Next week, the 2020 deer hunting season officially begins in the State of Illinois.
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has designated Thursday, October 1, as the start of its hunting season with archery opening up and wrapping up on January 17.
Hunting hours run from half an hour before sunrise to half an hour after sunset. No bow and arrow devices are to be carried with an arrow nocked during hours when hunting is considered unlawful.
Last year, hunters in the start harvested 153,048 deer for all of the different deer hunting seasons. Slightly higher than numbers from the 2018-19 deer hunting season of 151,709.
Of those, 67,696 deer were harvested from bowhunting. Knox County hunters had a nabbed 1,007 head of deer during the archery season and brought in a total of 2,262 for all seasons.
Fulton County has the best harvest numbers in the area and some of the best in the estate. Hunters there took in 4,028 head of deer during the 2019-20 hunting season.
