With a population pushing 80,000 people and new subdivisions being built practically all the time, northeast Alabama's Marshall County isn't really known as a haven for big bucks.

But one part of the county continues to produce better than average whitetails year in and year out: the portion north of the Tennessee River.

Danny Jordan, a Guntersville taxidermy shop owner, has seen the trend for years. Of the 73 nice bucks that Danny's shop had taken in to mount by the end of last season, well over half came from northern Marshall County.

The northern part of the county has some riverbottom areas along both the Paint Rock and the Tennessee rivers. But a great deal of the deer hunting here is done on one of four large mountains -- Grant (shown on maps as "Gunters"), Merrill, Bishop and Lewis. Grant Mountain is perhaps the best area north of the river for high-quality bucks, but, Jordan reported, Merrill Mountain isn't too far behind.

One of the better bucks to come into Jordan's shop last season was an enormous 9-pointer killed by Grant police chief Alan Edmonds. The buck had an 18 1/2-inch inside spread, but what was so striking about the rack is its mass; it's one of those sets of antlers that are just thick all over. "It's a moose," Jordan kidded.

Chief Edmonds said he saw one that was even bigger the week before he got the 9-pointer. He does most of his hunting on the slopes of Grant Mountain.

His hunting buddies are Sonny Wooten, Rodney Bodine, Sam Norton, Corey Wooten and Jerry Pendergrass. They've all taken nice deer over the years, with most of them also getting good bucks last season in the county.

Norton took a giant 15-point non-typical on Grant Mountain in December 2004 that was featured in the August 2005 edition of Alabama Game & Fish.

Chief Edmonds got his big buck at 3:45 the afternoon of Jan. 20 last season. The hunter was sitting on a high vantage point overlooking a scrape line in the woods in which he was afield. It took him a half-hour to hike to his spot; there he sat down and sprayed some doe scent.

"I hadn't been there 20 minutes," Edmonds said, "and here he came." The chief thinks that the doe scent played a role in the quick appearance of the buck.

That big whitetail capped off a streak of really nice luck for the chief. He'd killed a 4-pointer and a 6-pointer the weekend before. In a span of a little more than a week, he'd downed three bucks.

Edmonds has been hunting most of his life, but the 9-pointer is the best buck he's ever killed. Taxidermist Danny Jordan estimated that the deer scored in the 140s by the B&C measuring system.

Why is the northern part of Marshall County so good when it comes to hunters taking nice bucks? Apparently, lots of ing factors contribute.

"There's a lot more land area than in other parts of Marshall County," Jordan said. "Near Merrill Mountain, you've got the Jones farm and the Moss land that doesn't get hunted a lot. That's thousands of acres that serve as sort of a preserve."

The mountains here tend to be rugged, with lots of boulders and bluffs. That translates into great hiding places for deer difficult for hunters to access. It gives bucks a distinct advantage in surviving to trophy size.

Jordan said that people are getting pickier about what they shoot too. That allows smaller bucks to grow bigger. "People aren't shooting spikes much anymore," he noted. "They're letting them walk and that helps."

Sonny Wooten said that there aren't a whole lot of deer in the northern part of the county, but what they've got tends to grow big. The genes are simply there for some 150- and 160-class deer.

"We don't see a whole lot of does," Wooten said. "I might have seen 20 all bow season and I was hunting food sources where you would see them. I let them all walk."