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Thursday, April 25, 2024
Outdoors Sports

Illinois deer hunting: Overall deer harvest in 2021-22 seasons down, as expected; county-by-county added

Illinois’ overall deer harvest in the 2021-22 seasons is down from the 2020-21 seasons.

By  Dale Bowman
   
SHARE Illinois deer hunting: Overall deer harvest in 2021-22 seasons down, as expected; county-by-county added
File photo of a deer check station sign.

File photo of a deer check station sign. Credit: Dale Bowman

Dale Bowman

Note: Updated with pdf of county-by-county at bottom.

As expected, overall deer harvest by Illinois hunters in the 2021-22 seasons dropped from the pandemic-impacted 2020-21 seasons.

The preliminary total is 147,004 deer harvested during all 2021- 2022 seasons, which compares to 162,752 deer in the 2020-21 seasons.

Hunters took a preliminary total of 69,990 deer during the 2021 firearm season, compared with 77,160 in the 2020 firearm season.

Archery deer hunters took a preliminary total of 67,637 deer, well down from the record 75,106 in the 2020-21 season.

Harvest during the 2021 muzzleloader-only season was 3,043 deer, down from 3,451 deer in 2020.

During the 2021-2022 late-winter antlerless-only and special CWD deer seasons, the combined preliminary harvest was 4,505 deer, down from harvest of 4,713 in 2020-21.

The three-day youth season had a preliminary harvest of 1,829 deer, down from 2,322 in 2020.

More information on Illinois’ deer harvest prior to 2020-2021 are here.

I hope to have the county-by-county tables up later.

And now, click here for the county-by-county breakdown.

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