In studying the records, one thing becomes apparent: Counties in the southwestern and upper coastal plain areas of the state produce a lot of trophy deer. Farming dominates the landscape there, and agricultural lands in general produce bigger deer by reason of their bounty of forage. A deer in the heart of the North Georgia mountains is dependent on what the area's infertile soils naturally produce, while a deer in farm country in South Georgia is getting a big assist from local farmers.

It might seem contradictory on the face of it, but deer in the most-heavily developed areas of the state also have an edge. The low hunting pressure in urban areas combines with plenty of landscaped yards, home gardens and other sources of forage to help whitetails stay fat, happy -- and growing. A deer that learns to look both ways before crossing the road can lead a pretty good life in the middle of suburbia.

The final puzzle piece: management. In the 1960s, deer management in Georgia primarily amounted to restoration. As deer numbers increased statewide, hunters began harvesting surplus animals, frequently under bucks-only regulations. Over the years, management of the overall population through harvest was fine-tuned as biologists used bag limits, season length and either-sex hunting days to control and improve the herd.

A slightly different approach to this traditional form of deer management is Quality Deer Management. In QDM, additional efforts are made to manage the age structure and sex ratio to improve herd and hunt quality. This involves protecting young bucks while harvesting enough does to keep the population below the habitat's carrying capacity. As protected bucks advance into older age-classes, they produce a more natural age-structure and more opportunities for hunters to target ever more mature bucks.

Like any other management strategy, QDM brings both advantages and disadvantages; you really can't have one without the other. Basic biology doesn't permit both density -- a deer under every oak tree -- and quality -- half of those deer under all of those trees wearing Boone and Crockett-grade racks. The development of individual deer is related to the size of the herd. Put simply, the more mouths are going after the same food, the smaller the owners of those mouths are going to be. To revisit our analogy of the All-SEC running back: You may come from a long line of professional athletes, but if you get nothing more to eat every day than a bologna sandwich and a can of beans, and you have to run two miles to get it before someone else does, you're probably not going to be suiting up on game day anytime soon.

The hunt continues to be the primary tool for herd management. Antler-restriction regs are no cure-all -- they won't produce trophy deer in every woodlot in Georgia. They're tools that can be used in conjunction with other practices to work with the basics of what Mother Nature has provided.

Statewide, hunters can harvest two bucks each season. One of those whitetails must have at least 4 points 1 inch or longer on one side of its rack, except in counties with special antler restrictions. In Hancock, Harris, Meriwether, Montgomery, Randolph, Talbot and Troup, bucks harvested must meet the 4-points-on-one-side restriction; in Dooly and Macon, only bucks with a minimum outside antler spread of 15 inches can be harvested.