Dominique LaBlank hunted the Heppner Unit to tie his tag on this nice 4-point. In timbered areas, pre-season scouting pays off. Photo courtesy of Battle Creek Outfitters.

Oregon offers unmatched deer hunting excitement. With blacktails, mule deer and two subspecies of whitetail, anyone looking to complete a Grand Slam of Deer has to put this state on the calendar.

Blacktails, approximately 320,000 of them, inhabit the western third of the state. And this is the only place where Columbian whitetails are legal game (with the proper controlled tag).

East of the Cascades, there are an estimated 241,000 mule deer, with about 6,000 whitetails living along the river bottoms in the state's northeast corner.

For deer hunters, knowledge is power. We've interviewed wildlife biologists, outfitters and successful hunters from around the state to gather the data for you.

And we'll tell you what units offer the most animals and where you've got your best chance at tying your tag on a big buck when the sun comes up on opening day.

WESTERN OREGON
Where the road stops, the fun begins. Dave Nuzum stoked his stainless Marlin 1895 with cartridges and checked the 4-power scope. The rain had stopped, but moisture was still seeping through the canopy.

"Good," Nuzum said. "The dripping will provide sonic cover."

He moved into a stand of mixed alders and conifers, following a narrow path he'd scouted before the season began.

Here was a lot of standing timber with good forage, laced with deer trails made by heavy-bodied animals with splayed dewclaws. It was a good place to rattle in a buck. He clacked the antlers together, waited and listened. But he heard nothing except the sound of the rain on the ferns.

After a few minutes, he moved, keeping the wind in his face.

A buck was coming straight on, head down, when Nuzum saw him.

The hunter swung the .45-70 to his shoulder and dropped the buck at 22 yards.

Nuzum has had other successes with rattling antlers on the west side. His biggest buck was a 22-inch wide coastal blacktail that came to the clatter 10 seconds after he started. He shot that one at 17 yards.

Nuzum is an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist on the north coast. His work keeps him in touch with the Saddle Mountain, Wilson and Trask units.

"We came out of last season with pretty good buck ratios in all three units," he said. "We didn't see a lot of spikes in that sample, though. We had plenty of older deer -- three points and four points -- in that count.

"Folks may not see as many entry-level bucks in this year's hunt, but there should be enough older bucks."

Buck numbers are very high in the Saddle Mountain Unit, according to the Black-Tailed Deer Herd Composition Report. Post-season counts recorded 36 bucks per 100 does. Buck ratios in the Wilson Unit averaged 29 bucks per 100 does. The Trask Unit had 25 bucks per 100 does.

According to Nuzum, scouting and patience are the keys to success. "I tend to hunt thicker cover and more timber areas," he said. "The main thing is just to get off the road and walk the trails, and try to get away from other human activity."

And watch the weather! "Through the season, the weather comes and goes. And sometimes it's just like flipping a switch. The deer tend to be more active after they've had a front move through."

Rachel Phelps is one of the hosts of "America's Outdoor Journal" and a part-time blacktail outfitter with J&R Outfitters. She has spent 25 of her 28 years in the Alsea Unit.

"In this unit, I have seen more bucks than I have seen in a long, long time," she said. "We were very surprised during the velvet in 2006 how many nice bucks we saw. We've had some recent logging in this area, and that opened up a lot of feed."

Coming out of the winter, the deer appeared to be in good shape.

"They're looking really good," Phelps said.

Hair-loss syndrome has appeared in some of the local herds, but Phelps said all the deer she saw with hair-loss have since recovered.