Photo by Mike Searles.

O.T. Sutton has the Mississippi deer hunting thing figured out -- which is why the walls of his Columbia home are covered with trophy heads.

In addition to being a crackerjack shot and an excellent (albeit amateur) gunsmith, this guy has mastered the heart of hunting bucks through the entire rutting cycle -- which to many hunters means a few weeks of pre-rut and another week of bucks actually chasing does.

Not to Sutton.

To him it means hunting pre-rut bucks during the archery season in Tunica County in November and continuing his pursuit of the big boys through the peak of south Mississippi's doe-chasing in February. Thus, he was probably the happiest man in the Magnolia State when the deer season was extended through to Feb. 15 for muzzleloaders and archery in the extreme southeastern corner a few years ago.

"You know I was!" said the former guide, who honed his buck communication skills during years of helping clients at Mississippi's first pay-to-hunt operation at Cedar Ridge near Port Gibson. "When they gave us those extra weeks of hunting in south Mississippi, that was the final piece of the puzzle for me.

"And we really needed that change -- because hunters around the rest of Mississippi don't have a clue just what we were facing down here. The season was ending before we were ever really seeing bucks chasing does. It was always bad, but once the deer population started exploding it just got worse."

Mississippi wildlife officials divided the state into two deer zones far different from each other in size. Zone 2, or the southeast, comprising only nine counties and parts of five others, includes the worst of Mississippi's deer habitat, the southern coastal plain and the southern end of the Pine Belt.

Most of the area's small complement of hardwoods spared by the lumber companies was destroyed by 2005's Hurricane Katrina. Perhaps surprisingly, though, the horrific storm has provided a great benefit to the Zone 2 deer population by opening holes in the dense pine forests. Biologists predict a rise in the number of deer and improvement in the herd's health.

"Obviously, that could further affect the rut down there," said Chad Dacus, deer project coordinator for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. "The latest breeding date that we recorded in the state for last year was March 21 in Perry County" -- which lies in the heart of Zone 2. "Any time you put more deer on the ground, you're putting more antlerless deer and that means it takes longer for them to all cycle out once or twice and be bred."

Dacus and the rest of the state's biologists have comprised a map that shows the average breeding periods for all parts of Mississippi. It is posted on the agency's Web site at mdwfp.com (just look for the site's link to the new deer page) and is based on the historical data collected in post-deer season studies of does shot later in the spring. Biologists collected the fetuses, aged them and determined dates of conception.

The breeding map -- color-coded to distinguish 10 different time periods -- can be very beneficial to hunters, making available one more tool with which to decipher buck movements. "You can take their average date, and factor in the moon phases and pretty much plan your season," Sutton explained approvingly. "I for one believe that the most does come into estrus on the full moon phase. So if I take the average date of conception and look for the nearest full moon to that date -- hey, I'm onto something.

"For a lot of us who have hunted all our lives in certain areas, if we are half the sportsmen we ought to be, we have recorded our successes in our logs and know pretty much what is going to happen. But for newcomers, this can be an invaluable tool. It also would be a nice tool for somebody who has hunted one club in one part of the state all his or her life and then moves to a new club in another area."