We used mistnets to survey bats at 41 sites throughout the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois during the summers of 1999 and 2000. Unlike most previous studies, we placed nets in the interior of forest stands as well as the more typical placement along edge habitats associated with water. We captured 417 individual bats representing 10 species. Of these, 168 individuals (40.3%) and 8 species were collected in interior forest. Northern long-eared bats (Myotis septentrionalis) were caught significantly more often in interior forest, whereas red bats (Lasiurus borealis), eastern pipistrelles (Pipistrellus subflavus), and big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) were netted more often in edge habitats. In contiguous forest, especially within the geographic range of M. septentrionalis, a more accurate measure of bat diversity and relative abundance is obtained by placing nets in interior forest as well as edge habitats.