East central Alabama is another region that boasts outstanding hunting for quality bucks. The counties in this region are Coosa, Tallapoosa, Chambers, Autauga, Elmore, Macon, Lee, Russell, Bullock, Montgomery and Lowndes.

"It's always hard to pick one area for quality deer in our district," biologist Rick Claybrook said. "The district is pretty good overall for both numbers of deer and good bucks."

Pressed on the matter, he will say that south Montgomery, Bullock, Lowndes and part of Russell County offer some of the better areas.

He likes Lowndes WMA as a good place for quality deer. This will be its third season of being managed as a QDM area, with a buck required to have three points on a side to be legal.

"The only problem we have with Lowndes is that it's small, with only 10,000 acres," Claybrook cautioned. "It would be great if we had about 40,000 acres there."

The deer coming off Lowndes by and large are not top-end trophy bucks, but the quality has improved under the restrictive harvest, Claybrook added.

THE RUT IN ALABAMA
Most Of The State -- Jan. 15-31 Chattahoochee/Eufaula Area -- Late November Bankhead National Forest -- Late November Aliceville/Pickens County -- Last Week Of December

SOUTH
The better counties for quality bucks include Clarke, Monroe and Wilcox, he said. The soils are a little better quality in those areas and that helps to produce some bigger deer than the areas with the sandier, poorer soils further south.

The southwestern corner of the state has a heavy deer population, as evidenced by the need for 70 days of either-sex hunting. The counties in this region are Choctaw, Washington, Mobile, Clarke, Baldwin, Wilcox, Monroe, Conecuh and Escambia. Steve Barnett is the biologist.

For public land areas, his picks are Scotch and Escambia Creek WMAs.

"We're seeing some nice 8-pointers come out of those areas," he said.

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

He likes Pike County and the southern half of Barbour County as the areas where better antler quality is being seen.

"The eastern half of Dale County is also good," he said.

The soils in those areas are a little richer than the sandy soils that exist in much of the district and that is one reason antler quality is better.

Barbour WMA is without a doubt his pick for the top public tract for buck quality. It ranked No. 1 in the state a year ago for the number of 2- and 3-year-old bucks harvested there, but slipped to No. 3 last season. Still, it is a good one.

"We're on our sixth year of quality buck management on the WMA," Gray observed.

The hunt to be on last year was the one from Jan. 20-22, when several nice bucks fell. It rained the next weekend and the hunting was not as good.

Warmer than usual weather was a detriment to deer hunting in general last season and it also hampered the buck hunting. But the potential exists and seems to be on the rise for hunters to take some nice deer in the Cotton State.

No matter which part of the state you hunt in this fall, be content in the knowledge that there is trophy potential practically everywhere. And the harder you work at protecting young bucks, shooting does and growing nutritious deer food on your land, the better chance you have of eventually shooting a bragging size buck.