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| Well, I also farm in W. Illinois, have been no-till drilling green into c. rye for about 15 years, target early to mid April to start drilling with 8" spacing, and have never had serious slug problems. Some years I see a few, but the damage is minimal at best so far. If you keep the rye alive for a while even after bean emergence, I've had some tell me any slugs you may have prefer the rye over the emerged beans. Usually the c. rye is sprayed when it's about knee high early to (mid May-ish), give or take.
We don't have the same potential for slug damage as East and North of here imo. Typically I'm in the 30#/acre rate of c.rye drilled mid October. Going into winter, c. rye typically can be rowed easily from road, but don't prefer it much bigger.
Voles on the other hand are a nuisance problem I do have some slight damage with in some fields. Try to keep a decent amount of predators around although many neighbors/drivers by love to shoot them, whether bobcats or coyotes. Need to try putting up some bird perches, and do make sure to have some dead snag trees around field edges to help avain predators have better places to hunt out of. That said, even with some minor vole damage, bean yields have been significantly above County avg. consistently.
Getting back to slugs, thinking about it more, I have seen some bean setback in narrow points surrounded by timber in wet springs where the sunlight day length isn't great in that part of the field. Beans eventually grow out of it, but yield in those low % of total field areas probably dip under 50 more than I realize. Deer like those areas also, lol.
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Early notill beans and slugs
