Photo by Mike Biggs.

With Sept. 1 looming on the calendar, there can be little doubt that conversations around the Sooner State are turning to the approach of the fall hunting seasons.

And while a good number of those conversations will center on mourning doves, waterfowl, and bobwhite quail, the guess here is that the lion's share of these blue-plate-café coffee-cup conversations will center on Oklahoma's No. 1 big-game animal, the white-tailed deer.

With the archery, muzzleloader, and firearm seasons on the not-so-distant horizon, what is the state of Oklahoma whitetails in 2007?

For that heads-up, allow me to turn to Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation wildlife research supervisor Mike Shaw. In conversation earlier this year, I asked him about the two considerations nearest and dearest to the hearts of most Sooner State deer hunters -- overall numbers and overall quality of the herd.

"We've got about 600,000 whitetails as of our latest counts," he said. "And that number is generally increasing."

That's particularly true in a part of the state that might not seem to be the most deer-hospitable part of Oklahoma at first glance. "The southwestern part of our state is probably the fastest-growing in terms of deer population growth, although the deer haven't been there as long as in other parts of the state," Shaw said. "Probably 10 to 15 years ago you could count the harvest in those southwestern counties on one hand -- but now they're significantly higher. The southwest is equal to or has surpassed the northwest in terms of total deer kill."

Not only is the region's deer kill on the increase, but so too is the quality of bucks that are coming from that region. "People always thought that region didn't represent much in terms of deer habitat, but deer are adaptable critters and I think they're proving them wrong," Shaw said. "In fact, the last Cy Curtis non-typical record buck came from there. They are growing some good deer down there."

Southwestern Oklahoma isn't the only place that sees good deer being grown. Two other areas readily come to Shaw's mind, although both are about as different as daylight and dark. "When you look at the distribution for record bucks in Cy Curtis, Pope & Young, and Boone and Crockett, two areas of the state stand out," he said. "The northwest is one, the southeast is the other."

The ODWC deer man said that the south and southeastern part of the state is more forested and in some cases even mountainous and the region's deer are able to use such cover effectively. "That means that the deer there attain an older age structure, and that contributes to more deer down there," he said.

In the northwest, Shaw reported, the region's deer benefit from an abundance of agricultural lands and leased land that leads to fairly light hunting pressure. With plenty of food in place, the northwest has had and continues to have the potential to produce an eye-popping buck or two each fall.

"When people ask me what part of the state is the best, the northwest and the southeast stand out, but really, in terms of good-quality deer, a trophy can come from just about anywhere," he said.

That even includes urban areas around Oklahoma City and Tulsa -- which over the past decade or so have produced monster bucks within the very shadow of suburbia -- and areas like south-central Oklahoma's Bryan County -- which, though it's hardly known for its record-book dominance, yielded the current state-record typical buck, a whopping 16-point brute netting 185 6/8 on the Boone and Crockett scoring system, to Larry Luman in 1997.

Which strongly supports Shaw's contention: A bruiser buck is liable to pop up just about anywhere this fall.

That's undoubtedly in part true because of Oklahoma's robust whitetail herd, and is well illustrated by recent trends in the Sooner State's overall deer harvest. "As for last year's season, I don't have the totals yet (as of press time), but I believe that when everything is in, we'll be in the 110,000 neighborhood," Shaw said. "If that's the case, then we will have surpassed our previous high in 2000 of 102,200 deer."

For the record, that will also be well above the overall total harvest figure of 101,111 deer taken during the 2005 deer season.

Last year's high harvest may have resulted in large measure from drought conditions having made food resources scarcer, causing deer to have to search a little harder for their next meal. And, Shaw observed, last year's early start date for gun season -- an accommodation to the Thanksgiving Day cycle -- had the effect of enabling the Sooner State's gun deer hunters to catch the rut just right.

"I can't remember a time in the last four or five years where hunters were seeing as much rutting activity as we did last year," he said. "Everybody reported seeing bucks during the gun season."

While the absolute final firearm harvest totals weren't yet tallied at press time, Shaw expected the figure to be above the 61,740 deer taken by gun hunters in 2005.