"With some of our deer and turkey hunts, we try to go with quality over quantity. Rather than being concerned with putting enough people in the woods to kill a bunch of animals, we want to provide a quality hunting experience by having a smaller number of hunters."

Osborne said that the main way the state figures out how successful the permit hunts have been is by mailing out survey cards at the end of the season that ask hunters how many days they hunted, the kinds and numbers of game they saw and whether they were successful.

"That way, we can get more specific information on the permit hunts than we can get on our other game-lands hunts," he said. "The ideal situation would have hunters come and check in all their deer, and when you have harvested enough bucks or does, you cut it off. But we can't do that. We don't have the manpower."

"In some cases, landowners have requested that we have only permit hunts on certain game lands," Osborne said. "On the Roanoke River, permit hunts were required by the purchasing agreement we signed. And in other cases, a landowner who sells us a piece of land may want us to hold only permit hunts. They may have adjacent land or some other interest, and we'll try to work with them."

For Bebb and his boss, Don Cockman, taking care of the deer herd at Fort Bragg means setting up parameters for different management areas to give hunters the best chance they can get to take a deer, while keeping the herd at a good level.

"We do track counts and spotlight studies, to keep tabs on the deer herd," Bebb said. "We manage our deer on big management areas, typically 10,000 acres or more, and we try to set a harvest goal on each of the management areas.

"There are some places where we want to take more does than on others, and some places where we don't want to take many does at all. We set a number for how many deer we want taken from an area, and when we get to it, we cut off the hunting in that area."

Hunters who come in to hunt Fort Bragg on a daily basis are allowed to choose their hunting area, as long as it's not being used for training by the military, and as long as the quota for the area hasn't been reached. If Bebb and Cockman determine that hunters have taken all the does they need to from one area, they will issue buck-only permits. If the hunter wants the opportunity to take an antlerless deer, they'll offer him other areas.

"We will change (our numbers) from year to year. The last few years have been fairly steady; we've been decreasing our doe harvest to try and increase the recruitment in the herd," Bebb said. "We try not to put more than one hunter for every 100 acres."

Fort Bragg has had an annual harvest of between 300 and 400 deer for each of the past several years. The buck-doe ratio in the harvest has changed from about 60-40 to 70-30.

"Every deer that's killed has to come in, and we take a look at it, check the weight, antler measurements, get its age," Bebb said. "We try to keep a pretty good take on what's going on."