Illinois Public Land Hunt

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Sam Ubl
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Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Sam Ubl » Fri Jan 19, 2018 8:24 am

For as much public land as their truly is in Illinois, it's funny how little attention it gets. Suppose it's better that way...

My pal, Joe, visited the state for the second year in a row targeting whitetails on public land. The 2016 showed promise, and Joe put in his time scouting in the summer to prep himself for a second shot at tagging out during the 2017 season. Joe made good with his goal. Here's buck number two hunting on the road across state lines.
https://youtu.be/mharrCAd9-s


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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Greg4579 » Sat Jan 20, 2018 3:46 am

Looking forward to checking it out!
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Mike32 » Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:53 am

Cool video
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby <DK> » Sun Jan 21, 2018 3:16 am

Wow! Hes had a great season!
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Sam Ubl » Mon Jan 22, 2018 4:08 am

He sure did. Two weeks after this hunt he drove down to Kansas and camped out of his car for a week hunting public lands. He got onto some great bucks, but it wasn’t until the rest of his family showed up to join in the hunt than did Joe get to sleep in the comforts of a camper and kill a giant buck at the end of week 2 in Kansas.

He also hunted Mississippi again this year, but it doesn’t sound like he has plans of going back...
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby stash59 » Mon Jan 22, 2018 8:58 am

Another good video.
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby tgreeno » Mon Jan 22, 2018 11:35 am

Nice work guys!

How many cameras do you guys typically put out to scout a hunt like this? Typically on travel routes, bedding or food sources?

A little more how-to, would be really cool! "I set-up here because".
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Sam Ubl » Tue Jan 23, 2018 5:10 am

Joe ran 23 cameras in 2017, and typically places 3 or 4 cameras on any given piece, but it comes down to total acreage he's trying to learn. He hunts public almost exclusively, the only exception being a small 10 acre chunk of private where he ended up killing "Double-Take", the 160" beast in Wisconsin.

He tells me he typically has 4 or 5 cameras stolen annually, and concedes those are typically the cameras he neglects to hang high. He says most cams get stolen when he gets aggressive and places them in areas closer to the roads, or short walks from the access points. This year he had five cameras stolen, one on the small piece of private he hunted in Wisconsin, and four stolen on public. In 2016 he had four cameras stolen, all on public. Joe says four to five cameras stolen annually is pretty typical and average. He typically hangs his cameras high so they're less noticeable to a passer-by and harder to thieve, but it's public land and anything can happen.

With respect to his Illinois public land hunt featured in the latest film share in the initial post, he drove down to Illinois from Wisconsin at the end of September to scout and hang cameras, and then he went back down after the first week of October to check those cams. The pictures he gathered built his confidence in the area he had scouted and provided clues as to where the deer were coming from and directions they were heading. He set up on the travel route he learned from camera intel and made good with that gamble with the nice buck he ended up taking on his second sit.

It crosses my eyes when he tells me about all the cameras he manages across so many pieces of public land and across state lines, but that's a huge key to Joe's success in coordination with his boots-on-the-ground scouting. The hunt for "Double-Take" (below) is another prime example of Joe using his camera intel and foretelling the exact spot he expected the big buck to be standing when he'd have a shot opportunity. What's so neat is he points at the spot before the hunt, and sure enough, the deer catches an arrow to the heart right there in the spot ON THE SPOT :shock:

https://youtu.be/YnTX57W2Wmw
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby JShea » Wed Jan 24, 2018 12:29 am

Great videos..thanks for posting.

Why do you guys wait so long to gut a deer though? It was hot.

Tv hunting shows its the same deal. Glad I'm not eating it. LOL
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Sam Ubl » Thu Jan 25, 2018 5:48 am

JShea wrote:Great videos..thanks for posting.

Why do you guys wait so long to gut a deer though? It was hot.

Tv hunting shows its the same deal. Glad I'm not eating it. LOL


Thank you, JShea, and thanks for the question. Joe waited an hour to climb down and recover the buck in Illinois to give it time to expire. The time between the last breath and it being field dressed was less than one hour, which is more than safe despite the temperatures being in the 70's that evening.

The Wisconsin buck, "Double-Take", died right away and was recovered in less than two hours from the time it expired. I suppose we could have included a time stamp to be more transparent, I understand the way I produced the video makes it seem as though Joe had gone home and taken his sweet time getting back to recovering the buck, but the truth is he lives within 10-minutes from where he killed the deer, and believe me when I say, he was more than anxious to get back out there with his brother and brother in-law to get the deer home. The scene inside of Joe's parents home sure makes it look like he was taking his sweet time, but he tells me he spent little more than 20-minutes there to show them the video and soon after they were in the truck headed back to recover the deer.

But I agree, when it's hot you certainly don't want to wait too long to field dress the animal.

Thanks for watching!
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Rotty95 » Thu Jan 25, 2018 10:47 am

Nice... What County are you hunting? I'm from Illinois
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Sam Ubl » Fri Jan 26, 2018 4:03 am

Joe and I reside in southeast Wisconsin, but the rest of the guys and gals of Chase Nation are from Georgia, Tennessee, and various counties spread out across Wisconsin. No one actually lives in Illinois, however, one of the guys owns a farm in Illinois that we haven't hunted yet. It butts up to public along the big river in the central part of the state and is certainly on the bucket list for the next couple seasons to pay a visit to.
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby thwack16 » Fri Jan 26, 2018 4:43 am

Good stuff!

Sam Ubl wrote:He also hunted Mississippi again this year, but it doesn’t sound like he has plans of going back...


Would love to hear about this hunt(s) if they're documented anywhere.
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby JShea » Tue Jan 30, 2018 2:30 am

Sam Ubl wrote:
JShea wrote:Great videos..thanks for posting.

Why do you guys wait so long to gut a deer though? It was hot.

Tv hunting shows its the same deal. Glad I'm not eating it. LOL


Thank you, JShea, and thanks for the question. Joe waited an hour to climb down and recover the buck in Illinois to give it time to expire. The time between the last breath and it being field dressed was less than one hour, which is more than safe despite the temperatures being in the 70's that evening.

The Wisconsin buck, "Double-Take", died right away and was recovered in less than two hours from the time it expired. I suppose we could have included a time stamp to be more transparent, I understand the way I produced the video makes it seem as though Joe had gone home and taken his sweet time getting back to recovering the buck, but the truth is he lives within 10-minutes from where he killed the deer, and believe me when I say, he was more than anxious to get back out there with his brother and brother in-law to get the deer home. The scene inside of Joe's parents home sure makes it look like he was taking his sweet time, but he tells me he spent little more than 20-minutes there to show them the video and soon after they were in the truck headed back to recover the deer.

But I agree, when it's hot you certainly don't want to wait too long to field dress the animal.

Thanks for watching!


Cool, Thanks for the Videos...they are done well.
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Re: Illinois Public Land Hunt

Unread postby Sam Ubl » Tue Jan 30, 2018 4:49 am

thwack16 wrote:Good stuff!

Sam Ubl wrote:He also hunted Mississippi again this year, but it doesn’t sound like he has plans of going back...


Would love to hear about this hunt(s) if they're documented anywhere.


Mississippi is said to have an estimated 1.75 million deer herd, with an 1/8 of them annually harvested by hunters. Roughly 4% of Mississippi is open to public hunting, at least according to a statistic I read somewhere, and that's very little compared to Wisconsin's 14%. So of Mississippi's 30-million acres, less than 1.3 million is available for public hunting spread out across the state. That's very limited, considering Wisconsin's calculation comes from 34-million acres of total land with nearly 5.2-million huntable to the public.

So between the expansive margin of public land availability and total land acres across the state, along with heavy hunting pressure, the challenge of escaping the masses to have some space is real. Nonetheless, like most Beasts, Joe isn't afraid to put in the work to find those hard-to-find and hard-to-access pockets of public, but concedes that the sightings are minimal at best and witnessed minimal practice of buck age class management.

The ratio between deer harvested versus total herd is relatively close between Mississippi and Wisconsin, where roughly 13% of the deer were killed in Mississippi in 2017, versus Wisconsin, where 15% of the deer herd are thought to have been killed by hunters in 2017. Mississippi actually has a fairly small deer herd per their total land mass, versus Wisconsin who is somewhat comparable in total land mass, but has more than a half-million more deer roaming the land. And yet, the harvest to herd ratio is very comparable between the two states. In other words, hunters put a much heavier dent on the Mississippi deer herd than they do on the Wisconsin herd. At least that's how my math works out...
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