Autumn in West Virginia is a special time. Fall foliage sets the hills ablaze with color, and people’s thoughts turn toward harvesting the bounties of the forest.

Of all the game species available to Mountaineers, none captures their imagination more thoroughly than the white-tailed deer. From mid-Sep­tember (more on that later) through the end of December, hunters venture afield and test their abilities against the whitetail’s keen senses and survival instincts.

Last year, they succeeded 162,371 times. Assuming a statewide average of 45 pounds of boned meat from each deer, sportsmen took home more than 7.3 million pounds of venison.

The 2008 total — the combined results of the bow, buck firearms, antlerless firearms and muzzleloader seasons — represented an 11 percent increase over the season, and was the 15th highest on record.

This year’s harvest should go even higher. State wildlife officials say the deer herd is as large as ever, and two brand-new seasons will give bow­hunters and muzzleloader enthusiasts more opportunities to succeed.

Earlier this year — on May 17, to be precise — the West Virginia Natural Resources Commission approved a six-day antlerless-deer archery season for Sept. 14-19 and a six-day antlerless-deer muzzleloader season for Sept. 21-26. The seasons will be open in 36 of the state’s 55 counties.

Frank Jezioro, director of the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (DNR), says the seasons were designed to accomplish a pair of long-term goals.

“For some time, we’d been looking for ways to give people extra hunting opportunities and to reduce deer numbers in counties where they’d become overpopulated,” he says. “We believe these new seasons will do those things.”

So now, the dilemma every West Virginia sportsman faces: Where does one go to take advantage of both the new and traditional seasons?

The short answer is almost anywhere. Woodlands cover 78 percent of the Mountain State, and deer are quite literally everywhere.

In reality, however, finding really good hunting spots is a bit more complicated than that. Some areas harbor more deer than others. Find them, and you usually find the best places to set up a deer drive or put up a tree stand.

To help simplify the process, we have developed a formula that tells us where hunters have the best chance at success. Here’s how it works:

First, we rank all the counties, highest to lowest, for the total number of deer killed within their borders. Next, we divide those “raw kill” numbers by the county’s area in square miles. The result — expressed in “deer per square mile” — gives us a much better idea how productive the county actually is.

We rank the counties, highest to lowest, for their productivity. Then we add the raw-kill rankings to the productivity rankings and divide by two to get an average. When two counties’ averages tie, we rank higher the one with more public hunting land.

This year’s top 10 counties represent four of the DNR’s game-man­agement districts. No counties from District II (Eastern Panhandle) or District IV (Southeastern) ranked enough in productivity to come close to the top 15, let alone the top 10.

Four of the top 10 counties hail from District I (Northern Tier); three came from District VI (Ohio River); two came from District V (Southwestern) and one from District III (Allegheny Highlands).

When the final rankings were complete, District VI’s Wood County stands alone at the top. Wood’s raw harvest of 4,792 whitetails ranks seventh in the state, and its productivity average of 15.51 deer per square mile ranks third.

It’s easy to understand why Wood produces so many deer. Fertile bottomlands, rolling woodlands and rich agricultural lands make it a 309-square-mile whitetail magnet.

Its weak point — if a county so productive could be considered to have one — is a relative lack of public-hunting land. Only the 1,987 Sand Hill Wildlife Management Area (WMA) lies within the county’s boundaries, and then only partly so.