The 38,000-plus bowhunters afield in Louisiana last season brought home 13,900 deer. Much of the same is expected this season. Photo by Bill Lea.

In Louisiana, the good times seem always to be rolling, all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to the northern hardwoods.

And in the Sportsman's Paradise, that's especially true every year when whitetail bowhunting season finally arrives.

"It's a good bowhunting state in terms of quality and numbers," agreed Scott Durham, deer program manager for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. "Quality edges it out a little bit, since some of our public lands are getting some real good age in the buck segment. Plus, we have a big bowhunting constituency that goes and hunts these areas and they do pretty good on them."

Durham expects that trend to continue this year. He saw no reason to believe that this fall's bowhunting campaign wouldn't be a good one.

"Things are looking OK -- except for it being a little dry in a few places -- but (for the most part) we're getting a good greenup," he said. "We're getting adequate rain to produce browse and set up acorns, so I don't see why we wouldn't have a good bow season."

That should come as good news for the string-and-stick enthusiasts in the Bayou State, and there are plenty of them. Last season's statistics were not available at press time, but more than 38,000 bowhunters went afield in 2006-07 and harvested nearly 14,000 deer.

"We won't deviate a lot from either number this fall," Durham predicted, adding that he has only one real concern in terms of the state's bowhunting heritage. "The only problem is that they're getting older, and there's not the level of recruitment (of younger hunters into the sport) that we'd like to see."

Plenty of top-quality public land is available for rookie and veteran hunters, young and old alike, thanks to the state's 63 wildlife management areas -- and that's not to mention a number of federally owned national wildlife refuges where various hunting activities are permitted.

"They're all good," Durham said. "We're blessed to have nearly a million acres of public hunting land in our state."

That said, what are the best options available for a Louisiana bowhunter wanting to send some venison to the freezer and a set of big antlers to the taxidermist?

BEST OF THE BAYOU
"The best deer typically come from the alluvial bottomlands of the Mississippi and Red River systems," Durham said, "especially where those systems converge."

LDWF deer management assistance program coordinator Emile LeBlanc said that a couple of WMAs jump off the map simply because of their names. "Red River and Three Rivers (WMAs)," LeBlanc suggested. "They are right in that river floodplain that produces some high-quality animals."

LeBlanc also said that the region -- a mixture of farmland and bottomland hardwoods -- can produce some pretty nice whitetails -- including some that meet the lofty standards of the Boone and Crockett and Pope & Young clubs.

A glance at the Louisiana Big Game Records program confirms the region's trophy potential. At Red River WMA (a 41,681-acre WMA in Concordia Parish) and Three Rivers WMA (a 26,295-acre WMA also in Concordia Parish), a total of eight bucks -- four from each area -- have been entered into the LBGR program. Those include Johnny Warren's Red River archery non-typical buck taken in 1993, a brute that net-scored 184 6/8 inches.

NORTH
Further north, the Tensas River National Wildlife Refuge (a 64,012-acre tract spreading across Franklin, Madison and Tensas parishes) has produced 11 such record book entries including Joe Hatton's 1995 typical entry that net-scored 163 1/8 inches on the Pope & Young scale.