Joey Pisel arrowed his 16-pointer on Oct. 9 ``around'' Peoria.

``[I am] thinking it should score 160 inches (hoping),'' he emailed.

Through Sunday, Illinois bowhunters harvested 21,313 deer, ahead of the five-year average of 20,847. The percentage of bucks through the first four weeks was 37, that jumped to 46 percent last week, said forest wildlife program manager Paul Shelton.

That's a sure sign the rut nears.

We started BOTW a bit early this year because some nice nominations started coming in and I figured we might as well get going.

I expect a bunch of nominations the next few weeks.

Email nominations for BOTW, the weekly celebration of big bucks taken by hunters around Chicago outdoors in the Sun-Times outdoors page on Wednesdays when apt, to straycasts@sbcglobal.net.