Photo by Ralph Hensley.

The 2007-08 deer season is poised to become a historic one for hunters who target trophy-caliber whitetail bucks in Alabama. For all Cotton State hunters, the biggest change is that you can no longer kill one buck a day for the entire length of the long hunting season.

The Conservation Advisory board adopted a three-buck season limit last spring -- the first such statewide buck limit in more than 40 years.

"The new buck limit in itself is not going to make a huge difference," said state deer biologist Chris Cook. "The average hunter doesn't kill three bucks per season.

"What the new limit does is send a subtle message to the state's hunters that bucks aren't a limitless resource. It hopefully makes the hunter think about whether he really wants to shoot that spike or 4-point."

Cook said his hope is that over time, the new buck limit will take some of the pressure off the younger bucks. Wildlife managers would to see older age-class bucks make up a bigger share of the Alabama harvest in future seasons.

Cook thinks the new buck limit will probably impact only about 10 percent of the state's hunters. They're the guys who kill multiple bucks every season and they're the ones who stand to be riled by the idea that they can't shoot as many as possible.

"Our mail surveys indicate that most years, 40 percent of the hunters in the state don't kill a single deer," Cook noted. "It's one of those situations where 10 percent of the hunters take the biggest part of the harvest."

Cook expects the new licenses to have a blank on the back for hunters to record their buck kills. He said that any hunter transporting a dead buck without having filled out the tag would likely face a ticket from a conservation officer.

Beside the blank, there are expected to be notches, and each hunter must punch out a notch for every buck taken.

The other parts of the equation that could make this season historic are the climate factors that point to a lot of deer movement this fall.

A late freeze in the northern half of the state is expected to have impacted the mast crop. After a March that was warmer than usual, most trees were in or near full leaf, and flowering trees and a lot of other plants were in bloom. The late freeze didn't just nip the new growth, it killed it back.

The state was also entering a protracted drought going into the summer growing season. Both factors severely limited the availability of natural food this season.

That translates to deer having to move a lot more to feed.

"It's going to be hard on the deer," Cook said. "But if we get some cold weather to go with it, we'll see a lot of deer movement."

Last season, Alabama hunters had cold weather on the front end and the back end -- two key times -- and lots of deer were harvested during those time frames.

"The first part of the season was good last season. And then January, which is the rut in most of the state, was also very good," Cook agreed. "Those are two huge times for us every season."

Even when it's warm this year, the deer may move if the food supply shapes up to be as dire as predicted.

"We'll see deer keying on honeysuckle and greenbrier pretty early if the drought conditions continue," he said. "The hunters who like to hunt green fields may do pretty well, if they were able to get a little rain in the fall and get their plots up."

The best places to search for a trophy buck in 2007-08 remain the same ones they've been for years -- northwest Alabama and the Black Belt.