I ordinarily go after deer in Louisiana at a hunting club south of Ruston. I'll try to collect my venison for the freezer in the form of a couple of fat does early in the season. Having the deer I've taken converted into neat packages labeled "backstrap," "tenderloin" and "venison hamburger" gives me a warm feeling, as their presence in the freezer provides constant assurance that my family will enjoy plenty of tasty meals with venison as the entrée.

Once I get my year's worth of deer frozen and ready for the table, I quit hunting and move on to other pursuits -- right? Wrong! I have my eye on the calendar for the approach of the Thanksgiving holidays, when I'll be spending as much time as I can in the woods, on one of my deer stands looking for Mr. Big to walk by.

I'll be out there for a week on either side of Thanksgiving for the simple reason that in the woods I hunt, Thanksgiving week characteristically sees the peak of the rut. Experience suggests that I'm more likely to encounter a lust-starved buck during this period than at any other time.

Most deer hunters feel the same way about hunting the rut, knowing that at this time more than any other, a big buck is apt to drop his guard and venture out during daylight hours, its single purpose to find and to breed receptive does.

In some areas of the state, however, hunters will be spending Thanksgiving with family, eating too much and lounging on the couch to watch football. It's not that they're not interested in hunting deer during the rut -- it's that the rut in their areas won't yet have begun.

The wide variation in peak breeding period from one region of our state to another has an interesting cause. This phenomenon was discovered in 1966, when researchers examined seven deer herds around the state and identified three distinct breeding seasons for Louisiana deer. Simplified, the peak breeding season for deer in southwest Louisiana is mid-September to October. In northwest and central Louisiana, peak breeding takes place between mid-October and November. Along the Mississippi Delta, in the Atchafalaya Basin, and in southeast Louisiana, peak breeding season is during December and January.

David Moreland, a former deer study leader who now heads up the Wildlife Division for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, believes that this phenomenon has to do with relocating of deer from one region of the state to another during the state's restocking program.

"Factors that generally influence breeding activity include photoperiodism, the diminishing ratio of daylight to darkness," he said. "Also, latitude plays a part. In the U.S., breeding begins in the northern states in November and goes through March in the Southern states. However, a look at the breeding seasons for Louisiana shows that something else is at work. That 'something else' is genetics.

"This is the factor that has resulted in our state having different breeding seasons. Deer relocated from one area of the state to the next maintained their inherent breeding schedule.

"Another factor influencing breeding periods has to do with nutrition. Poor nutrition causes deer to be stressed and causes late breeding. Herd densities, sex ratios, etc., might also figure into this situation."