TN to Follow Illinois Deer Hunting rules & Regs

[tnbowhunter]

I am a die hard bow hunter who works really hard on scouting, proper stand placement, food plots and protein sources for deer as well as turkey, to utilise as much of a natural enviornment as I can to try and Harvest a pope & young whitetail. The difficulties are hard enough with the landscaping we have to deal with and territory we hunt in .. then you throw in 30 days of gun seasons throughout the whitetail season and you might as well just give up and join the party of gun hunters.. DONT GET ME WRONG.. I have killed whitetail deer with a rifle!! But it is EXTREMELY difficult to GROW our male whitetail population to the desired trophies we all hope and dream of.. Some people pay thousands of dollars to hunt them... Well not everyone can afford a hunt like that nor do they have the means to have their farm produce that quality of deer. (due to not being able to fence the deer in.. again money factors as well as genetics.. which can be bought..again money factors..)

SOOOOO... WHY DOESN'T TN CHANGE THEIR STANDARDS ON LEGAL BUCKS TO HARVEST AS WELL AS THE LENGTHS OF EACH SEASONS????

This is probably a million dollar question.. but one I would love to hear some repsones on... I personally think that if one or more states can do it then why not our state?? Think of the amount of money it would bring into our state?? We could start selling hunts here!! The amount of hunters that would come here because its closer to come here than Illinois or Iowa or Kansas or even Canada.. I think it would generate great income for our state not to mention our local mom and pops hunting stores, as well as land owners and guiding services... And.. it would more than likely help our children become more active in the outdoors...

Please respond to this posting as intelligently as you can and if there are any more hunters our there that think the same way I do.. Well Maybe we can push a law up to congress and see what happens.. I would also like to add that I OWN SEVERAL RIFLES AS WELL AS HAND GUNS AND SHOTGUNS!! I am a duck hunter as well.. This post is most definitely NOT to ban guns or weapons by any means!!!!!!!!!!! I am an active member with the NRA !!!!! I just simply would like to see our state be able grow larger whiteltails and an abundance of them!!!

HAPPY HUNTING EVERYONE AND I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT HUNTING SEASON..

[FrankG]

I’m inclined to agree with your assessment. With the firearm guys lobby here in TN as aggressive and numerous as they are, it was bound to happen. Personally I would prefer “the way it was” with the firearms pause of two weeks and the season extending past the 1st of the year. Or just a thought. Make it doe only! With the over abundance of does (3 a day in my county) give more bucks a chance to mature. Now I’m aware the gun guys for the most part won’t agree. Acutely aware as well that a good portion of the same only go out for a couple of weeks anyway and don’t care about the quality of the resource.

[Bowriter]

Now that the season is over with I believe the second highest kill on record and more bucks in the 160 and up range than any year, how do you guys like the new dates? Just my observation but it sure doesn't seem to have hurt our bow hunting any. The majority of the hunters I talked to, liked the new dates.

[Deebz]

Hey Guys,

I'm from IL, and I hunt both bow and gun. Just curious, what are the "new dates" they changed your season to? I really do enjoy the fact that I get to bowhunt from Oct 1 until the weekend before Thanksgiving before the first hard core gun season. They seem to throw in some youth season gun hunts and things, but those are generally just 2-3 day sessions and only youths can shoot deer. There are a lot of doe only late season hunts in different counties and such. I really like that you can pattern deer on their feeding patterns during the early season, then watch and keep hunting as the rut gears up and still have a good chance at getting close enough with a bow to harvest a mature buck. This is all before the deer get exposed to the "orange army".

One thing the OP didn't mention is that IL doesn't allow the use of any rifles outside of single shot muzzleloaders. Our firearm season is shotgun only. I'm pretty sure you can use handguns that have the right specs as well, but the range is really limited compared to a rifle. I think this is another reason we have a reputation for bigger and older bucks.

One thing about IL that I don't like is that a bow tag is good statewide, but a firearm tag is only good in a specific county. I buy tags to hunt where I live, but if I want to gun-hunt with my dad and brothers I have to buy another tag for that county...but I can only shoot 2 antlered deer per year regardless of the weapon or county taken in...