Bricken runs four big permit-only hunts on the 8,443-acre Pee Dee NWR each fall, in addition to a one-day youth hunt and a hunt for disabled hunters and open archery hunting. Permit hunts run Thursdays through Saturdays, with a muzzleloader hunt in early October, a gun hunt in late October and two gun hunts in early November.

"Here at the Pee Dee, our main objective is waterfowl management, but deer hunting is one of our six public-use objectives, and we know we have a good (deer) herd," Bricken said. "We do parasite studies every year -- we take five deer from different areas of the refuge -- and we send off the samples. If the number of parasites is high, then we know our deer population is more concentrated than it ought to be. Basically, it gives us a number for the carrying capacity."

Bricken draws 250 permits for each hunt, and the annual harvest on the refuge runs between 120 and 150 deer.

"We draw 250 names for each hunt, but we rarely have that many hunters on any given day," he said. "We may have 50 people who are drawn who don't pick up their permits, or we have some that can't come on Thursday or Friday -- and some that don't want to come on Saturday when we have the biggest crowd. On any given day, we may not have more than 100 hunters on the refuge.

"We realize with the limited number of days we hunt, we can't possibly hurt the deer population. There aren't enough hunters and not enough time to put that much pressure on 'em. We have to flood our waterfowl impoundments in mid-November, so our deer hunts end then, except for the late archery season.

"We document all the deer killed on the hunts; we check and weigh 'em and examine them all," he said. "We know we have a healthy population.

"We have the hunts as a way of controlling the deer population, and we accommodate hunters who have nowhere else to go. A lot of people hunt here because it's the only place they have to hunt. We're close enough to Charlotte that the area is getting developed, and it's hard to get a good lease. We used to have people who came here and hunted in addition to hunting somewhere else, but it's not that way anymore."

Hunters can take two deer per day on the Pee Dee for each of the three days of the hunt, as long as they stay within state regulations for antlered deer limits. Bricken said that many hunters look to his refuge hunts as a way to kill an extra-big buck -- as witnessed by a handful of really big bucks taken over the past handful of years.