agree that it is better than just about anywhere including KY. However KY isn’t that far behind and the deer just have so many more advantages that help them get to maturity. In the end it’s the advantages that the deer have that makes the difference not the advantages that the hunter has.

P.S. - If Illinois had all those things you were crowing about you’d have exactly one banner year and so many of your bucks would be killed that things would go to hell in a rowboat so fast your head would spin. You wouldn’t be a top twenty state in 5 years. Sustainability is Illinois problem when it comes to deer hunting. Making hunters more successful in Illinois isn’t the answer.

 

Ofcourse I'm right Steve, I needed no conformation, but thanks anyway.

 

you're right; but neither does voting. As to moving, I would in a heartbeat but can't - unless you or some idiot wants to buy a house that in the past decade has lost about 33% of FMV while property taxes paid have risen by nearly 50%; I'm stuck here for a bit longer.

As to IL being a great deer hunting state....unless you live south of 80 and/or west of 39 your access to hunting land is extremely limited. Which is why I don't hunt this state.

 

Ban whoever wrote and published this article... lol but yeh social media will do that. Unfortunately those of us in states that at one time weren't sought after to hunt for non residents seem to be seeing alot more out of state hunters. Not to mention like already stated above the cost of land, leases, public land over crowded, and no longer a knock on a door to receive permission to hunt. I personally own land, but I do still see the toll these tolls... take on the hunting/hunters

 

Thanks for confirming that intelligent dialogue wasn’t what you were looking for.

Interesting that you are actually a KY hunter living an hour from the Illinois line. Interesting indeed. Oh well. Enough time spent arguing about stuff we can’t control. Good luck this year.

 

You lost me when you started telling me what I was imagining, lol. But yeah, the article is complete BS and you and I both know it. They're trying to make a square peg fit a round hole, way to many variables at play to even try to make a comparison.

Yes, I live in a super location...I've got well over two hundred thousand acres of public around me to hunt...LBL, Fort Campbell, Peabody, Pennyrile, The Sloughs, Higginson Henry, Big Rivers. Being a 100% public land hunter, I'm like kid in a candy store over here, lol.

 

I had thought the golden triangle term applied solely to that three county area in West Central Illinois anyhow.

But wth...it's the way of the world to steal or misapply nicknames. LT is Lawrence Taylor, not Ladanian Tomlinson. "Never Again" was the JDL's mantra about the holocaust, not sniveling brats and gun control.

 

Illinois has slid so far down that the Golden Triangle didn't even enter any B&C bucks last year. And, Harpole's Lodge has turned into an off road vehicle park for ATV's! lol. You can still pay over $4,000 to go hunt deer on a property that is being run over daily by 4-wheelers and side-by-sides if you want though. Sounds like a great mix.