Named for a bottomland creek found running through part of the WMA's grounds, Departee Creek WMA is accessible via U.S. Route 367 by taking the Bradford exit and then following the service road for about two miles south. Established 1998, the WMA property was once used for farming and aquaculture.

Although there are no campsites, lodging is available nearby in Searcy and Bald Knob to the southwest, and Newport to the northeast. Those cities and small communities like Bradford provide anything a hunter could need.

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While there are several public-land areas to hunt in Bayou Country, thousands and thousands of acres are tied up in farming operations. So, knowing a friend of a friend, asking permission to hunt or securing a lease or club membership could be the way to go if you want to access the private lands of this region.

One such private farm is the Roger Turner farm located west of DeWitt and south of Almyra. As with many family farms, hunting is restricted to family, close friends and, if there is a guiding business operated there, paying clients.

Two bayous meander along the edges of Turner's acreage. Chris Earhart and Jay Bly, Turner's sons-in-law, manage the deer intensively, all the while knowing that over-pressuring or repeatedly bumping them could send the bucks and does up or down those bayous a mile or more -- and off their farm.

That's the way it can be in bayou settings. The deer may range up and down a bayou for miles and may only use certain parts of their range occasionally, all the while keeping close to their thin corridor of cover. Thus, the goal is a familiar one: Attract the deer to an area and keep them there.

While you may not be hunting the Turner farm, you can put into play some of the principles they practice on your own piece of Bayou Country.

Bly said the family's deer hunting philosophy can be summed up in a handful of words: stealth, selectivity, persistence, availability, malleability and awareness. Here's how he explained the various facets of that six-pronged attack.

"We just try to give the deer as much room as we can," Bly began, noting that it is important to get in and out of the stand without creating much disturbance. "The woods along the bayous are in strips. So, we give the deer their space. We know where they want to be, and we do not go in there at all. Otherwise, they'd just leave the property. While we hunt as much as we can, we try to choose the right times to hunt. This means being mindful of the wind and the weather and being able to hunt without spooking or pushing the deer."

While the whitetails take full advantage of the row crops on the farm, in particular the soybeans and the winter wheat, the Turner farm hunters make sure there are more food sources to attract and hold the deer.

"We try to plant wheat or oats for them along the edges of the timber in high-traffic deer areas," stated Bly. "We like to provide the things they need and do it as naturally as possible. For instance, we'll plant a pea patch and then just let it grow. We want the deer to have as easy a life as possible where they don't have to travel far for food, or for cover."

He added that the Turner farm also supplements the forages with food plots and corn feeders.

Although Bly and his relatives do all they can to assist the deer, Mother Nature can sometimes be less kind, providing drought or flood conditions that can stress the herd. When either of those events occurs, Bly said, the family responds by tweaking its hunting tactics.