Tyndall's hunts start during the archery season with a week-long hunt, then the base is open to archers Saturdays, Sundays and Wednesdays. Next the area is open during the state three-day muzzleloading hunt. When the gun season opens at Thanksgiving, only shotguns and primitive weapons are allowed.

This tract is long and linear, situated on a sandy spit of land with East Bay and part of St. Andrew Bay on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. Tyndall has an aggressive prescribed burning program, something Mobley believes has been a key to their hunting program.

"Everyone knows the value of burning to improve habitat and browse for deer," he noted.

Hunters tend to have their own places they like to hunt year after year, but you cannot go wrong on the base by hunting the oak ridges, especially when acorns are falling. All you have to do is look around the ridges for deer tracks to see which are the most used.

Some hunters find it a bit disconcerting while others enjoy being surprised occasionally by a black bear or two passing by their stands. No one knows how many bears call the base home, but they are seen, particularly early in the season before cold weather sets in. But, of course, there is no bear season and the critters are protected.

For information about Tyndall AFB WMA and its hunting seasons call (850) 283-2641.

In the North Central Region the top-producing public area for big bucks is the 11,150-acre Lochloosa WMA. There are 30 trophy bucks listed on the FBR from this tract. The trouble is, there are strict quota requirements for that area's two hunts. Citrus WMA is next in the region with 21 trophy entries, but except for a few days of archery season early in the year, it is a quota area as well.

One area that you can hunt during December in the region is the 266,000-acre Osceola WMA northeast of Lake City. The Osceola area has produced a handful of nice bucks for the Buck Registry and there are likely many more that have never been measured.

Osceola is located on national forest property and, as you might expect, is covered by mostly pinewoods with scattered cypress heads and swamps. Portions of Osceola are thick and tough to hunt, so it is important to scout and find open areas the deer are using.

One good thing about Osceola is that general gun season runs from Nov. 12 to Jan. 8, providing action throughout December And, by this month, no quota permit is required to hunt here.

A friend of mine who hunts Osceola told me that he looks for several things when deciding where to hunt. First, he does not like hunting where other hunters had been, because he believes that big deer learn to pattern hunters and change their habits when pressured. The other thing he looked for, as simple as it sounds, was deer sign. He tried to zero in on movement from one type of habitat to another, such as going from a stand of pines to the cover of a swamp. Once such a trail was identified, he set up his stand accordingly and always seemed to take four or five deer a year.