Only three things are certain about West Virginia's upcoming firearm season for buck deer:

One, it opens Monday; two, it will attract more than 300,000 hunters; three, a lot of deer will be killed.

"I truly am looking forward to an outstanding buck season," said Paul Johansen, assistant wildlife chief for the state Division of Natural Resources. "With acorns and other favored foods in short supply, deer will likely be found in fields and along field edges where they'll be much more vulnerable to the gun."

Last year, hunters bagged 68,540 antlered whitetails during the buck season and 54,704 antlerless deer, many of them in counties open to doe hunting during the buck season.

Johansen expects those numbers to increase this year. "If we get favorable weather throughout the season, I expect hunters will be very pleased with the harvest," he said.

Naturally, some areas of the state harbor more deer than others. Hunters who head for those areas stand a far better chance at success than those who head elsewhere. For more than two decades, we at the Gazette-Mail have employed a special formula to find the likely hotspots. Here's how we do it:

First, we see how many deer were killed in each county, and we rank the counties in order from highest to lowest. Next, we divide each of those so-called "raw kill" totals by the total number of square miles of habitat in each county. The result, expressed in terms of "deer per square mile," gives a much truer measure of each county's productivity.

We rank the counties, top to bottom, in deer per square mile. To make our "best bets" list, a county has to rank high in raw kill as well as deer per square mile, and it has to have plenty of room for folks to hunt - at least 350 square miles of habitat and one or more sizable tracts of public hunting land.

Monongalia County heads up this year's list.

Hunters killed 4,704 deer within the county's borders last year, eighth-most in the state. The county's average of 15.08 whitetails per square mile also ranked eighth.

Monongalia offers just about every kind of deer habitat available in the Mountain State, from the bottomlands along the Monongahela River to the lofty ridges of the Allegheny Mountains.

There's plenty of public hunting. Hunters can head for the 766-acre Pedlar Wildlife Management Area or the 1,036-acre Little Indian Creek WMA in the county's western lowlands, or they can opt for the more spacious 3,092-acre Snake Hill WMA or the 12,713-acre Coopers Rock State Forest along the Preston County border.

Close behind Monongalia comes Mason County. Located inside a sweeping bend of the Ohio River, the county's 407 square miles are a deer-friendly blend of agricultural bottomlands and rolling oak-hickory woodlands.

Mason's hunters bagged a whopping 5,464 deer in 2008, the state's second-highest total. The county's productivity average, 13.43 whitetails per square mile, ranked eleventh.

Two major public hunting areas provide hunters plenty of room to pursue their pastime. The 11,772-acre Chief Cornstalk WMA is the larger of the two. Located on the south side of the Kanawha River near the town of Southside, Cornstalk is a heavily forested mixture of gently rolling hills and steeply wooded slopes.

The 3,655-acre McClintic WMA is the smaller than Cornstalk, but arguably more popular. One look at its composition tells why: 600 acres of farmland; 1,100 acres of brushland; 180 acres of wetland; and 1,775 acres of mixed hardwood forest.

All bucks killed at McClintic must have antler spreads of at least 14 inches to be legal. That regulation, instituted in 1999, has ensured a steady supply of trophy-class bucks - not huge, but nice.

Lewis County ranks third on this year's best-bet list.

A fixture among West Virginia's best deer producers, Lewis didn't disappoint in 2008. Sportsmen killed 5,088 whitetails, the state's fifth-best total, within the county. Lewis' productivity average of 13.51 deer per square mile ranked 10th.

Only three things are certain about West Virginia's upcoming firearm season for buck deer:

One, it opens Monday; two, it will attract more than 300,000 hunters; three, a lot of deer will be killed.

"I truly am looking forward to an outstanding buck season," said Paul Johansen, assistant wildlife chief for the state Division of Natural Resources. "With acorns and other favored foods in short supply, deer will likely be found in fields and along field edges where they'll be much more vulnerable to the gun."

Last year, hunters bagged 68,540 antlered whitetails during the buck season and 54,704 antlerless deer, many of them in counties open to doe hunting during the buck season.

Johansen expects those numbers to increase this year. "If we get favorable weather throughout the season, I expect hunters will be very pleased with the harvest," he said.

Naturally, some areas of the state harbor more deer than others. Hunters who head for those areas stand a far better chance at success than those who head elsewhere. For more than two decades, we at the Gazette-Mail have employed a special formula to find the likely hotspots. Here's how we do it:

First, we see how many deer were killed in each county, and we rank the counties in order from highest to lowest. Next, we divide each of those so-called "raw kill" totals by the total number of square miles of habitat in each county. The result, expressed in terms of "deer per square mile," gives a much truer measure of each county's productivity.

We rank the counties, top to bottom, in deer per square mile. To make our "best bets" list, a county has to rank high in raw kill as well as deer per square mile, and it has to have plenty of room for folks to hunt - at least 350 square miles of habitat and one or more sizable tracts of public hunting land.

Monongalia County heads up this year's list.

Hunters killed 4,704 deer within the county's borders last year, eighth-most in the state. The county's average of 15.08 whitetails per square mile also ranked eighth.

Monongalia offers just about every kind of deer habitat available in the Mountain State, from the bottomlands along the Monongahela River to the lofty ridges of the Allegheny Mountains.

There's plenty of public hunting. Hunters can head for the 766-acre Pedlar Wildlife Management Area or the 1,036-acre Little Indian Creek WMA in the county's western lowlands, or they can opt for the more spacious 3,092-acre Snake Hill WMA or the 12,713-acre Coopers Rock State Forest along the Preston County border.

Close behind Monongalia comes Mason County. Located inside a sweeping bend of the Ohio River, the county's 407 square miles are a deer-friendly blend of agricultural bottomlands and rolling oak-hickory woodlands.

Mason's hunters bagged a whopping 5,464 deer in 2008, the state's second-highest total. The county's productivity average, 13.43 whitetails per square mile, ranked eleventh.

Two major public hunting areas provide hunters plenty of room to pursue their pastime. The 11,772-acre Chief Cornstalk WMA is the larger of the two. Located on the south side of the Kanawha River near the town of Southside, Cornstalk is a heavily forested mixture of gently rolling hills and steeply wooded slopes.

The 3,655-acre McClintic WMA is the smaller than Cornstalk, but arguably more popular. One look at its composition tells why: 600 acres of farmland; 1,100 acres of brushland; 180 acres of wetland; and 1,775 acres of mixed hardwood forest.

All bucks killed at McClintic must have antler spreads of at least 14 inches to be legal. That regulation, instituted in 1999, has ensured a steady supply of trophy-class bucks - not huge, but nice.

Lewis County ranks third on this year's best-bet list.

A fixture among West Virginia's best deer producers, Lewis didn't disappoint in 2008. Sportsmen killed 5,088 whitetails, the state's fifth-best total, within the county. Lewis' productivity average of 13.51 deer per square mile ranked 10th.

The 18,289-acre Stonewall Jackson WMA has ranked among the state's most productive public-hunting tracts since the area opened in 1988. Its rolling hills and grown-up farmlands are a virtual whitetail magnet.

A few miles to the northeast, the 2,985-acre Stonecoal WMA offers similar habitat, only on steeper terrain. The county's other public tract is the 252-acre Smoke Camp WMA on the Right Fork of Freemans Creek Road.

Fourth on the list comes Wetzel County.

As usual, Wetzel ranked high in both overall harvest and in kill per square mile last season. The county's raw-kill total of 4,853 whitetails ranked sixth, and its productivity average of 13.75 deer per square mile ranked ninth.

The Lewis Wetzel WMA near Jacksonburg provides 13,590 acres of steeply sloped, thickly forested woodlands. Like Stonewall, Lewis Wetzel consistently ranks among the state's top deer-producing WMAs.

Also near Jacksonburg, the 555-acre Lantz Farm WMA and Nature Preserve offers similar hunting. A portion of the 2,215-acre Cecil H. Underwood WMA extends within the county's borders, though most of it lies in neighboring Marshall County.

This year's fifth-ranked best bet, Preston County, almost always leads the state in raw kill. Last year was no exception. Hunters bagged a whopping 7,246 deer, nearly 1,800 more than in runner-up Mason County. Preston's productivity average of 11.84 whitetails per square mile ranked 16th in the state.

The largest state-owned public hunting tract is Preston's share of Coopers Rock State Forest along the Monongalia County border. After that comes the 1,162-acre Briery Mountain WMA. The State Armory Board (National Guard) owns Briery Mountain, and sportsmen must obtain a free hunting permit before entering the property.

Preston also contains a portion of the Snake Hill WMA, located in and around the rugged Cheat River canyon along the Monongalia County line.

The county contains federal hunting land, too. A goodly portion of the Monongahela National Forest's 59,978-acre Blackwater WMA extends into the county's southeastern reaches.

Buck season at a glance

Reach John McCoy at johnmc...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1231.