Bowhunting is our specialty. We focus our efforts on putting you within bow-range during the most exciting time to be in the woods; The Whitetail Rut! We primarily book hunters for the best three weeks of the year, increasing your odds, and keeping pressure at a minimum. This recipe has proven successful at MWTO, and the results are there to back it up.
We have two different camps that we’ll share with you, depending on the locations of hunting and number of hunters in your group. Both camps are fully equipped with all the amenities of home. Meals are included with your hunt. When you show up for your hunt, you should bring a towel, sleeping bag, and pillow as well as any toiletry items you may need.
At MWTO, we strive to bring you the best whitetail experience of your life. Our guides work tirelessly to make sure you’re in the right spot, using most recent information, and historical success to place you within bow-range of that buck of a lifetime. 80% of our hunters see the biggest buck of their lives? you could too.
During the course of your 5 1/2-day hunt, we promise you a variety of hunting experiences. Most of our sites are tree stand locations overlooking travel corridors although we have been known to set up a ground blind or hide in a creek bottom in places where tree stand hunting is not possible. We set our tree stands anywhere from 10 to 30 feet depending on the site. Some times it?s just not possible to hunt high and others it is necessary to be at least 30 feet off the ground. It all depends on how comfortable you are with heights.
The hunt itself plays out something like the following. We get you into your stand about ? hour before sun-up so that you are set and the area has a little time to calm down. Wind direction and weather conditions are always considered before placing a hunter. Once in the stand, you can elect to hunt all day or come out for lunch about 11:00. We recommend sitting a good stand all day if you can. It is no secret that many trophy book bucks are shot between 10am and 2pm.
If you like your location, you can keep hunting it. We recommend hunting a hot stand site for at least a day or two before abandoning it. When you are ready to move, we?ll take you to another site and try again. Just remember, the more you walk around from stand to stand, the more educated the deer you want to kill will become.
Once your buck is hit, our guides will track and locate the animal for you. We will take care gutting the deer and getting it out of the woods. We?ll help you get it to the butcher shop or local taxidermist, depending on your plans.
This is your hunt so we want you to be comfortable with your daily routine. We will make suggestions on ways to be more successful, but the hunt is yours. You paid the money, took time off work, and away from your family so we want you to enjoy yourself first and foremost. Some guys come out and hunt from dark to dark everyday. Others spend only a few hours a day afield. The hunt will be what you make it.
Rattling and grunting work very well during the pre-rut and rut when we hunt. The bucks are out seeking, tending, and fighting for the attention of the does. We?ve seen many shooter bucks roaming by themselves who get turned by a good grunt or bleat.
If you want your guide to try rattling or decoying a buck in, he?ll help you do that. Sometimes we set up on the edge of heavy bedding cover and, with the right wind, will use these techniques to coax a buck out of hiding. Remember, our job is to put you on the best buck of your life and we intend on doing everything possible to accomplish that.
MWTO leases and operates around 5,000 acres exclusively in Fulton County, Illinois. All of our land is located centrally from our lodges and all within 10 minutes of each other. The majority of out leases and farms run down the same back country road, or adjacent properties and roads. With the exception of a few neighbors, most of whom also practice quality deer management, we control a major block or area of turf.
The answer is very little…MWTO only operates a very limited amount of time with a very limited amount of hunters. We only run 3 archery hunts a year, all of which are during some phase of the rut. 2008 was the first year we offered gun hunting on our property.
Fully guided hunts, meals, and lodging are included. The hunter’s only responsibility is simply to purchase a hunting license and permit. The hunter to guide ratio is 3:1. The guides have all the preparations and farms ready long before the hunt starts. You don’t have to worry about scouting, hanging stands, or even worse, dealing with the product of a disturbed and tainted property from the weeks of other clients walking, scouting, and hunting before you get there. That does not happen on our land. The guides are there and more than willing and excited to strategically help each and every client kill a trophy.
MWTO operates out of 2 separate lodges all located within approximately 10 minutes of our centrally located farms. One of our houses is located in town and will bunk between 7-10 hunters. It is a comfortable old style farmhouse, plenty warm, comfortable and clean with enough room and showers for all your deer hunting needs. It is also within walking distance of convenient stores.
Our second lodge is a little smaller, but yet a little more spacious and private because we will only lodge between 4 – 5 hunters in it. This lodge must be specially requested and has other terms for bookings.
The lodges are stocked with food such as cereals, granola, or oatmeal and such for breakfast. Lunch meat for sandwiches, water, juices, drinks and snacks are available for lunch. All of our dinners are privately catered at the local restaurant in town. They are buffet style and good hearty home cooked meals. We do no cooking in camp, to ensure a scent free environment and less mess and clutter.
If you are looking for the Taj-Ma hal with bathrobes and a mint on your pillow, MWTO cannot afford that. We put all of our money into having excess and better land, more guides, more tree stands and less pressure.
Rest assured, you will not be in a tree with the bark rubbed off of it or following a footpath worn 6 inches deep leading to it from constant hunters using it. Many clients often come out the last week of our hunts and frequently hunt from stands and even entire segments of some farms that have not yet been hunted. The guides also end up pulling stands that never even got hunted every year. We are approaching 200 tree stands that we own and we rarely book over 50 some bow hunters for the entire season, let alone for each week. Keep in mind though some tree stands will be used more than once. The bottom line is we hunt where we feel we have the best chance for success. Ask about the imagination stand.
All of the MWTO team are experienced and passionate bow hunters. It is what we love to do most. We do not hide it from any clients that we do get a chance to hunt while we are out during the rut…but, there are very strict stipulations on the crew that are followed. None of the guides can hunt on any of the farms where clients are hunting and none of our guides ever hunt when there are clients to be taken care of. The property that the guides and owner hunts does not meet the terms of which we promise you on the properties you book to hunt. The farmer has some family members that hunt the farm before we arrive in November and they gun hunt it themselves after we leave.
All of the pictures on our web site and on our brochure or promotional material are all of our clients’. There are no pictures of the guides, owner, neighbors, strangers or anything copied and pasted off of a scouting camera web site.
All the references on our list are also all clients. No one on the call sheet is affiliated, worked for, or a family member of MWTO and a portion of them have not harvested and animal with us.
MWTO are serious bow hunters. No one in the organization does this to make a living. We are fortunate enough to work a job that allows the time to operate one of the most successful outfitters in Illinois. We are out here for one things and one thing only and that is our addiction of big whitetails in the rut. We are not farmers just looking to capitalize on their non-tillable land and we are not a commercial outfit with financial backers, omega advertising budgets, or real estate futures and plots to manipulate into hunting grounds for sale.
Everyone here at MWTO eats, sleeps, and breathes monster whitetails 24/7. We love sharing our obsession with fellow hunters. Our passion is putting whitetail enthusiasts on bucks of a lifetime..