When all of these factors -- limited hunters, difficult hunting, and the intangibles of diet and chemistry -- come together in one location, you end up with mule deer hunting at its most impressive. As with good steelhead holes or grouse coverts, these places are usually not secrets. Indeed, many of the most passionate mule deer hunters know the names of places like the Trout Creek Mountains and the Desert Unit. They may have never seen them, and likely never will, but they most certainly know of them for their reputation as big-deer factories.

Hunters who are willing to participate in permit hunts and who build up preference points actually have a pretty good chance of eventually drawing a tag in a premier unit. When they do, the hunt of a lifetime awaits them. Here are some of those units.

OREGON
Whitehorse and Trout Creek Mountains
Anyone over the age of 50 has probably spent a fair amount of time as a child watching Hollywood westerns that were filmed in the southeast corner of Oregon. This sprawling region of expansive vistas, rugged mountain ranges, buttes, canyons, cold desert rivers and seasonal creeks is tailor-made for cinematographers. Ironically, those same features that inspired cinematographers are the same characteristics that make Oregon's Whitehorse Unit and Trout Creek Mountains one of the legendary mule deer areas in the West.

Even today, when much of the inter-mountain West has been transformed by development and outdoor recreation seekers, this rugged and remote corner of Oregon remains wide open and virtually unpopulated. That is just what mule deer want, and many of them live long enough here to grow into true trophy-class bucks.

One of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's largest units, the Whitehorse, sits in the southeast corner of the state extending from Idaho and Nevada to the Steens Mountain foothills on the west and north to the Owyhee Unit. Although it contains a smattering of working ranches (many of them more than a century old) and wind-blown communities, more than 90 percent of the unit is public land. It contains the Owyhee River and canyon, the Alvord Desert, and the Trout Creek and Sheephead mountain ranges.

The Trout Creek Mountains, in the southwest corner of the unit, are known for producing the largest deer in the unit. The ODFW operates a separate permit hunt for the Trout Creek Mountains.

Nearly all of the public land is held by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and is open to hunting. However, some ranchers lease public areas for grazing, and there are occasionally problems with gates and access. Always call the regional BLM office before planning a hunt.

The bad thing about setting your sights on the Trout Creek Mountains, of course, is that you will almost certainly have to wait a long time to draw a permit. During 2002, 1,834 hunters vied for 53 tags.

Your odds are considerably better in the East Whitehorse Hunt, which encompasses the rest of the hunt; only 776 hunters applied for 266 permits in 2002. Despite the Trout Creek Mountains' widely heralded reputation for turning out wall hanger racks, the success rates of the E. Whitehorse hunts and Trout Creek Mountains haven't been that different in recent years. In 2000, for instance, 52 hunters killed 32 bucks in the Trout Creek Mountains for a 62 percent success rate. The same year, 235 hunters in the East Whitehorse tagged 135 deer, for a 57 percent rate. A hunter who is seriously interested in the Whitehorse Unit, therefore, can greatly increase his or her odds of drawing a tag without significantly decreasing the chance of killing a deer by choosing the East Whitehorse Hunt.