I'm from ky and wanting to try hunting some other states and I have been thinking about Illinois so can someone give me some info on what I have to get and is there plenty of public land? Of course it will be next yr. I would like to take camper and stay at a campground close to where I would be hunting. Atv would be nice but not a must. Thanks for any info.
I know southern Illinois has a lot of public land. Might want to look at non-resident fees before you decide on Illinois though.
Yea gotta agree with Ferg, we're not very nice to out of staters when it comes to tag fees. I would think though if you do decide to go for it with a little reaserch you could find some decent public land in southern IL. Iknow we have places around here that allow camping and have rv parks. Not familiar with what's around rest of state though.
check out Indiana, bud. Good public land options can be tough to find, but there are big bucks galore, fees aren't terrible, and the laws are straight forward and apply pretty much universally across the state. I live in Illinois and can hunt for cheap and I don't even hunt here. Granted the public land options are also really slim in No. Illinois, but the myriad of goofy and arbitrary rules on them makes popping over for a long weekend hunt borderline impossible; unless you got a friend who is well-versed and familiar with both the land and the specific rules on that parcel of land. Some public parcels require pre-season "education" meetings, which are one time events scheduled either opening morning or up to a week in advance. Many parcels limit the number of hunters daily and are on first come basis; some allow your own tree stands and some don't, some allow leaving stands up overnight and some don't....the list goes on and on. I'd rather (and do) pay out of state fees to hunt in Indiana, Michigan, and now (first time this year) Wisconsin rather than deal with the idiocracy that dictates this place. Maybe that would change if I come across a decent parcel of private land nearby, but my advice to an out of stater is that unless you are paying for a lease or semi-guided hunt, I'd look elsewhere.
