There's no secret part of the WMA, however, that's better than another, Cook added -- it's all good. "I'd just try to get in the middle of it, if I were going to hunt it," he concluded.

SOUTH
The southwest part of the state has had a heavy population of deer for years. The counties in this region are Choctaw, Washington, Mobile, Clarke, Baldwin, Wilcox, Monroe, Conecuh and Escambia.

The deer population in this region of the state continues to be very stable, supervising biologist Chuck Sharp said. "You can't base the assessment of the population on anecdotal evidence, such as how many deer you see along a certain road and how many you saw on that same road last year," he stated.

In this part of the state, deer location depends on whether or not the many river bottoms -- particularly in the Mobile Delta -- are at flood stage and have driven the whitetails to higher ground. In general, lots of variables factor into the deer's selection of locations.

Over the years, development in Mobile and Baldwin counties has been tremendous, so the best hunting here is found in the most rural counties, specifically Clarke, Choctaw and Monroe. Scotch is probably the best WMA, with some particularly good hunts occurring there in January.

According to Sharp, Perdido River WMA is up and coming. "We've only had it for three seasons now," he pointed out. "It can be difficult to hunt, but it's got the potential to be a really good one within the next couple of seasons."

The southeast corner of the state is made up of the counties of Butler, Covington, Crenshaw, Pike, Coffee, Geneva, Barbour, Dale, Henry and Houston. Bill Gray is the district's supervising biologist.

"It was either feast or famine in our district last year," he said. "If you got a good day, you might go and see several animals. But at other times, you might go and not see much of anything."

A once-in-a-lifetime crop of acorns littered the ground in the district last year. According to Gray, so many acorns lay on the ground that it was like walking on ball bearings in some woods.

"I would expect us to have a much better season this year," he said. "I don't think there's any way we could have another acorn crop like that."

Numbers of deer are good throughout the district, with the highest populations thought to be in Pike, Covington, Crenshaw, Barbour and Henry counties.

A new public tract comes on line in this district this year: Geneva County WMA, which is really just a remnant of the old Covington WMA.

"We lost 15,000 acres of the Covington WMA," Gray said. "The new Geneva County WMA was previously part of Covington. This is actually the Geneva State Forest, owned by the State Forestry Division. They've done a lot of work on it and it's just one of the most beautiful places you'll ever visit. It's a hidden treasure and there's going to be some pretty good hunting on it."

The best WMA for deer numbers in the district, Gray asserted, is probably Blue Spring. Hunters take good numbers of deer here every year, and it's one of the few WMAs that still allow organized hunts with dogs on select dates. The opening-day and mid-January hunts are particularly successful ones here.

* * *

From the mountains in the north to the piney woods and swamps in the south, Alabama will continue in 2008 to offer the whitetail enthusiast both solid deer hunting and lots of places in which to pursue the pastime.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anthony Campbell is a reporter for the Advertiser-Glean in Guntersville. He is also a freelance outdoor writer and frequent contributor to Alabama Game & Fish.