Photo by Mark Werner

Can you feel it?

Deer season is upon us. Some Great Plains hunters already have been on stand -- in Kansas, for example, where muzzleloader hunters can take to the woods not too long after Labor Day. Others are set to hoist themselves and their archery gear into tree stands as bow seasons open throughout the region. But the most intense seasons of all -- the firearms seasons -- are still a little way off.

In this first of a two-part series, let's look at the prospects you face in filling your tags when those 2005 gun seasons arrive. We'll look at each state, with an eye toward those deer management units that hold the best potential for bringing home venison.

Among the information included will be assessments from big-game biologists in the Great Plains about the overall health of their deer herds, particularly in terms of deer density.

No Great Plains state is facing the kind of deer-population issues that some other states must deal with -- particularly in the Southeast and in some Northern states. That, however, doesn't mean that Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas are immune to the potential for overpopulation. If anything, they can be more susceptible to problems without proper management and adequate harvest. Why?

Deer researchers and biologists around the nation will tell you that when deer populations are their healthiest, resident does in a given population can become fawn factories, and without the kind of control that ethical hunting provides, populations can quickly begin going out of balance. That's why it seemed important to include some observations about deer densities in this story, which focuses on where to go if your major goal is to fill a tag. The easy answer is that you go where the most deer are, and/or where the success rate has proved to be high for hunters in recent seasons.

You'll find that information in the following four-state roundup, along with more information that should be helpful in planning your hunts.

KANSAS
Kansas biologist Lloyd Fox doesn't talk so much about deer density in the Sunflower State. Instead, he talks about deer vulnerability.

"We definitely have higher deer density in eastern Kansas," he said. "In that part of the state our deer herd has better escape cover and sanctuary … and limited hunting opportunities."

You can fault increasing development as a reason for that. More land is off limits altogether to hunting, but it's that same land that deer are adapting to. They now live, and in growing numbers, in places hunters just don't get access to.

But there's an interesting twist to the concept in Kansas, where private landowners are seeing the value in managing their land for deer, and their deer for hunters. Deer hunting is becoming profitable for landowners.

You might call the result inadequate harvest by choice. Some folks are creating deer refuges through limiting access to their land and the deer using it. For that reason, Fox pointed to deer management units in western Kansas as those with the most promise this season for hunters who just want to fill a tag; he specifically mentioned units 1, 2, 3, 16 and 17, and suggested that Unit 7 was a possibility.

"Our harvest last season was 78,000," he said, "which is up slightly from 2003, when it was 71,000 to 72,000."