He did note that his buck hunting improved when he quit shooting does and small bucks. "I like to eat venison," he said. "I used to shoot 10 or 11 deer a year to eat, but I didn't get many good bucks then."

Wooten said that "rut season" in January provides by far the best hunting of the year in the northern part of the county. It's when the majority of nice bucks are taken.

But early season can be extremely good too. Just ask Jason Morrison, of Grant.

Only two bucks from Marshall County have ever been entered in the Pope & Young Club all-time record book for archery kills. It was while bowhunting on Grant Mountain on Oct. 31, 2005, that Morrison took one of them -- a 130-inch 10-pointer.

"I really didn't know this deer was around," said Morrison, who is a 4th grade school teacher at nearby Grassy Elementary School. "We'd never seen him, but we had seen his tracks."

Morrison and his brother-in-law Eric Largen hunt on a 2,400-acre lease with 10 other hunters. They were riding a 4-wheeler together going from spot to spot scouting for places to hunt when they came across a water hole pockmarked with deer tracks in a logging road.

"It was no more than a puddle really," Morrison said. "And there was a persimmon tree near it."

The young men had also found another good spot in addition to the water hole and good naturedly argued over who would hunt the beside the puddle.

"I told him to just hunt it and I'd go back to the other place," Morrison recalled. "He said, 'No, you hunt it.' We were going back and forth when he got my tree stand and threw it off the 4-wheeler.

Largen then told him that he may not hunt there, but if he didn't he was probably going to lose his tree stand!

Morrison would soon be thankful for his brother-in-law's insistence.

Shortly after settling into his stand, six bucks came to the watering hole together. Morrison shot the 10-pointer at 35 yards with his Mathews bow. The deer went about 70 yards before piling up.

"There were two other shooters in the group," the hunter recounted. "They were both eights."

He waited on Largen before recovering the deer since he needed a more powerful light. The hunt wasn't exactly a bust for his brother-in-law either.

"He'd seen 14 deer at the other place and arrowed a 4-pointer," Morrison said.

The P & Y 10-pointer had an 18 1/2-inch spread. Its longest tines were more than 8 inches.

"It's real symmetrical," Morrison said. "It grossed 130 3/8 and netted 127 7/8."

Like other north Marshall hunters, Morrison thinks the ruggedness of the mountains, the lack of houses and more abundant woods contribute to the number of bucks in the area. But he thinks more is at work than just that.

"There's still agriculture just across the county line from us in Madison County," he said. "I'm not so sure that some of the deer in our area don't go over there to feed on crops and then come back to the mountains to bed. All that separates the mountains from the fields is the Paint Rock River."

Morrison's family also has property on Merrill Mountain and he's had good luck hunting there too.

"The year that I got the 10-pointer at Grant, I took a nice 8-pointer on Merrill Mountain," he reported. "I also got two 7-pointers at Grant. It was a good year."

He finds that he's getting more and more selective these days, as many north Marshall hunters do once they've been at it awhile. Morrison passed up a 7-pointer and some other bucks with his bow last year that he might've shot in previous seasons.