On the topic of timber harvesting I would definitely recommend a forester...my district forester recommended a guy here in West Central IL that was outstanding. He marked every tree to go (trunk and base), put the project out for sealed bid ONLY to those loggers that would agree to my terms and had proper insurance based on my requirements, then supervised the removal. He was great. If there's anyone in Central IL that wants his info PM me.

Side note, I did my harvest purely to improve the health of my timber but it had a fairly significant side benefit...my 40 acres now (8 years post harvest) holds more deer than guys on either side of me with 3-4 times the acreage. I had the typical 'open timber' model on my ground pre-harvest...lots of mature hardwoods, full closed canopy, no underbrush. The forester took out every third or fourth mature tree, letting some underbrush come in. Consequently I have patches of bedding/cover all over my timber now. Strategic placement of stands so as to not bump the bedding areas and I have a phenomenal hunting area. In a year when IL kills were down almost 35% overall and most of my hunting buddies in the area didn't see hardly anything the entire bow/gun season combination, I had one of the best years I've ever had. 21 sits in for bow plus 9 for gun, and only 2 sits total did I not have the ability to harvest a deer. I had more 3 1/2 year old bucks in range this year than I ever have before. I have pictures taken from my stand of no less than 7 different bucks that are borderline shooters. I let them all go. I only had an encounter with a clear shooter-class buck once, and couldn't get a good shot with my bow. Had I seen him during gun season he would've been harvested.

My totals for the year are 4 deer in the freezer...3 taken the same morning before 9 AM. The weekend of Thanksgiving falls in between the 2 major gun seasons in IL. I traditionally don't bother bow hunting that weekend as in my experience the gun season really wreaks havoc with the herd. But this year was relatively quiet on first gun weekend so I decided to get a good sit in with my limb and stick that next Saturday. Long story short I had 11 different deer within bow range before 9 AM. I harvested 2 does and 1 small 7 pointer that someone had darn near shot the leg off of the previous weekend. He could barely walk, and was going to be coyote food very shortly. You can see the hole in his upper leg in the picture. I'm very particular about the bucks taken off of my ground but this guy wasn't going to make it.


Dale

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"When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the Fire Department usually uses water." - anonymous