The 12,713-acre Coopers Rock State Forest (SF) tops the list. Sprawled across the Monongalia-Preston line, it offers mixed hardwood habitat at an elevation greater than 3,000 feet. Interstate 68 skirts its southern end and provides easy access.

Adventurous hunters might want to try the nearby Snake Hill Wildlife Management Area (WMA), a 3,092-acre tract that drops off into the imposing Cheat River Canyon.

The 1,036-acre Little Indian Creek WMA near Arnettsville offers more gentle terrain. The property features old strip mine benches that have been reclaimed into open fields. These fields are interspersed with moderately steep, wooded hills.

The Pedlar WMA offers similar terrain, but its listed size of 768 acres is a bit deceiving. The tract is broken up into two non-adjoining forested plots of 440 and 328 acres.

Morgantown, Monongalia's county seat, offers all the restaurants and motel rooms a visiting hunter could wish to choose from. Visiting sportsmen need to be careful, though, to time their visits so that they don't coincide with West Virginia University football games. Morgantown becomes a very busy place when the Mountaineers are in town.

If Wood County had more public-land hunting opportunities, it would have shared the top of the list with Monongalia. Wood ranks fourth in kill per square mile at 15.3, and fifth in raw kill at 4,728. Strictly, by the numbers, the two counties finished in a dead heat for first place.

Almost all of Wood's deer, however, came off private property. Only the 967-acre Sand Hill WMA lies within the county's boundaries, and even then only partly so. Some of the hilly, mostly wooded tract straddles the border with neighboring Ritchie County near the town of Volcano.

Interstate 77 carves a four-lane north-south corridor through the county, and U.S. Route 50 -- also four lanes -- provides easy east-west access. Motel rooms and restaurants can be found in and around Parkersburg, where the two roads intersect.

A little farther down the Ohio River, Mason County occupies the No. 3 spot on this year's best-bet list. Last year, Mason ranked second in raw harvest with 5,391 whitetails and ninth in kill per square mile at 13.3.

Two sizable public-land hunting areas solidify Mason's elite status among West Virginia's whitetail-producing counties. The 11,722-acre Chief Cornstalk WMA near Southside is the larger of the two. Its combination of mature timberland and overgrown farmsteads makes it a popular destination for hunters in the Charleston-Huntington area.

A few miles to the northwest, the 3,655-acre McClintic WMA might enjoy even greater popularity. A combination of brush, timber, farm and wetlands, it is a magnet for deer.

Three years' worth of "trophy-buck" management (all bucks must have antler spreads of at least 14 inches in order to be legal) have made McClintic a "must-try" during the opening weeks of the bow and buck seasons.

Both WMAs lie within just a few minutes' drive of Point Pleasant, the county seat and a center for lodging and dining. U.S. Route 35 provides easy access to the Cornstalk tract, and state Route 62 passes just west of the McClintic property.

Mason's neighbor to the northeast, Jackson County, has been a top 10 deer hotspot for more than a decade. Last season, hunters downed 5,220 whitetails within the county's boundaries -- the state's third-highest total. Jackson's productivity average of 11.6 deer per square mile ranked 13th in the state last season.

Because Jackson County is only a 30- to 45-minute drive from Charleston, the county receives plenty of hunting pressure, mostly on private land. Sportsmen who prefer public land have two choices: the 2,587-acre Frozen Camp WMA near Marshall and the 1,696-acre Woodrum Lake WMA near Kentuck.

Frozen Camp is the easier to hunt. Its low, forested hills contain two small lakes, a few open bottomland fields, and some open ridgetops. The Woodrum Lake property is much more rugged, with steep-sided hills and old, overgrown farmsteads.

Lodging and restaurants can be found in the county seat of Ripley and the old Ohio River town of Ravenswood. Interstate 77, U.S. Route 33 and state Route 2 are the main thoroughfares.

Marshall County, located at the base of West Virginia's Northern Panhandle, is another consistent whitetail producer. Last year, Marshall's hunters ranked 11th in the state with 3,802 deer killed. The county's average of 14.1 deer killed per square mile was the state's seventh best. What the county lacks in size, it makes up for in ruggedness. Its hills aren't particularly high, but they are steep-sided and -- for the most part -- heavily forested.