If you're hunting a property on which most bucks killed are 1 1/2 years old, Cook proposes that you should find another place to hunt. "Your chances of shooting a bigger deer aren't too good if a lot of bucks are getting shot at 1 1/2 years old," he asserted.

You've got to put in a lot of time in the woods, too. The best windows in which to look for a buck to slip up and make himself vulnerable are bow season, early gun season and the rut, the last of those three being a January affair in most parts of the state. Cook would pick the rut over any other period if he were going to use vacation days for his hunting.

The difficulties of hunting Alabama whitetails include bucks becoming extremely nocturnal and adopting unpredictable patterns that make it hard to determine their whereabouts. It's hard to sneak in tight to bedding cover, since most parts of the state abound in thickets.

Nowadays, a lot of Alabamians have become greenfield deer hunters, perhaps out of convenience more than anything else. Cook regards this as a pretty good rut tactic if you've got fields to which plenty of does come in the afternoons. "During the rut, the bucks will be cruising to check those does," he said. "And you might get an opportunity at a nice buck."

Scrape hunting gets a lot of press in other parts of the country, but Cook's never had a whole lot of luck doing it, and doesn't know many other Alabama hunters who have, either. "I'm not an expert on scrape behavior," he noted, "but in my mind, a lot of bucks hit scrapes once or twice and then never visit them again. That's why it can be a slow form of hunting."

Cook would rather try a little rattling, which, he says, can get surprisingly good results in Alabama. He's had lots of hunters tell him of having luck with it. The most successful rattling hunters that he knows of employ a two-man method: One rattles, and the other's the shooter. "It's a very good tactic to use on properties where a balanced herd has been a management objective and the doe to buck ratio is good," he said.

Hunting clearcuts is another dynamite approach to the rut, in Cook's view. He feels that cutovers, whose cover complement makes deer feel more secure moving around, can actually be a lot more productive than greenfields. "They feed in it," Cook observed. "They bed in it. It's just a good place for deer." He cautioned that this type of hunting can be tricky, since cutovers -- especially those replanted in pines -- grow up so quickly that there's a narrow window of opportunity for optimum hunting.

With these tactics in mind, let's look at the promise held out by different regions of the state, and at what you can expect of them this fall.

TROPHY HUNTING IN THE HEART OF DIXIE
North
As mentioned earlier, the northwestern corner of the state has been one of Alabama's best producers of prime-quality racks for several seasons now -- and district biologist Ron Eakes sees no reason for that not to continue into this year.

Eakes' territory covers Lauderdale, Limestone, Madison, Colbert, Franklin, Lawrence, Morgan, Cullman, Winston, Marion, Lamar, Fayette and Walker counties. In this region full of sprawling wildlife management areas and national forests, an estimated 180,000 acres of public-land deer hunting will be found.