By the time October arrives in the Bayou State, Louisiana's deer hunters are in the hardwoods, piney woods, prairies, swamps and marshes either preparing for the deer gun season -- or actually hunting whitetails with archery gear.

Much preparation has occurred by this time, including preparing green­fields and choosing stand sites.

On public lands, biologists with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries have also been busy repairing trails and primitive campsites on wildlife management areas for a flood of hunters seeking venison.

The LDWF deer study leader Scott Durham said that 160,000 licensed deer hunters would be hunting the Bayou State's estimated 700,000 whitetails this year.

"I continue to look toward a deer harvest at around 200,000 whitetails statewide," Durham said. "Unfortunately last season, our military land WMAs (Fort Polk and Peason Ridge) were unavailable during our scheduled management hunts due to training maneuvers on site at the time."

Those tracts are the Fort Polk and Pearson Ridge WMAs.

"Also, some of our either-sex management hunts on a few WMAs opened at the time we were receiving heavy rainfall, so our statewide 2008-09 deer harvests were down an estimated 16 percent overall when compared to the previous season," Durham explained. "In 2008-09, some 2,589 deer were taken on WMA managed hunts as opposed to the 3,094 taken in 2007-08."

In predicting hunter success on public lands for the 2009-2010 season, Durham was guardedly optimistic.

"It all depends on our weather," he said. "If we continue to have adequate rainfall this spring and summer, we will carry over many deer with a good batch of fawns.

"There is no problem with habitat here as all the hurricanes we have experienced since 2005 have removed much of the thick forest canopy and supplied undergrowth, browse and cover in many locations to include southeast and southwest Louisiana and areas within the Atchafalaya Basin."

Durham also associated colder weather with deer movement, and it is his hope that Louisiana will experience cold snaps coinciding with the WMA management hunts in October and November.

For 2009, approximately 80 percent of Louisiana's whitetails reside on private lands. The highest densities of deer per acre on private lands appear to occur in northwestern, north-central and western Louisiana, as well as along the Mississippi River Delta.

The Bayou State also boasts more than a million acres of diverse, public lands available to deer hunters. These lands are managed by the LDWF, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Forest Service, or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

On these public lands, some 5,000 whitetails are harvested each year during managed hunts, which typically occur on holidays and weekends in October through December. Access to a few of these hunts is by lottery only.

According to Deer Study Leader Durham, deer hunters using these lands may actually find more white-tailed deer available than last season because of less hunting pressure then on military lands and other WMAs affected by torrential rainfall during management hunts.

Durham also pointed out that for the second consecutive year, all harvested deer must be immediately tagged at the location where they were taken.

As in seasons past, regulations allow for the taking of one antlerless and one antlered deer per day, except on some public lands. Hunters are advised to read regulations specific to WMAs they plan to hunt before heading out.

Sportsman's Paradise
The forest products and timber industry owns and leases expansive tracts of pine and mixed hardwoods forests in this region. That gives Louisiana hunters access to property managed with woodland rotation that energizes a healthy deer herd.