Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Deer Hunting Illinois

I have access to land in Illinois but I've never hunted there.
It's family land with plenty deer.
As a non resident, what are the rules,regulations and do I have to be drawn?
I did notice it's legal to hunt with single shot straight wall centerfire rifle.


Thanks in advance.

You won't be using that remington 280 lol. Ain't bad. Lots of public. I went to college there for a year. Awesome bow hunting. I was near pike co.. lots of big timber on rolling hills and crops. Actually choked on a 160s typical at 30 yards. I had to hunt hard and it gets cold.

Read regulations for sure. Short answers are yes, you do have to "apply" for a county specific gun tag. Residents already had 1st shot. Second lottery is for residents who haven't applied yet and non residents. It may be open now.

Gun season is three days in mid November and 4 days in early December. Certain straight walls are legal. Tags are about $350 and you need a $50 non resident license and a habitat stamp.

Watch yourself and stay legal. Illinois gets a lot of non resident hunters and the wardens love to check out of state hunters.

Fixed

I think the third lottery is open now. Pretty rare for them to be filled.

Rem280- if you need a +1, drop me a line. 😀

I read over regulations but yalls advice is very helpful...going up in Sept to check things out. All this is new to me, heck all I do in TN is buy my sportsman license and go kill within state /county limits..lol

IL used to be a worldwide destination for deer hunting. Some very impressive bucks have been taken here. But the money game got the better of the "outfitters" here and their influence over the DNR became very apparent. Up in the NE corner of the state, where I am, there's just about zero public land available and it's archery only here as well. Though not common, you do get to occasionally see bucks approaching 200" here. Vehicles are the most dangerous thing to them. Also, because of the very limited hunting opportunities, poaching is a real problem. I was an IL DNR Hunter Safety Instructor for a very long time and got to know some of the DNR CPO's very well and some of the stories they told me were just incredible...

Best to you Remington280, there are some real bruisers running around here!

Monroe county is where I'll be hunting....not sure how popular that county is.
My wife's cousin owns the land, hes too busy making money to hunt.
I'll be headed up soon to check it out, it's just a 4 hr drive from my house.

Same issue here in the EC part of the state... land access is the real rub these days. So much acreage has changed hands and been built on or bought up as vacation playgrounds over the past couple decades that it's dang hard to find anywhere to hunt anymore unless you own a plot, or have family that does. The odds of draw for firearm tag on the few bits of public within a reasonable driving distance of my place are slim at best, closer to none.

To the OP - the way the law is worded you can also use a repeater in a legal cartridge, but the magazine has to be capable of holding zero rounds. I've made mag plugs for a couple of my lever actions, and I know a couple guys who will be using bolts in 300 Blackout with single shot box magazines this year.

You might want to get one of these if you want to use an AR15.
https://originalbobsled.com/arsleds.aspx