The typical buck categories are usually well represented, with gun hunters often bagging the biggest specimens. The 2005-06 deer season entries consisted of 15 in typical firearms, four in non-typical firearms, 22 in typical archery, and one in non-typical archery.

If you divide the state roughly in half along a line running from Columbus to Macon to Augusta, you'll find that 66 percent of those 42 deer -- 28 -- were killed south of that boundary. So the bottom line for finding Georgia's trophy bucks is to head for the less-populated agricultural counties in that half of the state.

Of the Georgia's 159 counties, 29 entered a buck last season. Nine counties, seven of which were in the south, posted multiple entries: Morgan and Fulton, in the north, produced two each; Lee, Wilcox, Burke, Macon, and Dodge boasted two qualifiers each, while Turner added three. Topping all others was southwest Georgia's Dougherty County, with five whopper whitetail bucks, among which was the No. 2 typical firearms kill, James Lawson's 163 3/8 B&C bruiser.

Its seat in Albany, Dougherty County consists mainly of flat terrain punctuated by scattered wetlands. Its many private quail plantations are intensively managed for wildlife.

Inspect a map of Georgia highlighting the counties in which big bucks were taken last year, and you'll easily spot a trend: A specific section in southwest Georgia surrendered the majority of the biggest bagged. In this 13-county area stretching from Early northeast to Dodge and northward to Taylor, 24 of the 42 entries were taken. In order to limit crop damage, the region's residents have historically suppressed the deer population, and agricultural land-use patterns in the area make available nutrition of the sort required to grow big bucks. But genes probably also play a part.

When Georgia's deer population was being restocked several decades ago, many of the deer released in this region were from Wisconsin. Dairy State whitetails are known to attain impressive dimensions -- and they're doing that in southwest Georgia, too.

A list of the Top 20 bucks taken from the 42 contest entries shows that 14 of them are from this southwest region. So this sector of the state not only produces numerous trophies, but also grows the biggest of the big.

The highest-scoring typical buck taken by firearm last season was a 169 1/8 B&C brute downed in Dodge County, from which another Top 20 buck, Marvin Hightower's 146 7/8 firearms kill, also came. The 2004-05 season's largest animal overall was a 180 4/8 B&C buck from Dooly County, also in this region. Seven of last year's Top 20 fell in this region, and several more in surrounding counties.

Clearly, history indicates that the place for bagging a giant Georgia buck is southwest Georgia's Deer Management Unit 6, which gives up plus-sized whitetails year after year.

The Piedmont portion of the state is also home to many a worthy buck, seven counties there -- Harris, Meriwether, Lamar, Baldwin, Wilkinson, Burke, and Morgan -- having made appearances in the 2005-06 edition of the Big Deer Contest.

Burke County, in eastern Georgia's DMU 7, yielded two big-racked bucks. And Morgan County has accounted for many wallhangers in the past, and did so again this year, providing two bucks that won the non-typical firearms and non-typical archery categories. Both of the Morgan County whitetails were taken on the same farm by hunters from a single family! Lamar Banks took the highest-scoring rack, a 185 7/8 non-typical rifle-killed buck, while his son, Loy, arrowed a 171 6/8 P&Y non-typical.