BOTW leads the Illinois Hunting Report on the outdoors page of the Sun-Times on Wednesdays. An extended online version appears here, usually by midnight Tuesday.

Here's the nomination from Tom:

My younger brother Tim, (who is not an "email guy") shot this deer on the north side of the Kankakee River - about two miles west of Momence.

Perfect lung shot with Slug.

He phoned me (thinking I was in Beecher - and by the way the Sun Times in one of our long time very good customers for newspaper delivery supplies) - Tim called me on my cell phone and asked me to come down and help him put the Buck in his pickup truck. I told him I couldn't because I was in Philadelphia!! He said even tho he had just shot it about 45 min to an hour ago and he dragged the deer back to his property, and gutted it, his heart was still beating out of his chest. We're very happy for Tim because he spent about 5 days bow hunting and only got off one shot. (It was high - he missed). I thought you might like this story. We have more pics - this Buck turned out to be 177lbs after field dressed and is a 9 pointer.

E-mail BOTW nominations to outdoordb@sbcglobal.net.