I had a friend that worked with me in Illinois, from TN. He worked at our lodge in Illinois for more than the required time to claim residency, bought his resident tags.
Shot a fall turkey and the same day the warden was at the lodge, we have to check animals in there, he was obviously waiting for him to shoot something, why did he not show up when he bought the license?
Dude had IL. drivers license, address at the lodge the whole nine, and he did live there for 4 or 5 months at the time.
Warden tried telling him he couldn't live at the lodge, asked him why his phone was still Tn. area code(duh) and gave him the run around for weeks, he sat in the driveway for an hour after harassing my friend for an hour, my friend was like wtf, I told him if he had you on anything you would already have a ticket or be in jail.
So maybe the OP got the shaft?