2018–2019 Illinois Deer Hunting Forecast

Success rates of Illinois gun hunters declined substantially after the large epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) outbreaks in 2012 and 2013 but have since rebounded as deer numbers recovered. As a result, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) expects deer hunters to have good success during the 2018 seasons.

Deer hunters should not look for the 2018—2019 seasons to set any records; the factors affecting the final outcomes of the harvest are more complex than recovery from disease outbreaks. To allow deer herds to rebound in affected areas, biologists have curtailed harvest by adjusting deer permit quotas downward in many counties and have closed several counties to the special late-winter antlerless-only season. Despite improved individual hunter success rates, opportunities (in terms of number of deer permits available) for hunters to take as many deer as in past seasons are not there, but additional improvement in deer numbers for counties that are below goal levels will continue.

IDNR has proposed new harvest restrictions for archery deer hunters in five east-central Illinois counties (Champaign, Douglas, Macon, Moultrie and Piatt). When adopted, the new regulations will allow harvest of only antlered deer during the first 15 days of the archery season (October 1—15). This restricted archery zone is being established to reduce bow harvest in counties where deer numbers have been unable to rebound despite reductions in firearm and muzzleloader permits in recent years. Similar regulations in place in the late 1990s and early 2000s in many of these same counties were effective in allowing populations to increase.

Several Illinois counties have a historical track record of producing large harvest numbers, and those counties frequently are the ones touted as destination locations in outdoor magazines. However, in some cases those counties have excelled because of their large size, or because of the large number of acres of deer habitat they contain, which often means that their permit quotas are much larger. Hunter success often is just as good, or better, in some smaller counties that do not get much attention. During the 2017 seasons, as in recent years, the list of counties with the highest success rates was dominated by counties in the southern third of the state. The good news for those hunters who don’t have places locked up to hunt is that public land for deer hunting is much more available down south.