Deer often mingle with cattle on Arkansas farms, growing fat on the same foods that produce prime beef. Photo by Keith Sutton

Savvy deer hunters know that one of the most important facets of late-season deer hunting is finding the right area. Arkansas encompasses a lot of varied hunting terrain. You can hunt mountains or swamps, pine woods or oak/hickory forests, dry rocky slopes or damp gumbo creek bottoms. All these areas have healthy populations of deer, but during the late part of the season, if it's big deer you're after, you'll be most wise to hunt farmlands.

Many Arkansas sportsmen confine their hunting to wooded areas of the state year after year, drawn back to the forests by a strong sense of tradition. But the best deer hunting in Arkansas is often in easy-to-reach farm country, where whitetails stay fat and healthy by eating cultivated crops.

So why do these agricultural lands rate higher than other habitats? Several reasons come to mind.

First, those agricultural foods are very important in the deer's diet, especially during the hard months of winter. A study conducted along the Mississippi River found that five of the 10 preferred deer foods were crops raised by farmers -- winter wheat, corn, alfalfa, grass and lespedeza.

Farm crops also have a relatively high protein content and tend to produce deer that are bigger, healthier and fatter than woodland deer. A whitetail thriving on corn, soybeans, alfalfa and other farm crops can stay in good physical condition year 'round.

In wooded areas, deer primarily rely on hard mast and browse for food. There are fluctuations in mast crops from year to year, and in some years, shortages of acorns and other important mast crops can force deer from their normal home range to areas where food is more plentiful. As often as not, deer move into winter wheat fields or other farmlands, where food is plentiful.

I once counted over 100 deer on a 40-acre winter wheat field late one January afternoon. Most of these exceptional gatherings take place (at least during daylight hours) toward the end of hunting season when fewer hunters are in the field.

Studies have found that deer concentrations can be up to 10 times higher in the immediate vicinity of agricultural crops than in the more remote wooded areas; these same studies reveal that the deer disperse when the food is gone. But in many areas of Arkansas, winter wheat, waste grain and other farm foods are available to deer throughout the season. In farming areas, deer may remain concentrated on agricultural lands well past the end of February when hunting season is over.