It's that time again -- deer season. There's no question that Florida has plenty of deer, and plenty of hunters who will be looking for them. Virtually anywhere in the Sunshine State there's an opportunity for you to bring home some venison.

That said, it's also true that some areas harbor better deer herds than others. Since a hunter's goal is to bring back some venison, your best bet is to go where the deer are.

To find out where the best prospects are for bagging your whitetail this season, we talked to biologists across the state to get their recommendations for both public and private lands this fall. One thing they all told us is that it's getting harder and harder for them to make predictions about private lands. That's because they don't have the same level of information about hunt clubs and private lands that they once did.

In the past, when each region was responsible for issuing antlerless deer tags to private landowners, biologists had a pretty good handle on what the deer herd on private land was like. However, since the state moved the antlerless deer program to the Tallahassee office of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission several years ago, regional biologists no longer keep such close tabs on what's afoot.

"Unfortunately, we don't have good survey data capability on private land," explained Corey Morea, Deer Management Program Coordinator. "We do a random sample survey of hunters and that gets us to harvest effort and harvest, and we extrapolate from that to come up with overall harvest. Anything beyond that is just guessing."

Overall, the FWC feels that the deer population is stable statewide. Morea said the spring drought probably didn't have a dramatic effect on the deer herd.

"Deer are pretty much adapted to the local climate, and they're able to tolerate it," he said.

As far as the wildlife management areas are concerned, the ones we picked for this article are not necessarily the best in the state or even in the region. Most of Florida's top WMAs are kept that way by having very limited hunts, either through the Special Opportunity system or the Quota Hunt system. Since you are reading this long after the deadline for applying for those hunts, we eliminated WMAs that are managed entirely under either system.

The WMAs we are covering all have at least a portion of the season open for either walk-in hunting or hunting with a daily hunt permit available at the check station.

There's one other thing you should know: The FWCC is looking at hunting seasons across the state. Beginning back in April, the FWC began considering possible changes to deer hunting zones and dates. The purpose of any changes would be to better align season dates with the period of the rut in different parts of the state. Under the resulting proposal the state would be divided into five zones instead of three, and the dates would vary somewhat from existing hunting season dates. Those changes are not slated to take affect until the 2010-2011 hunting season on private lands, and even later during the 2011-2012 on public lands.

Northwest Region
In the Northwest Region, one tract with a non-quota period and a good deer population is the Aucilla WMA in Jefferson and Taylor counties.