A Response To Tim Wells' Warning for Illinois Hunters

Famous hunting personality Tim Wells recently made a post on Facebook that got a lot of people’s attention. It was titled, “Are the glory days nearly over for Illinois quality bucks?”

In it, he questioned the future of hunting opportunities in Illinois. More specifically, he expressed his concern that if the glorious (my sarcasm, not necessarily his) state of Illinois doesn’t step in, the days of harvesting mature, trophy bucks may be behind us, or very soon there.

This is something we’ve discussed a lot on our podcast. It’s also interesting to me. So, I decided to construct this response to the post. If you’d rather listen to my ramblings than read them, I also put this out as a Full Draw Friday episode, which you can listen to here.

If you are more of a reader, I’ve broken down Tim’s statement into chunks and added my commentary for your enjoyment. Or, for your displeasure. Either way, let me know what you think, and what you think of the health of deer hunting in Illinois.

“EHD and overhunting has most of us seeing less and less deer, Illinois continues its aggressive herd reduction efforts”

(IDNR Photo)

Overall, I think this is a regional issue. We’ve talked on our podcast about this a lot when it comes to turkeys. There are plenty of people who have tons of turkeys in their area and others who don’t have many at all. This seems to be the same with deer right now.

I know where there are fields I can drive past during the late season and see 50 deer almost every evening. On the other side of that coin, I also sat a lot of hunts throughout this past season and only saw a handful of deer, if any. Are there places where the herd is down? Yes. Are there places where it is bordering on out of control? Also yes.

EHD does have a lot to do with that, in my opinion. But it also has to do with habitat. The deer are going to be where the habitat is. When that changes, they’ll move to the next place.

Hunting pressure is definitely higher in certain areas, too, which obviously has an adverse and inconsistent effect on herd numbers.

Because this seems to be a localized issue, I agree that Illinois is “shockingly” out of line with its proposed solutions. Especially the ones Tim mentions, i.e., longer seasons and more effective weapons. Both of those will affect the entire state and don’t account for the fact that not all herds have the same issues.

That’s part of the problem though. It doesn’t seem like the powers at be recognize the deer in separate herds. More so, it seems they see the entire herd across the state as one.

I do think they look at things county by county when determining which ones get late winter seasons, but that’s about the only time they break anything down as far as I can tell.

However, at the same time, Tim is kind of looking at things the same way. He’s painting the picture that the whole state is facing the same low numbers, and that just isn’t the case.

“Within my circle of friends and other hunters around the state, we see less deer and mature buck numbers have tanked as well. Still the state strives to kill more.”

(John Pennoyer Photo)

I do feel like I have a unique perspective on this, being that I get to work at a deer processing shop. I can say at least somewhat anecdotally, and somewhat scientifically, I suppose, that the deer and mature buck numbers around us seem to be improving. We really noticed this trend sometime around 2019 or 2020.

One of those years was when we noticed we were getting more and more bucks in the shop. Not just any bucks either. A large percentage of them were mature. The past 4 or 5 seasons since then have been no different. Will that run out this year? Possibly. But I really don’t expect that.

Nate and I have talked about this quite a bit, as far as the number of quality bucks at least. He’s told me different times how he’s heard stories about the old days when there were giant deer everywhere. At the same time, though, talking with dad and several other guys that were around for those times, a 140” deer was not all that common back then.

While I can offer a different perspective on this stuff, it is limited to about 15 years or so. That’s about how far back I can remember actually paying attention to the quantity of quality deer we had in the shop. Dad, on the other hand, has been running the shop and working it for way longer than that. To the tune of about 30 years longer. If anyone can attest to the health of the herd in our area, it would be him. When we’ve talked about it, he’s always said that there are more, bigger-bodied, bigger-racked deer now than there ever were.

Now, again, this goes for our area of a few counties in Southern Illinois, and I’m sure there are places where this isn’t the case. But, as was stated earlier, that’s the problem with looking at the deer herd across the entire state as a whole.

“Land owners practicing whitetail management find it's rough when the neighbors have a handful of tags in their pocket. You better control a lot of ground for your local herd of whitetail, otherwise the outcome ultimately is over harvest. In a solid block of timber, five farms can practice whitetail management but if farm number six kills every deer they see it wrecks the entire effort.”

(William T. Smith Photo)

There’s a lot of truth to what Tim said there. Without thousands of acres, it’s hard to really manage a herd if you have bad neighbors. You still have to do it, though. Because, to his overall point, the state isn’t going to make it any easier. I’ll get to why when I wrap this thing up.

Most of the time, though, if you practice quality deer management and your neighbors don’t, you will eventually have the opportunities at the deer you want. There may not be as many as there could be if you had better neighbors, but you have to play the cards you’re dealt. So you might as well play them the best you can.

On the other hand (pun intended), if you have good neighbors who practice the same quality management, there may be more big deer in the area, but they are also going to have just as good of a chance to kill them as you are. They may have even more opportunity depending on how things lie, who gets to hunt the better days, and especially depending on who has the hot does first during the rut.

“Compounding the effects, EHD is a mass killer that is sweeping the state year after year.”

Dead buck presumably from EHD. They are often found near or in water.

EHD sucks. When it hits hard, it can absolutely devastate a herd and wipe out an entire age class of bucks. If not two or three. There’s even some research to suggest that bigger antlered bucks are even more susceptible to infection, because they have more surface area where the midge flies can bite them.

I think over the last few years it probably has been worse in a lot of places do to the dry summers. I’d like to see more research done on it than what they’re doing with CWD, but the money is in CWD right now. That’s a whole separate discussion on its own, so I’ll leave it here. EHD is bad. It’s usually fairly local. Some deer can survive it, a lot don’t and when it hits, it 100% has an adverse effect on a local herd.

“I own some of the best deer habitat in the Illinois. Twenty years ago I could sit in a tree on a cool November morning and count on seeing two dozen plus deer and at least one being a mature buck. Now I'd have to sit in the same tree for a week and I'd feel lucky to even see a good buck. My strategy for big deer used to be get in the woods and eventually a big boy would show because there were plenty. Now I blanket the timber with cameras in hopes of finding a single shooter then hunt him exclusively till he slips up. I'm starting to actually feel bad when I whack the only shooter left alive.”

(Whitetail Properties Photo)

There are a lot of variables that could go into why this is. Maybe his neighbor's habitat has improved, or maybe enough of it around has gone downhill that the neighborhood doesn’t hold as many deer, meaning he doesn’t have as many either. Maybe his neighbors, like he mentioned earlier, are the problem. Maybe he had different standards for deer 20 years ago, and what he called a mature buck was much different. He wouldn’t be the only one. I can remember back then when even the TV guys were saying 3 1/2 year old bucks were mature.

Now, most of them won’t even look at a buck unless it’s 5 1/2. We also tend to remember things better than they were. We forget the bad stuff and remember only what we want. That goes for anything in life, and especially hunting. Of course, you remember the one time you saw a giant buck, but you forget about the 15 hunts before that where you didn’t see anything worth noting. Which is why you didn’t note it in your memory.

Obviously, this is all speculation. I haven’t talked to Tim personally and asked him why he thinks it is that he isn’t seeing the same amount of deer. Based on his post, though, it sounds like he believes it to be a lack of intervention from the state and bad neighbors. Which are definitely valid concerns.

“I'm no biologist and you can say what you want about my opinion. For I'm old now and my view is blurrier than it once was but throughout my lifetime when it came to hunting anyways, there's a general rule that I could count on. Good things never last! Hopefully I'm wrong this time….”

Wells with a Giant Whitetail Buck

The whole tone of this has probably sounded like I disagree with Tim, but I actually share a lot of his concerns. I’d really like to hear his proposed solutions, though. I think that’s why I ultimately decided to share my thoughts on his post.

I try not to complain about stuff just to complain and get people fired up without offering solutions. I’m not saying that’s what Tim was trying to do, or even that that’s all he did, but I would love a follow-up post from him about what he thinks could help solve the problems he highlighted. He’s been around a long time and has forgotten more about hunting and wildlife than I know, so I think his ideas would be extremely valuable. They also may hold enough weight to get the ball rolling on changing things. Maybe his post will do just that.

What Could Be Done?

Personally, I do think something needs to happen to offset harvest numbers across the board. There are definitely more deer being killed now that crossbows and rifles are legal. I’ve also done podcasts on the effect of having firearm season right in the middle of the rut.

I do think that if something doesn’t change, there could be a time when we don’t have the number of mature bucks that we do now. Here are just a couple of things I think would be huge steps in the right direction.

I think the firearm season should be moved to the first part of December. This would allow the deer to finish the rut without the added pressure of gun season. Currently, the first season falls right in the middle of what should be peak rut. Like Tim, I’m no biologist, but that can’t be good for deer numbers. Now, before you get out your torches and pitchforks, I would also like to see the firearm season go to 10 straight days. Something like the first Friday in December to the following Sunday would be ideal in my mind. That would not only help promote breeding within the herd, but it would also allow more people to hunt. If you want my full thoughts on that, go check out Full Draw Friday #45.

At the same time, if they want to expand the season to curb overpopulation, they should try to do that in counties where they actually have overpopulation. We have the technology to figure out which counties those are. I don’t mean hunter surveys, or the farm bureau’s stats, or the number of car accidents either. I’m talking about technology. If they flew thermal drones over feeding areas at night, it wouldn’t take long to find out almost exactly how many deer are in a given area.

Then, they could make actual, educated decisions based on real data, rather than whatever they’re doing now. It obviously isn’t working. If it were working, they wouldn’t still be concerned with raising harvest totals.

Here’s the problem with all this, though, and why the actual management of local herds falls on the property owners and hunters in a given area. The state isn’t going to do anything that doesn’t benefit them financially. Tim mentioned the wants of veteran hunters. I promise you, the state doesn’t give two you know whats about what any hunters want. That’s not where the money is. The money is in the farm bureau, the insurance lobbyist, and the sale of licenses, permits, stamps, and so on. All the hunters in Illinois combined don’t have the buying power to outbid those groups.

Will Things Ever Change?

I don't know if things ever will change. I do think we’re in a pretty good spot right now as far as mature buck numbers go. But two things can be true at once. While we may have as good of an overall herd as ever, if it’s not taken care of, it won’t last. Like Tim said. That does fall on the state, but it also falls on us individually.

For what it’s worth, I don’t ever trust any form of government to take care of me or anything I have. I rarely think it’s a good idea to ask them to step in and try to solve a problem, either. There are plenty of examples to prove why that’s a bad idea. Personal agency is way more important to me. That goes for everything, including hunting.

I suppose that’s why I’m not for the state taking rights away from hunters. Whether that be limiting permits, weapons choices, or seasons. I don’t think they need to expand certain things either, but I’m just not keen on asking them to take things away. Because where does it stop?

What can we do as individuals? It’s fairly simple. Try to be good stewards of the land and the resources it provides. Being a hunter is an amazing privilege and often defines many of us, but even before being a hunter, be a conservationist. If you aren’t, you may not get to be a hunter forever.