"We'd realized that there weren't a lot of people utilizing the primitive weapons hunt we'd been having in January," Eakes explained. "So we decided to try something different. A few WMAs around the state offered the hunts this year as a pilot project."

Both zones of the WMA provide a week-long gun hunt the week after Christmas.

Historically, Eakes said, the most successful hunts on the WMA have been the earliest hunts in the season. That's because they tend to draw bigger crowds and more people moving around results in deer being pushed in front of hunters.

If a true top-end trophy -- a buck with 150 inches or better of antlers -- is your goal, Winston County and Bankhead Forest form an excellent choice for a hunt, according to Dennis Campbell, author of Alabama Whitetail Records.

"When you talk about top-end deer in Alabama, everyone talks about the Black Belt," Campbell offered. "But the Black Belt as a trophy region really reflects a bygone era in Alabama. Most of the top-end deer nowadays are coming from northern Alabama, and a lot of them are coming from Winston County."

Black Belt counties dominated Alabama Whitetail Records entries in the early days of the record book, but many of those bucks were actually harvested back in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.

"The true picture is starting to come into focus now," Campbell countered.

Winston County ranks No. 5 in the state for 150-inch-plus deer in the Alabama record book that was published last summer. The only counties ahead of it are Jackson, Pickens, Greene and Lamar.

Hunters who downed their trophies in Winston County have entered 37 bucks scoring 150 or better in the state record book.

When you add in bow kills, which have a minimum score of 115, and muzzleloader kills, with a minimum 120, Winston County still ranks No. 9 with 43.

"For all practical purposes, looking at all record entries doesn't tell the real story," Campbell pointed out. "You've got some counties like Madison and Montgomery that have a lot of bowhunting and it changes the overall picture somewhat."

He thinks the true measure of a county's trophy potential comes from looking at the 150 or better deer that have come from the area.

"In my opinion, Winston is a good county for a couple of reasons," Campbell continued. "For starters, the genetics are real good. The first deer stocked in that county were from Michigan and those transplants have had a big impact on the genetics in that area."

Native Alabama whitetails were stocked in the area several years ago. Campbell said there's probably some hybridization or mixing of the Alabama and Michigan deer going on now and that's probably a bonus for the county.

"Another big plus is that the herd in Winston County hasn't expanded so much that the numbers have hurt the habitat," he said. "I don't look for that to happen for quite awhile."

The key to killing a big deer, Campbell argued, is to find some under-hunted ground where the deer are able to get some age on them. A lot of hunters are spending big dollars to lease ground and try to make that happen.

"But you can believe they're killing some big deer on public lands like Bankhead too," Campbell said.

The trick, he added, is to go to the extra effort to get into places where no one else is hunting.

"You have to find those pockets that are almost unhuntable," Campbell noted. "We're not talking about just getting out and walking into the woods a little bit. We're talking about finding some true remoteness. It takes work. Accessing a place with a boat is one way to do it. Who wants to get out in a boat before daylight when it's 15 degrees outside? Not many hunters will do it."

The Black Warrior area does get some hunting pressure, but not as much as it got in years gone by.

"We're within an hour's drive of something like a million and a half people," Eakes said. "That includes Huntsville, Birmingham, the Quad Cities and smaller towns like Cullman, Russellville, Double Springs, Hamilton and Jasper."