A couple hot takes in here. For Illinois:
- One buck tag per year and some sort of limit to doe tags (With current predator populations and EHD coming through every other year, the need to harvest does is overblown in a lot of areas, imo.) Second buck tag if you provide access to unrelated hunter through lottery system.
- Move shotgun season to the week after Thanksgiving (currently 2nd season) instead of before. Although, I do not feel as strongly about this as a lot of deer are locked down during our current 1st season and gun-only hunters deserve a shot at hunting some portion of the rut.
- Ban deer drives. In my area, most 3 year old studs are killed by resident long term hunters, not youth or non-residents. Hunters that are new to the sport are much less likely to have a "brown its down" mentality, especially if coming to the sport from watching Meateater or the Hunting Public. Many of the Elmer Fudd's that are complaining they can't hunt for free anymore are the same ones that shoot everything they see and do not give a hoot about managing habitat or the resources. These guys always know when the rut is going to start though, so I guess they have that feather in their caps. Nowadays, I see the deer drives firing up around 10:00am on opening morning as little to no attempt is made to hunt traditionally.
- CRP is actually inspected by FSA/USDA and no plans allow land to be placed in a monoculture of cool season grass that gets mowed every year. No more glorified "lawns" qualifying for CRP based on erosion control.
- A lot of discussion above regarding incentivizing farmers to promote habitat, why not make their subsidies contingent upon it where appropriate? If they want to cut every tree down, spray every "weed" in sight, fill in every ditch, graze every square inch, and shoot does all summer with predation tags, so be it, but maybe they do not receive their direct subsidy check or they have to pay unsubsdized market rate crop insurance. This could also be a method to get hunters access as well, you want subsidies? Fine, then you will take part in a hunter lottery and allow access to a hunter(s), no more leasing of recreational ground for those landowners, hunters would be required to self insure and government could indemnify landowner to address liability concerns. Hunters lacking access to could either pay to be in lottery or could volunteer to perform invasive plant control.
- Not sure limiting hunters to certain weapons would help. Lot of guys in this state were taking 200 yard shots at running deer with slug guns before we got straight wall cartridges and 60 yard shots with their vertical bows they never practice with. My hope is that our newer choices lead to more ethical kills.
- End all antlerless only late season hunts after January 5th. No reason to encourage shed buck hunting.
- No limitations on season or technology when hunting or trapping coyotes, raccoons, or possums.
- Ban the sale, transport, or use of known nonnative invasives, which includes reed canary grass.
- One adult turkey season, 30 days, one tom per hunter. Two tags if you permit hunter from lottery to access property. No hens allowed to be harvested in fall or spring.