Jeanette Gibson column: Deer hunt 2021 gets going in Illinois
The fall deer hunting season is an important annual tradition that helps to reduce the deer population and thus keep it healthy.
Too many deer in a given area leads to starvation and disease for the animals and also increases the odds of deer-automobile crashes.
While it is true that coyotes help keep the deer population down, the most consistently successful deer hunter is humans.
This years’ Illinois deer archery hunting season began on Oct. 1. As soon as deer tags were available, local stores where DNR tags were available saw hunters waiting in lines for their tags in Henry and surrounding counties.
The archery deer hunt was relatively successful during the month of October, with a preliminary total of 20,637 deer being harvested, however this years’ total falls short of the 26,824 total deer harvested during the same time period in 2020 October.
What causes these fluctuations from year to year? Many factors, including how close to the rutting season it is, hunting pressure, deer population and even fluctuations in moonlight and wind direction.
In example, the first shotgun season for deer was from the 19th to the 21st of November. The deer were in their rutting season, with reports of bucks outnumbering the does some 5 to 1 in some areas.
The moon was at its’ fullest on the 19th, which provided plenty of light for the deer to graze by during the nighttime hours. This meant that the deer weren’t so much observing their typical pattern of moving during the dusk and dawn times of the day. Many were already sitting tight to cover and bedded down by the time that hunters were out in their hunting blinds and deer stands.
A few hunters that I spoke with commented that this factor alone made hunting more difficult during the first firearm season, as it is difficult to hunt deer when they aren’t moving from cover.
Other hunters stated that the lunar eclipse that weekend further compounded the difficulties of the weekend hunt.
One hunter in particular, Kevin, explained that “even a change in the wind pattern can affect the movement of deer.” Indeed, that weekend saw a change in the wind pattern.
Despite these difficult factors, most of the hunters that I’ve spoken with have gotten their deer tags filled. Bob showed off a photo of his grinning son holding an armful of ground deer burger that he had processed from one harvested deer. It was a very big doe that had yielded about 60 pounds of meat for Bob’s family.
This weekend is the second firearm deer season. That weekend will also be during the New Moon phase, so this should not affect the deer herds typical movement at dusk and dawn.
The weather forecast is absolutely outstanding, with high temperatures in the 40’s and lower 50’s expected and no rain in the forecast.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing many more photos of grinning hunters and successful hunts!
This article originally appeared on Star Courier: Jeanette Gibson column: Deer hunt 2021 gets going in Illinois
