Cheyenne resident Susan Mabra killed this fine buck last fall near the author’s hunting spot in Roger Mills County. The hefty deer sported a 13-point rack. Photo courtesy of Susan Mabra.

Sometimes a hunt is so great that you have to shake your head and pinch yourself a time or two to make sure that you're not dreaming.

That's the way it was for me last November during my hunt on Turley Ranch, near Durham. Covering nearly 15,000 acres, Turley Ranch sprawls across the red hill country of Roger Mills County, which lies on the western edge of the Sooner State, near the Texas Panhandle. The ranch encompasses several miles of bottomland along the Washita River and Rush Creek, as well as miles of virgin prairie, windswept hills and isolated canyons.

That's not unlike a lot of the country in that part of Oklahoma. It's very similar to the habitat on Black Kettle National Grassland, which borders much of the ranch.

Perhaps the biggest difference is the hunting pressure. It can be intense on Black Kettle, at least during modern gun season, but the deer on Turley Ranch are less pressured, virtually undisturbed even. Turley and other landowners in the area also plant large fields of wheat and alfalfa that attract and nourish deer. Of course, deer travel back and forth between public and private land, so there's always a good chance of encountering any buck you might find on private land while hunting Black Kettle.

Scott Perry, a wildlife biologist for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, said the secret to the excellent deer herd in Roger Mills County is no secret at all. Great habitat equals healthy and numerous deer, and there's as much of that on public ground in the region as there is on private holdings.

"A good portion of Black Kettle WMA happens to fall in pretty fair deer habitat," Perry said. "It supports some healthy wildlife populations just the way the property falls. Black Kettle has about 30,000 acres, but there's about 350 miles of boundary fence around the WMA. You've got these little islands of public land surrounded by private land. Because of that, you gain a lot of private land influence.

"The flip side is that a fellow can go in there and have some good luck, and the next day new critters can move in. You're actually looking at a much larger piece of habitat, and that makes it more productive."

One big management component at Black Kettle is prescribed burning. Perry said he and the U.S. Forest Service, which owns the area, tries to burn at least 3,000 acres per year, and as many as 8,000. They also strip disk large sections and maintain about 40 food plots of at least an acre each. He also said the soil has plenty of all the right minerals to develop good antler mass for mature bucks.

Finding them on public ground is a challenge, he added.

"We're not set up for trophy management at all," Perry explained. "There are a lot of yearling bucks on the area, but the numbers of older deer drop off pretty quick. The average buck is going be 1 to 2 years old. In this part of the world, that tends to be a little better than the average yearling."