Barry Hollifield killed this handsome 8-point buck at Chestatee WMA during the 2006 season. Photo courtesy of the Georgia WRD.

The pre-dawn darkness was cold, the stars were still out, and the mountainside was steep from where I’d had to leave my old car. It was late in the rut period in Union County, and I knew from past experience that I had more than an hour’s climb ahead of me. The goal was a blown-over oak on the edge of a laurel thicket; there, a deer trail crossed a saddle, and a good-sized hemlock had been rubbed bright and shiny by the buck I hadn’t seen yet.

The forecast was for a clear morning with the temperature several degrees below freezing. I tried hard to move quietly through leaves that crunched loudly underfoot if I was careless.

My rifle of choice that day -- and this was nearly 50 years ago, before any of the companies now making muzzleloaders even existed -- was a .50-caliber percussion muzzleloader that a friend and I had rebuilt from parts of four different old guns. The rifle was short and heavy of barrel, but with a healthy charge of black powder and round ball, it was accurate enough to keep three shots on a poker card at 50 yards from a steady rest.

I settled into the now-brown but still leafy branches of the oak just as the sky was turning rosy in the east off the far side of the saddle. I’d just gotten my breathing slowed to something approaching normal after my climb when I heard crunching steps coming through the leaves scattered under the heavy cover of the laurel thicket. I was ready and focused before the buck even stepped into view. The range was less than 20 yards. The light was good enough now that I could clearly see the shining 6-pointed rack and his breath condensing into steam in the cold mountain air.

When the big .50 boomed, the smoke obscured the whole scene, but as it lifted and blew away, I could see brown legs kicking in the leaves.

This was no record-book buck, but it was a nice one, and it was my first high mountain deer. I was hooked! From that day on, I was a “mountain man.” No matter how many and how heavy-horned my flatland deer have been, my most memorable and meaningful hunts have been in the North Georgia mountains.

Today, however, just what constitutes a trophy buck in the rugged mountain counties, and what size of deer can a hunter reasonably expect to find there? The area we’re talking about comprises the 16 mountain counties at the top of the state, where the lands of Chattahoochee National Forest and other public hunting possibilities may actually exceed the amount of private hunting lands -- a condition definitely not found farther south.

To start the search for an answer, I checked the all-time Boone and Crockett Club records for the last decade, the Georgia Big Deer Contest entries over the same period, and the all-time record book for Pope & Young Club bucks.

There were no B&C entries from the mountain counties, and only three firearm entries from the 10-year period in the Big Deer Contest. The annual Big Deer competition is jointly sponsored by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Georgia Sportsman and the Georgia Outdoor Writers Association. It recognizes the top gun- and bow-killed typical and non-typical bucks taken each season. Minimum qualifying scores for firearms are 145 B&C for typical racks and 170 for non-typical. The Pope & Young Club recognizes typical archery kills of 125 P&Y and 155 for non-typicals.

From 1967 through 2005, only 15 mountain bucks were listed out of the more than 450 deer on the P&Y all-time list from Georgia.