Illinois had started issuing stamps instead of raising the price of a license. Started with "pheasant stamps".
They only issued them for TWO years and then started doing a habitat stamp and then finally they sell you an imaginary one.
I have some pretty cool old hunting licenses. The stamps...OMG if I added up all the stamps value it'd be a lot.
A couple weeks ago I sat down and started getting them out of the baggie I'd been saving them in so I could put them into an album.
Someone gave me a picture album for Christmas and I was about to throw it away because nobody does pictures anymore and who would look at them anyway. It dawned on me that I had a stack of hunting licenses that were in a 'temporary shelter'.
I noticed licenses got bigger and bigger for about 25 years and then shrunk down to a little receipt a 'puter spits out. ;(
The oldest one I have is from 1978. I vividly remember the trip my dad and I took that year. On the way he turned to me from the captain's seat in the Winnebago and said, "did you remember the decoys?". I said, "what decoys?" and we did a U-turn right there on the interstate at night. You don't forget things like that but it all came back when I looked at that old license.
I really wish I had kept a journal of all the hunts from each year. I did that starting in about 1999. I have some pretty good stories in there. You can buy it all after I'm dead.
I'm such a rebel...didn't sign my duck stamp on that '78 license.
