Illinois' First Week of Hunting Brings Disappointments

Illinois' First Week of Hunting Brings Disappointments

Illinois' first week of hunting is over and with it comes great disappointments.  The state facilities saw lower numbers for dove harvested and Dale Bowman from the Chicago Sun-Times wrote an excellent article about these numbers.  We highly recommend you read Illinois hunting: Dove opener, updated, still down.  However, these disappointments are not what the hunting community is talking about.


At Capitol Outdoors, we follow many different organizations so we can bring you information from across the state and spectrum.  While on Facebook and surfing the web this weekend a disappointing situation came to our attention.  The lack of respect from a hunters!

Spent shells litter the ground at Sangchris Lake

Now, when I say hunters we're not talking about the 99 percent, but rather we're talking about the one percent.  At Sangchris Lake dove hunters left a wide array of spent shells across stake 13 at field 2.  As you can see from the picture the lack of respect brings shame to the hunting community.  If you check out the comments on the Sangchris Lake State Park Facebook page you'll see that not only did it upset the managers of this facility but the hunters as well.  Those that don't hunt will also see these pictures online and think all hunters are like this.  It's a classic example of guilty by association.

If that didn't upset us enough, this did.  Like many waterfowl hunters Capitol Outdoors checks the Duck Unlimited Waterfowl Migration Map.  If you check these updates enough you'll find that it doesn't so much track the migration but rather it's a forum, a place were hunters complain about issues on that particular day as well as tell a 'white lie' about the number of birds in a certain area to throw off other hunters.

Just one of many reports about early shooting on Opening Day

Saturday was the opener for Teal and we checked the site to see how people we're doing and what everyone was saying.  What we read was so disappointing.  Several weeks ago we wrote a post about the regulations and unfortunately people did not take our advice. Commentors mentioned how so many people were shooting before shooting hours.  Shooting time for Teal begins at sunrise not a half hour before.  READ THE REGULATIONS.

The end of September could bring the layoff of 33 Conservation Police Officers.  With these layoffs pending it's up to us to call out other hunters for their lack of respect for the facilities and regulations.  If we don't say anything our passion will continue to decline morally and ethically.