Photo by Kenny Bahr.

It was on a cold Saturday morning back in 1965 that I went on my first deer hunt.

A senior in high school, I accompanied a couple of buddies who lived in the "country" and regularly regaled us "townies" with tales of hunting and trapping exploits. The day before my big adventure, I'd borrowed a 16-gauge shotgun from my next-door neighbor and bought four 00 buckshot shells.

The morning dawned clear and cold. I remember the frozen leaves crunching underfoot as the three of us walked down an old logging road in the early-morning light. After we split up, to "cover more ground," I came to an old sidehill sawmill site and, upon seeing numerous tracks in the sawdust, decided to sit there for a while. I found a flat spot with a big pine that I could lean back against and made myself comfortable, quietly working the action of the shotgun to slide a shell into the chamber.

It was colder back in those days, and within 10 or 15 minutes, chills were running up and down my back. My socks were so tight inside my leather boots that they cut off the circulation to my toes, which were soon as numb as my fingers. After a half-hour I was squirming, trying all the while to remain still, which I knew hunters should do, my teeth chattering loud enough that any deer within miles surely heard.

Suddenly, movement in a row of dark pines below me -- and, all thoughts of cold forgotten, I saw a shape materialize in the dimness, then saw the glint of sunlight off an antler. I'm sure I was holding my breath as the buck stepped into the small opening around the sawdust pile, then stood there testing the breeze. To this day I can still see him there, steam blowing from his nostrils, everything about him -- beauty, grace, wariness -- a symbol of the outdoors. Somehow I got the shotgun up without him seeing me, and even remembered to click the safety off as I tried to center the bead on his chest.

At the blast he whirled and disappeared back into the dark timber. The thing I remember the most, even today, is the complete stillness that enveloped the clearing after his disappearance. Before, crows cawing, squirrels rustling in the leaves, even a raccoon flipping rocks in the small stream there below; after, all silent.

When I got to the spot where he'd been standing I felt a growing panic: no blood, only gouges in the damp leaves that he'd left in flight. I walked slowly in the direction he'd taken, heart heavier with every step, knowing that I'd missed what would surely be my only chance ever to take such an animal.

And then there he was, lying less than 50 yards into the trees, white belly like a beacon. As I ran to him, I could hardly breathe; my whole body shook, but no longer from the cold. Heart racing, I lifted his head from the leaves: an 8-pointer.

Back in that now long-ago season 20,028 deer were checked in statewide. I believe that there were more deer hunters at the time. I can remember schools closing, local plants taking days off, downtown businesses shutting down, "gone hunting" signs common in store windows along Main. Most written accounts of the time put hunter numbers at around 350,000, so the overall state success ratio ran somewhere in the 5 to 7 percent range.

Fast-forward to the present: Last year, 164,579 deer were checked in here in the Natural State. Even the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission admits that hunter numbers are down, with the most-often published totals being in the 300,000 range, which translates to an overall success ratio of around 54 to 55 per cent. Sometimes I sit on my deer stand and contemplate what the "old-timers" would think of the bounty we now enjoy. Growing up and raised in a time when there were virtually no deer in this state, I'm sure they would be amazed at the quantity of deer here today.

Some years back I observed that, were you to throw a dart at a map of Arkansas, deer hunting of substantial quality would be present wherever it stuck -- and that's still true today. But naturally, some areas are better than others.

For many years Arkansas was divided into four basic deer-hunting regions: Ozarks, Ouachitas, Gulf Coastal Plain, Delta. Realizing that such large areas, which often had several differing types of terrain within them, made management difficult, the AGFC deer team divided those regions into the more-workable deer management units.

THE MOUNTAINS
The majestic Ozarks and Ouachitas, which cover most of the western half of our state, offer something that no other region has: thousands upon thousands of acres of land open to the public. Unfortunately, that "open" part is both a plus -- you can still hunt free of charge amid some of the most beautiful land in the state -- and a minus -- deer management there lags behind areas to which access can be controlled.

When you hunt this region, you must think of Big Piney Creeks Wildlife Management Area, which lies northwest of Russellville along Scenic Highway 7, as an example of the "why" of that. It consists of some 180,000 acres of rugged and rolling land, most of it remote and accessible by relatively few roads. Last year, 133 deer were taken there, which works out to 1 deer per 1,353 acres. Smart hunters look for spots away from the roads; that search got tougher or better (depending on your preferences) with the National Forest Service's new off-road vehicle policies.