There might be an easier and quicker way to write this story.

I could call it, "Where NOT To Look For Great Plains Big Bucks."

Combined, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota have 318 counties. And according to information compiled by the Quality Deer Management Association with data from Boone and Crocket and Pope and Young clubs, less than 13 percent of those counties did not produce a trophy buck from 1996 to 2005. That's 41 of the 318 counties.

But there is excellent hunting throughout the Great Plains. A big buck could pop up about anywhere in the four states we'll cover. The goal of this story is to help point you in the right direction to find the best of the best when it comes to areas that hold the potential to give you a chance at a healthy, mature buck with big antlers. Here are places to hunt, with a heads up on the places that haven't pro­duced record bucks in recent years.

KANSAS
Biologist Lloyd Fox summed up the Sunflower State's big-buck prospects in one sentence.

"This," he said, "is a wonderful time to hunt deer in Kansas."

Fox went on to talk about the rack from a Morris County whitetail taken last season that he'd just finished scoring in his Emporia office. It taped 193 non-typical inches. He also mentioned two other bucks he'd scored over the past 14 days, both from areas northwest of his office, but not terribly far away.

One scored 202 and was taken in 2007. The other was a 2008 archery buck that scored 196.

"When I talk about just the deer I've seen, that's only scratching the surface of what we have available," said Fox.

Mule deer numbers in Kansas are stable, and the same management units show the best promise for trophy mulies year after year. The best include DMUs 1, 2, 3 and 17. This includes all of northwest Kansas and all the western counties that border Colorado except for the far southwest corner, which is part of DMU 18.

When it comes to whitetails, Fox pointed hunters toward DMUs 5, 7, 8, 14 and 16 for 2009.

If you look at the QDMA map showing B&C and P&Y entries from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s, you also can add DMUs 4, 6, 9, 10, 13 and 15. Remember, however, that Fox didn't include those on his list. They represent an observation based on record-book applications from the counties in those units.

If anything, topography and habitat suggest that the units Fox mentioned just might hold the best of the best in the Sunflower State. They encompass a lot of native tall-grass prairie and CRP acreage. Hunting places like these is not like the deer hunting you find in many other states, especially east of the Missouri River, where wooded habitat provides great cover for deer along with at least decent amounts of hard and soft mast.

If you want to hunt country like that in Kansas, by all means check out DMU 10, which includes the Missouri River bluffs in the very north­east corner of the state. There is some truly amazing hardwood deer habitat up there, which I discovered during spring turkey hunts to the area when I first moved to Kansas years ago.