I was reading in the latest American Hunter that the state of IL has a walk on hunting program. Supposedly this program costs the hunter $25 to participate and there are private land owners who will then let you hunt on their land. This way you do not have to go knocking on doors to find private land to hunt on. Has anyone heard of this? I searched the web and the only thing I could locate were public lands (Hazlet, Peabody, etc.) with walk on hunting.

Jim

I have seen (cant remember what it was called) where you send in $25 and a list of counties you would like to hunt to this org.
They then send you a list of land owners that are wanting their land hunted, etc.
They say that their might not be any other fee other then the $25 but I sent it in one year about 3-4 years ago and they sent me this list and they all had a fee to hunt/fish etc.

Access IL. I think it might have been called.
From what I've heard since they use to have allot of listings from farmers and such that didn't have a fee but in the last few years they all figured out they could solve their crop damage problems and get paid to let someone hunt on them.

Here you go Jim
I found the site for the one I was talking about.

http://www.accessil.org/

I read about that awhile ago, and at that time most of the land available was in the northern part of the state. The locations map on their site looks like ts expanding. I was able to find it for you all.

http://www.accessil.org/how.html

Ah, but after reading, the deal is the program hooks you up with the landowner who is willing to lease his land. The 25 bucks gets you thee info, you then pay the landower whatever his trespass fee is. Looks like there are yearly, weekly, seasonal availabilities.

Still could be cool to locate a good place for a week away. Sometimes a new view out of a treestand is always good.

You been out Jim, saw you signed in out here. Saw a few over the last couple days, got close, but no cigar.:rolleyes:

DANG flatlanders quick...

Bob
I went out yesterday even though it was about 70 degrees.
First time so far this season I went out and didn't at least see anything.
Going to give it another try tomorrow.

Yes, Access IL is a great way to find a hunting lease. I'm not quite to the point yet that I'm willing to pay to hunt though. It might come to that someday, but right now I'm not going to.

I think IL needs to emulate states such as Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming and several other western states (just to name a few) and set up a walk-in access program. I think it is a slick deal...the state leases private land for public huntng rights...everybody wins with this. It would be a good way for the state to provide public hunting opportunities in counties that have little or no public land (such as my home county, Monroe). Apparently it is working in these other states. I think these other states are using federal Pittman-Robinson, Dingle-Johnson funds to acquire the leases so there is no "low budget" excuse. Even so, I think alot of us hunters would be very willing to pay an extra state tariff on hunting and fishing gear to benefit the program.

OK, I'll get off the soap box.

Joe

I looked into the Access IL program before and the $25 is the sign up fee. There is quite a bit of land enrolled in the program and it shows the available acres on their web site. I believe a lot of it is geared towards deer hunting and is not cheap. I was interested in upland hunting and possible waterfowl hunting so I was out of luck. I have been to Kansas and their walk-in program is great. Tons of land open to hunting. Again, I was there for the bird hunting so I don't know if there are more restrictions on deer hunting the walk-ins.

Thanks to all for the info. Based on what was posted I will just keep on going to Peabody and Hazlett.

Jim

Some guys my buddy knows went out to Kansas on a turkey hunt and hunted the walk-in areas. They said there was no one else hunting turkeys, there were tons of birds, and they all filled their tags with mature gobblers.

From what I hear, alot of that land enrolled in that walk-in program is good deer hunting too.

I think it will catch on eventually. It is a relatively cheap way for the state to acquire hunting access to the public and their state residents. I think it would be a scary statistic to see the number of acres in IL "locked up" by leasing of well-to-do non-residents.

I agree Joe and JES22. Kansas WIHA areas are great. I've hunted phesants out there a few times. All the properties listed by county in a book complete with maps and what animals are available to hunt on each tract. KS has a nice set up.

Back where I grew up in PA the state has a huge amount of state land 1.4 million acres. A lot of that is large timbered mountains, but there are smaller lands too. It also has the Co-Op Safety Zone Program with more than 1 million acres. (More Here (http://www.pgc.state.pa.us/pgc/cwp/view.asp?a=513&q=168157)) I wish IL had a similar program for farmer / hunter interaction. This would work well here I think.

Anyone know if IN has something like this ?

I have a NR friend looking for something just over the river from White Co. IL