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.
